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PHP 8: Before and After

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Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#161

Post by danmur »

dgb23 wrote: post #125
TheHemric wrote: post #112

I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language. It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. I've been working on a SaaS API…

This is because you‘ve built up expertise and know the ins and outs of the language and frameworks (which are often very complex and idiosyncratic to achieve their cleanliness and expressivity). You know what to use, how to use it, what to avoid, how to debug stuff etc. However for people who have not invested this time and effort it is an objectively worse language than other web focused ones in many dimensions. PHP…

I think that's it. No argument that it's improved, so much, but if you're not already using it then it's hard to pick it over other options. Good luck to the fans though, you can do anything you need with it and if you enjoy it all the better.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#162

Post by spockz »

dcabrejas wrote: post #136
TheHemric wrote: post #112

I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language. It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. I've been working on a SaaS API…

I haven't found any good arguments against PHP in the comments here, just pure hate. Let's name a few of the arguments people are making: 1. Its variables start with $ and that is ugly: I mean, come on, I won't even entertain this bigotry. 2. It used to be better before: This is just pure nonesense, before OOP PHP wasn't good to create any big and well-structured application, it is ironic because most of the bad opin…

The latest version of PHP that I used was 5.3. The power, and disadvantage, was that it was basically a scripting language which allowed for quick prototyping and easily making some of a site dynamic and allowing for templating. For the more serious/involved/enterprise applications, a lot of workarounds were needed to cache database connections etc.

Lots has improved: ide support, jit, package manager. In doing so it became more mature now joining the realm of more serious, enterprise, languages which had all of this for ages. As such it is also being compared against those languages. At the same time templating is now easier and more cheaply done through static site generators. So imho PHP falls a bit in the middle and it is only kept afloat because of the likes of Magento, Wordpress, and other big products built on top of PHP that thrive by being modifiable by practically any developer.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#163

Post by Aeolun »

dgb23 wrote: post #125
TheHemric wrote: post #112

I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language. It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. I've been working on a SaaS API…

This is because you‘ve built up expertise and know the ins and outs of the language and frameworks (which are often very complex and idiosyncratic to achieve their cleanliness and expressivity). You know what to use, how to use it, what to avoid, how to debug stuff etc. However for people who have not invested this time and effort it is an objectively worse language than other web focused ones in many dimensions. PHP…

The fact that it is worse doesn’t make it bad.

I’d take Typescript over PHP any day, but not Javascript.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#164

Post by ai_ja_nai »

iDemonix wrote: post #155
ai_ja_nai wrote: post #153

I don't understand as of 2020 the use case for PHP. It's verbose as Java without its speed. Seriously, can anybody help here? It made sense to use PHP EXACLTLY in the good bad old days because it was just leaner to bang out applications in PHP than with other languages. Nowadays, I feel that PHP cake has been largely eaten by Python and Ruby. Why using PHP with such a level of verbosity?

See the comment by TheHemric, it's a bit more informed than you seem to be.

Uhm

>Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. >I've been working on a SaaS API with Symfony now for 2 years, our metrics are good... >It is a good tool, it builds good softwares

Informed? These are opinions, dude. Where are the objective arguments? "It is ok, works for me" is not "being informed"

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#165

Post by kijin »

js4ever wrote: post #134

Few months ago I was debating with a friend working since 15 years on PHP, my point was php is slow and max throughput is 200-500 rps, which is quite low compared to Go, node.js, C# and others, he answered that 100-200 request per second is more than enough for most use cases. I'm working on systems with 25K RPS at peaks, but for simple projects and small companies he is right ... But why should anyone start a new pr…

> php is slow and max throughput is 200-500 rps

I don't know where you pulled that number out of, but I just used an outdated version of `ab` to request the Hello World page of a fairly heavy PHP framework on a modest virtual server and got over 4k rps. Give me a proper server box and a well-written application, and I'll deliver the 25k rps that you want.

Besides, most webapps spend most of their execution time waiting for the database, memcached, redis, elasticsearch, or whatever. The speed of the language runtime makes very little difference.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#166

Post by codeulike »

hnarn wrote: post #147
codeulike wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of "PHP Hammer" I can’t even say what’s wrong with PHP, because— okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there. You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it’s one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that’s not very useful to you, but you guess it comes in handy sometimes. You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part on both sides. Sti…

That's funny and all, but it doesn't drive home much more of a point than "PHP is bad because PHP is bad". The insinuation that all "houses" built with PHP are defective and waiting to fall apart is so obviously untrue that it feels unworthy of discussion. A more reasonable analogy would be that there's a standardized toolbox that carpenters use that's weird, quirky and sometimes so bad that you need to know workarou…

Fair point about the houses

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#167

Post by [deleted] »

awestroke wrote: post #109
admissionsguy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> list of problems with PHP (Here we go again.) Such us?

Are you productive in any of the following? C#, Ruby, Rust, Elixir, Typescript (or even Haskell) If not, you're just proving my original point. It's hard to see the problems of a language if you are only productive in that language. I can start pointing out flaws in PHP, and you can claim that those flaws don't matter. Until you increase the number of languages in your repertoire, our discussion about the flaws of PH…

[deleted]

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#168

Post by ai_ja_nai »

mknx wrote: post #159
ai_ja_nai wrote: post #153

I don't understand as of 2020 the use case for PHP. It's verbose as Java without its speed. Seriously, can anybody help here? It made sense to use PHP EXACLTLY in the good bad old days because it was just leaner to bang out applications in PHP than with other languages. Nowadays, I feel that PHP cake has been largely eaten by Python and Ruby. Why using PHP with such a level of verbosity?

I converted about two dozens Ruby and Python apps to PHP in the last 7-8 years.

I don't know what to say in response.

Conciseness is a valuable property which, for web development, PHP seems to have given up.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#169

Post by andi999 »

codegeek wrote: post #137
js4ever wrote: post #134

Few months ago I was debating with a friend working since 15 years on PHP, my point was php is slow and max throughput is 200-500 rps, which is quite low compared to Go, node.js, C# and others, he answered that 100-200 request per second is more than enough for most use cases. I'm working on systems with 25K RPS at peaks, but for simple projects and small companies he is right ... But why should anyone start a new pr…

"he answered that 100-200 request per second is more than enough for most use cases" Exactly this. If you already know PHP and can produce results (mostly CRUD apps) and it doesn't need millions of rps, why do we need to use another language because they are so much better ? So much better at what ? It is like saying "I have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail to me". Not every web app has to be written in Lua/…

I am wondering this: are people who do crud apps (in php or otherwise) do consider race-conditions in the database? Like one query and then based on that query another one which inserts/updates? And if so, where can I read about the standard techniques used in practice?

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#170

Post by Mikushi »

pietrovismara wrote: post #58
AdrianB1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live and let live. There is enough space in this Universe for you and PHP to coexist without interacting, if you don't like it then ignore it.

Yeah that's mostly true, at least until you get a new job and only a few weeks in you find out they have a "small" years old service written in PHP that no one else wants to maintain :) That's my story, I ignored PHP for years but since I had to work again on it recently and got pretty quickly hit by its "rough edges" I couldn't help but ask myself why such a bad language is still around.

Because unlike "good" languages it generates revenue.
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