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Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

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Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#11

Post by sametmax »

superasn wrote: post #10

I would highly recommend PHP for quick web development. We've been using it for all our sites and it's such a breeze to develop using it. We've never had any performance issues either (in my experience they are always more on the db end) I'll highly recommend that you spend some time learning composer first. That is a must for any serious php development. Then there are optional things you can learn like a framework…

Are you advising that a beginer should implement their own auth solution ? That they will get csrf or xss handling right ?

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#12

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

saluki wrote: post #6

Speed of PHP 7 is much improved, it's way faster than 5, and fast enough for any app (Facebook runs on a flavor of PHP) I use the Laravel Framework on PHP 7, Laravel makes PHP nice to work with. Laravel is as enjoyable as Rails, sure you miss Ruby but Laravel keeps development fun. If you are doing a project in PHP use Laravel. I use forge.laravel.com to spin up servers and do deployments. It saves a ton of time and…

Do you use frontend frameworks like React or Vue with laravel/PHP?

I'm still debating what my 2nd backend language for webdevelopment should be (besides NodeJS). Rails is highly opinionated, activeORM is amazing, has rails API mode, but it lacks native async support, and has a weird way of doing things. A lot of magic behind the scenes.

I only learned enough to know how powerful it is, and it's paradigm. I think everyone should learn it. Abstracting away rails to sinatra I've been told is painful, and I've never heard of anyone building websites with pure ruby

PHP seems appealing to me b/c it couples well with Vue, PUG (html templating). I have heard doing things other than the rails way is a nightmare, but I don't know how it is with laravel.

PHP also b/c of wordpress. I still find it superior to any alternatives (Jekyll, hugo, gatsby, etc) because of the rich plugin ecosystem, proven ground, and ability to own your comments (and not have middleware like disqus)

Rails doesn't really work with windows OS either, and I primarily use a windows machine too.

The other downside of PHP is that it's frowned upon due to developers dislike for legacy PHP codebases.

How well does PHP work as a REST API? Is Laravel highly opinionated or are there many ways of doing things inside the framework? Does PHP have native async support? I could probably look these up but I'm curious to know what your opinions are.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#13

Post by hluska »

sametmax wrote: post #11
superasn wrote: post #10

I would highly recommend PHP for quick web development. We've been using it for all our sites and it's such a breeze to develop using it. We've never had any performance issues either (in my experience they are always more on the db end) I'll highly recommend that you spend some time learning composer first. That is a must for any serious php development. Then there are optional things you can learn like a framework…

Are you advising that a beginer should implement their own auth solution ? That they will get csrf or xss handling right ?

Is interfacesketch actually a beginner? If he/she is a true beginner, that would change the entire question.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#14

Post by sametmax »

hluska wrote: post #13
sametmax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you advising that a beginer should implement their own auth solution ? That they will get csrf or xss handling right ?

Is interfacesketch actually a beginner? If he/she is a true beginner, that would change the entire question.

I don't know any senior web dev that need the advices you gave, nor ask question about PHP. Everybody with years of web xp has did something in php at least once or know what' s up with framework.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#15

Post by eksemplar »

I wouldn't recommend PHP, but there is nothing wrong with it, especially not if you're good at it. Django is more productive, and react, graphql + Apollo and prisma is better in production, but really, if you're good at PHP then PHP is fine.

I wouldn't worry about it not being the fastest tech, the fact is that if it's more productive, then it's often more cost-efficient. Iron is so cheap, that if you need to spend 1-2 weeks extra on development, then you'll be able to pay for your servers for several hundreds of years until a faster tech becomes more cost-effective than something that deploys faster.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#16

Post by steve_taylor »

siquick wrote: post #5

I still haven't found a language that lets me get a very basic website up and running faster than PHP. I don't care too much for the syntax but if you just want to put up a simple page with server-side logic in as quick a time as possible then its as good as most.

Have you tried Node.js with Express and Handlebars (express and hbs packages)? It’s dead easy and fast to develop.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#17

Post by BjoernKW »

I'm currently using it for creating specific components for two customer projects. With Java, JavaScript, TypeScript and Ruby (for scripts) being my usual go-to languages, I'm not a huge fan of PHP but I'd say PHP 7 fares quite well.

It's reasonably fast. Though not part of the core language, PHPUnit is really good, as is the PHP support in IntelliJ IDEA (or PhpStorm, JetBrains' dedicated PHP offering).

If PHP is your main language or if for some reason PHP is required by your environment (e.g. if the target platform for your software are run-of-the-mill virtual servers) then PHP 7 absolutely is a good choice for new projects.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#18

Post by bnycum »

I use PHP still, using Laravel. So far I enjoy it. Definitely a pleasure to use. My web apps are used by at most a hundred people throughout the month, so performance won’t be an issue.

Deployment with Laravel is a breeze. I don’t use any of their deployment utilities though like Forge.

I came back to PHP. Used it back in what feels like the Stone Age. Then went through Rails when it was the new hotness. Switched to mobile and desktop development. Was behind when I needed a web project done, and knew I could fall back to my PHP skills faster than Ruby. Tried out Laravel and have been pretty happy since.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#19

Post by philippz »

PHP7 is really fast and performance won't be an issue. It's usually another bottleneck, like the database that kills your performance.

Laravel is highly recommended these days. For even more performance you should check out PhalconPHP (https://phalconphp.com/en/). But still - I'd go with the Laravel ecosystem.

Re: Ask HN: PHP 7 for new projects – your experience and recommendations

#20

Post by saluki »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #12
saluki wrote: post #6

Speed of PHP 7 is much improved, it's way faster than 5, and fast enough for any app (Facebook runs on a flavor of PHP) I use the Laravel Framework on PHP 7, Laravel makes PHP nice to work with. Laravel is as enjoyable as Rails, sure you miss Ruby but Laravel keeps development fun. If you are doing a project in PHP use Laravel. I use forge.laravel.com to spin up servers and do deployments. It saves a ton of time and…

Do you use frontend frameworks like React or Vue with laravel/PHP? I'm still debating what my 2nd backend language for webdevelopment should be (besides NodeJS) . Rails is highly opinionated, activeORM is amazing, has rails API mode, but it lacks native async support, and has a weird way of doing things. A lot of magic behind the scenes. I only learned enough to know how powerful it is, and it's paradigm. I think eve…

I created one Laravel app with React. I use vue now. Although I'm not completely sold on using Vue(or React) for the front end.

For most Apps I still build them as a traditional web app with just enough javascript/jQuery on the front end as needed.

Granted Vue is really nice, I'm sure I'll move over to using it more.

Laravel feels similar to the Rails way.

The developer of Vue works closely with the Laravel community so there is great compatibility there.

Checkout the Laracon talks Evan speaks at Laravel Conferences.

Laracasts.com is similar to Railscast.com and a great place to learn Laravel. There are some free classes to get you started.

WordPress, y I still maintain some WordPress sites, I don't enjoy it but it's the easiest way to setup a blog/content site. I have some Laravel apps that are setup to connect to the WordPress database, it works well it's easy to setup objects in Laravel to interact with Posts, Comments, Reviews, etc. This is mainly for dashboards, batch editing of comments for VAs, etc.

As far as windows, I switched to OSX when I was learning Rails. I was always having problems with Rails tutorials and would spend 10s of hours on windows workarounds.

Using windows for Laravel is a little easier. Like Rails most of the tutorials, developers use OSX. I would recommend using a mac for development. It's just easier more productive.

Even the entry point macbook air is more than capable for Laravel or Rails development.

If you need one you could probably pick up a last gen macbook air on sale (new ones just came out and are $1199) I've seen them as low as $649 but have been on sale for $799 pretty often.

Laravel works well as a rest API it is setup for api routes out of the box. There are lots of tutorials for using Laravel as the backend and interacting with vue through an api.

Native Async support included: https://laracasts.com/series/learn-laravel-mix/episodes/9

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