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A look at modern PHP

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Re: A look at modern PHP

#121

Post by mekster »

fetbaffe wrote: post #100
Svip wrote: post #14

Even with PHP7, PHP still feels like it is playing catch up. There is nothing new or revolutionary in PHP7, just adopting features present in other major languages. Adopting as other newer languages like Go and Rust seems to be moving beyond those features. A catch up into a world that's on its way out, if one will feel so blunt. PHP's raison d'être remains its ease of getting an instance running on a webserver. But…

Wait, Go hasn’t had any revolutionary change since it arrived 10 years ago. It is still basically the same language/package. I’m not saying that is bad, but why does a language need to be constantly revolutionary if it solves what it sets out to solve well? Catch up to other languages? You can easily argue the opposite, that other languages has finally catched up to PHP, ease of deployment, ease of horizontal scaling…

Other languages haven't caught up on PHP about ease of deployment.

If you need a fast hot reload, it isn't trivial in other languages. PHP does it with no effort. Save and refresh runs the updated code instantly, not to mention asking people to run PHP app is far easier as every general hosting provider has PHP installed.

On the other hand, language structure is quite behind others but can't blame when it had been around since 20+ years ago.

The new type hinting is so basic, not sure how realistically useful it is compared to typing in TypeScript.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#122

Post by naranha »

Svip wrote: post #14

Even with PHP7, PHP still feels like it is playing catch up. There is nothing new or revolutionary in PHP7, just adopting features present in other major languages. Adopting as other newer languages like Go and Rust seems to be moving beyond those features. A catch up into a world that's on its way out, if one will feel so blunt. PHP's raison d'être remains its ease of getting an instance running on a webserver. But…

A question I ask myself often is what niche does a language fill, and it seems a little like the traditional niche of PHP has been eroded away in the last decade. Many of the things that gave PHP an edge (ease of deployment, templating within your HTML files, direct SQL queries) are no longer considered the correct approach.

At the same time PHP is trying to reinvent itself by adopting a strong type system and experimenting with async and long running processes. But these are niches that are already filled better by other languages (Java/C#, Node, Go), so it feels like they are fighting an uphill battle. But maybe it is that tenacity of the language to stay relevant that makes it attractive to a younger generation of developers and decision makers.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#123

Post by leeshire »

creshal wrote: post #111
leeshire wrote: post #107

so is PHP worth learning right now? and what is the job prospect looking like? if I study the language for the next few months what is the lickely scenario I will find a career in it.. I actually enjoy and like PHP unlike other people idk what it is about the languauge it looks fun and enjoyable to play with . Plus it's simple and easy opens doors to more complex languages later on down the road

> what is the job prospect looking like? I hope you like working on legacy projects full of spaghetti code.

I do :) is interesting fixing stuff and turning into something better and more beautiful is rewarding.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#124

Post by fetbaffe »

pm90 wrote: post #36
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, being able to install new or change existing software just by uploading some files to a cheap webhost is not to be dismissed as easily.

Most webhosts provide some kind of support for containers don’t they? Perhaps I’m completely missing the point here? I’ll readily admit that Im young enough to have used docker to deploy apps nearly everywhere I worked. Is php useful for ultra low cost websites? Is it low maintenance? Is that the appeal? Genuine question.

Many small businesses just want to get online, how does a container help them? Actually it doesn't.

Containers definitely has its place, but there hundred of thousands problems out there that needs to be solved for a low cost, otherwise it will never be solved, and a container will just increase that cost with little or no gain for the customer.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#125

Post by luckylion »

giantDinosaur wrote: post #113
mxschumacher wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business perspective this might also translate into lower development costs and easier access to talent.

Generally lower quality talent. That's half the reason PHP got its abysmal reputation. Brilliant programmers using PHP must be annoyed that they're thusly tarnished. I suppose that's not so different from JS. To the flames with both of them, though, I find them genuinely depressing languages to work with.

> Generally lower quality talent.

Which is totally fine btw. Most work isn't "we're engineering a new motor for a F1 race car", most work is "this car's motor is broken, replace it". You don't need a CS degree and brilliance to write code that deals with databases and APIs, which is the super majority of code.

You need smart people that spend a lot of time on difficult problems to create strategies that are easy to follow and tooling that is easy to use. And then you just need a lot of people using those tools and applying those strategies to real world problems.

What good is it if you have something that allows those that fully grasp it to write things ten times as fast, but you only have 10 people that can actually do that? I'd much rather pick something where I have ten million people that can use it, the output is just so much higher, and you don't get single points of failure because the one guy in your city that knows that language and does freelance work has decided to move on to a different language.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#126

Post by jjeaff »

leeshire wrote: post #107

so is PHP worth learning right now? and what is the job prospect looking like? if I study the language for the next few months what is the lickely scenario I will find a career in it.. I actually enjoy and like PHP unlike other people idk what it is about the languauge it looks fun and enjoyable to play with . Plus it's simple and easy opens doors to more complex languages later on down the road

If I was looking for a job as a developer, I probably would not go with PHP. But if I had a new saas that I wanted to build and turn I to a business, I would seriously consider using php to get to a rapid mvp.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#127

Post by oblio »

s1k3s wrote: post #112

The amount of misinformation, false claims and unsupported statements in this thread is mindblowing for the quality that I've been used to see on HN. Here are some facts: - Symfony was the backend framework with the most contributors in 2019 [1] (yes, out of any backend framework written in any language) - PHP has more active contributors than it ever had [2] - Laravel is one of the most used frameworks in the world…

I'd assume that Django and Ruby on Rails can't be that far off.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#128

Post by oblio »

fetbaffe wrote: post #100
Svip wrote: post #14

Even with PHP7, PHP still feels like it is playing catch up. There is nothing new or revolutionary in PHP7, just adopting features present in other major languages. Adopting as other newer languages like Go and Rust seems to be moving beyond those features. A catch up into a world that's on its way out, if one will feel so blunt. PHP's raison d'être remains its ease of getting an instance running on a webserver. But…

Wait, Go hasn’t had any revolutionary change since it arrived 10 years ago. It is still basically the same language/package. I’m not saying that is bad, but why does a language need to be constantly revolutionary if it solves what it sets out to solve well? Catch up to other languages? You can easily argue the opposite, that other languages has finally catched up to PHP, ease of deployment, ease of horizontal scaling…

Go itself is also not a revolutionary language, actually the fact that it isn't revolutionary is one of it's "raisons d'etre". Go is mixing up various popular concepts into a reasonably compact package.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#129

Post by Grumbledour »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #27
tommica wrote: post #10

I've worked with PHP since 5.4, and to me the language has not been the obstacle, it has been my own skill-level that has held me back, and still is - I lack very much the core architectural skills in getting forward as a developer, among many other things. I've seen some codebases using an even older version, and I think I can understand where people are coming from with their angst towards the language - but I thin…

This has been my experience too. Ten+ years ago I had already concluded that the biggest problem PHP has is the community. Googling for "php mysql" you still end up on w3schools and the like where SQL injection is still not emphasized. Everyone was making their own frameworks and software from scratch. My last foray into PHP, and my realization that it's not actually all bad, was working in Zend Framework (iirc this…

Thanks, that made me smile. I got out of php a few years ago and 5.x is still the new kid on the block for me, with all this crazy enhancements! :-D

Though I also totally forgot things like array creation syntax and wonder how I could have ever lived without stuff like that shorthand.

Re: A look at modern PHP

#130

Post by tudorw »

s1k3s wrote: post #112

The amount of misinformation, false claims and unsupported statements in this thread is mindblowing for the quality that I've been used to see on HN. Here are some facts: - Symfony was the backend framework with the most contributors in 2019 [1] (yes, out of any backend framework written in any language) - PHP has more active contributors than it ever had [2] - Laravel is one of the most used frameworks in the world…

Symfony is an outstanding framework and a real pleasure to build with.
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