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PHP Sucks

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Re: PHP Sucks

#221
post #85

I started freelancing in my area doing Ruby on Rails, and found it far harder to maintain a project. I also found it harder to acquire clients in my area for new RoR development. More work was available locally with PHP. Clients were more willing to pay. I've done a ton of things in WordPress that shouldn't have been, "to save money". And I've done greenfield development with CodeIgniter, Laravel (v3 and v5), and a c…

I will say this: I whipped out the backend of a site in 1 night that had most of eBay's functionality... in PHP. But I quickly moved away from it and I'll explain why. I think that many programmers are starting to realize that the less "cognitive load" your language demands of you as a programmer, the better (the fewer bugs, etc.) Simple example, the recently-maligned "==" comparison operator has a very complex table…

"most of eBay's functionality"

Do you realize what a ridiculous statement that is?

Re: PHP Sucks

#222
post #85

I started freelancing in my area doing Ruby on Rails, and found it far harder to maintain a project. I also found it harder to acquire clients in my area for new RoR development. More work was available locally with PHP. Clients were more willing to pay. I've done a ton of things in WordPress that shouldn't have been, "to save money". And I've done greenfield development with CodeIgniter, Laravel (v3 and v5), and a c…

> More often it's the programmer who sucks, not the language. In the context, it's also a common occurrence that I can tell when developers came from the php (non framework) world. When I see them move to Rails (or in javascript), I often see an obvious lack of understanding / adaptation of MVC, Single Responsibility, asynchronicity, testing, and variable scoping - I've seen Senior PHP Developers come out with less o…

"Single Responsibility, asynchronicity, testing, and variable scoping"

Asynchronicity is this generations goto statment. How you need that in 99% of projects is beyond me. Mental masturbation?

Re: PHP Sucks

#223
post #85

I started freelancing in my area doing Ruby on Rails, and found it far harder to maintain a project. I also found it harder to acquire clients in my area for new RoR development. More work was available locally with PHP. Clients were more willing to pay. I've done a ton of things in WordPress that shouldn't have been, "to save money". And I've done greenfield development with CodeIgniter, Laravel (v3 and v5), and a c…

I graduated in 2003. I haven't been able to stop coding php. Why? Because of the amount of work . I know other languages, but the pay for php these days is totally astronomical. (I live in sf, pacific-heights / WELLL over 6 figs / wife doesn't work). Currently I feel like I have a massive technical advantage (I wont share). Right now I work on iphone/android backends - at massive scale, top 10 (PHP is fast). When peo…

I started in PHP but moved away from it because everyone always wanted to pay less than a CS grad should/would get using other languages "because PHP programmers are supposed to be cheap." Which meant not only did I get paid less, but that my coworkers frequently had very questionable ideas and no CS fundamentals. "No, you can not secure/maintain a session by base64 encoding a user name and id and putting them in a url" is a conversation that really shouldn't have needed to to take place.

Re: PHP Sucks

#224
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and who's paying me to work with one of those alternatives? No one. My reference for what you quoted was a Rails project written by a Python dev who thought he needed to make Ruby more like Python. The resulting code was so horrendous that I literally cannot tell which of 2-3 parts that compose one feature (all heavily monkey-patched together) is responsible for what. It's like 2-3 complete implementations, bu…

> Right, and who's paying me to work with one of those alternatives? No one. Give me a break, it's not like there are only PHP jobs out there. If you can't find anything else then it's because you're not capable of coding something that is outside PHP domain, IE basic CRUD apps ..

Ad hominem attacks won't get you anywhere.

Re: PHP Sucks

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give us a break, as a language PHP is a terrible language, and yes I do develop and get paid because of PHP, and I do so for the same exact reason you listed. It pays the bills and does so handsomely too. I have 20 yrs of programming experience in various languages than I care to count, as much as 20! So I do know my languages. From an academic perspective, PHP blows! But from a practical standpoint, it's a tool. It…

Is it any worse than Javascript, if we're honest?

'Not worse than JavaScript' is a low bar to clear. JavaScript has exactly two advantages: it is deployed everywhere, and it is dynamic. The latter means that with sufficient pain one can accomplish whatever one needs to.

It's not quite bad enough to count as a Turing tarpit like INTERCAL or brainf*ck, but it's one of the closest mainstream languages to the tarpit.

Re: PHP Sucks

#226
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree that what makes a good language is subjective, and that most all languages have their problems. There is a certain threshold where "good enough" is what matters. Personally, I'd rather everyone just stop the good/bad language debates entirely.

Programming has to be the only environment where the voices of academia don't seem to matter because "my language gets shit done". Deep inside, what do you think those researchers in the PL community, the people that know the ins and outs, that theorize about languages, the people who spent years and years learning about the theory behind it all, who created the OCamls, the Haskells, the Coqs, the Idrises and so fort…

> PHP is not fast

Actually, it is.

https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/php.html

Re: PHP Sucks

#227

This post hits it on the head. I had been a 12+ year PHP developer and a little less than 2 years ago I had left PHP for Node.js because I was sick of constantly defending my competence to people who used PHP for 15 minutes back in PHP4 days or had to fiddle with a crappy WordPress theme/plugin and completely dismissed the whole ecosystem.

I think it's hilarious when the same people who bash PHP will expound on their love of YavaScript in the next sentence. It's like there is not distinction between trendy and good. Actually, I think the author's post could be titled "PHP isn't trendy" without loosing any meaning.

Re: PHP Sucks

#228
Programming with PHP is sort of like eating/buying McDonald's food.

Yes it gets the job done and you can argue it is readily available, a calorie is a calorie etc....

...but the reality is even "new" McDonald's is not terribly good for you and people will judge you if continuously eat there (I'm not saying that is a good thing but it does happen. Just try asking coworkers to go there with you).

And that is the point. The OP doesn't like to be judged but the general consensus is PHP is "probably" not good for you long term (regardless of the caveats of the language one cannot argue that other language programmers are generally paid much higher).

Imagine it this way. Imagine a fitness professional saying: "you know calories are the main thing that make you fat so I eat a small McDonald's meal and fast the rest of the day".... what would you think of this fitness expert... would it honestly not affect your judgement?

I'm not saying PHP is bad... I'm just saying I understand the behavior the OP doesn't like.

Re: PHP Sucks

#229
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The language also is written by a programmer, who sucked in PHP's case IMO. Yes, I am a terrible coder, but I am probably still better than you :) - Rasmus Lerdorf Modern PHP is written and maintained by a team of programmers. It hasn't been the language Rasmus wrote (badly, as a hack he never intended anyone else to use) for years.

I wonder about the origin and context of all these quotes. This one was apparently tweeted by him and the full version is: "For all the folks getting excited about my quotes. Here is another - Yes, I am a terrible coder, but I am probably still better than you :)" That is, unless there is actually a prior instance of him saying it but there could well not be.

He's right, though. Most people who rant about how terrible PHP is and how incompetent a programmer Rasmus is couldn't come up with anything better themselves.

Re: PHP Sucks

#230
From the bottom of the article: "I regret using such a clickbaity title, but . . . . " You could have called it, "PHP's stigma sucks and I'm leaving." It would have been more attractive and honest, instead of piling on more of the stigma that you dislike.
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