71–80 of 297 posts
"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses" -- Bjarne Stroustrup
I think every language has somebody complaining about it anyway.
Once you need a framework and the complexity that goes with it, PHP starts to suck. It lacks the behavior and tools to nicely manage complexity beyond a pile of files.
But when what you need is a pile of files, PHP is awesome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to like Laravel, but lately it feels so enterprisy. There is a lot of boilerplate in Laravel today and it was changing too fast for me to keep up with it.
The more I used Laravel the less I liked it. I like Laravel Elixir (the npm package) and Eloquent (the ORM). Laravel itself is overly complex and the learning curve keeps getting higher. I'm much happier with Slim 3
"The problem I have with PHP has nothing to do with the language, it’s its reputation. I can’t count the times I’ve started a conversation with a programmer who upon finding out I primarily do PHP got awkward with me." The HN post title is sure helping with the reputation.
That's me but ... I've known quite a few good PHP developers like this author. I've also seen horrible, horrible things - things that other languages and frameworks simply won't let you do. A language that gives you a lot of slack also gives you more opportunity to hang yourself. There's nothing that says you have to hang yourself.
As mentioned, the barrier to entry is low with PHP. The combination of a "loose" language and a newbie programmer is dangerous. And didn't all of us, as newbs, think we were done when it seemed to work properly? So the correct statement is not that PHP sucks, it's that many write sucky PHP. I'd rather see everyone aspire to not sucking (and certainly not hanging themselves) regardless of the language they use.
NOTE: I wrote a lot of PHP code in the late '90s and reworked part of a project in 2005/2006 so I obviously don't know anything about the current state of PHP. I'm not against it - I simply choose not to use it (at least at the moment).
I used to feel the same way a lot of times, a shame it seems for being a PHP dev. Now, I don't care. I've been using it since 1999, and I use it to get stuff done. My customers and users of my applications don't care what it's written in. But, you should definitely learn more languages as a programmer. > And to anyone considering programming as a career, or trying to get into it... stay away from PHP. This is the par…
PHP is actually the language I do recommend people learn if they're interested in web development (obviously along with JavaScript), because PHP developers are in high demand. PHP developers can always find work, precisely because there is so much PHP out there.