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Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#11

Post by zapperdapper »

Depends.

What are your objectives? Why are you learning it? Is PHP your first language? Are you trying to get a job, get general stuff done, or have a specific project in mind? Are you primarily looking at web, text processing, database?

My own thoughts on PHP today is it is a very capable language, and probably as worthy of learning as Python, Ruby, or any of the other mainstream scripting languages - again depends what your objectives are.

In other words - how long is a piece of string? ;)

Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#12

Post by emteycz »

admissionsguy wrote: post #8
t312227 wrote: post #5

imho ... why not!? it's just "yet another c-style/curly brackets scripting language", which isn't hard to learn and especially easy to use and which was and still is heavily used in context of web-development. why? its very efficient/productive ... which is of special interest for example for smaller fixed-rate projects, mvps and similar use-cases. even if php has many flaws, it got a few things right and is for exam…

> nearly every webhoster out there Why do people bring this up so often in 2020? When you can have a $5/month Linode and install anything you need. I like PHP a lot, but wouldn't want to use / learn it in a constrained environment of an old-school webhost.

Webhostings often go for $1 a month or less, or free with an ad injected to your site.

Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#14

Post by wprapido »

zapperdapper wrote: post #10
wprapido wrote: post #6

PHP is not going away anytime soon. The only downside, it has no use beyond web. If you're new to programming, no. Better focus on Python, Node, Go, Java, or even JavaScript. There's still a strong and in certain niches growing demand for PHP, but definitely not suitable for a beginner, as lots of that work involves maintaining and / or upgrading legacy code.

I see where you are coming from, but I have a built a few big XML processing tools in PHP that run quite happily on the command line. Having said that, it was a few years back, and I tend to reach for Python for text/XML processing these days...

PHP is rather potent and I absolutely love it. Built lots of non-web stuff in PHP myself.

Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#15

Post by gregjor »

wprapido wrote: post #6

PHP is not going away anytime soon. The only downside, it has no use beyond web. If you're new to programming, no. Better focus on Python, Node, Go, Java, or even JavaScript. There's still a strong and in certain niches growing demand for PHP, but definitely not suitable for a beginner, as lots of that work involves maintaining and / or upgrading legacy code.

Maintaining and upgrading legacy code is good work for a beginner. Plenty of work, and beginners can learn more from a working application than trying to write something ground-up when they aren’t prepared to make the design decisions.

Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#17

Post by amazonavocado »

admissionsguy wrote: post #8
t312227 wrote: post #5

imho ... why not!? it's just "yet another c-style/curly brackets scripting language", which isn't hard to learn and especially easy to use and which was and still is heavily used in context of web-development. why? its very efficient/productive ... which is of special interest for example for smaller fixed-rate projects, mvps and similar use-cases. even if php has many flaws, it got a few things right and is for exam…

> nearly every webhoster out there Why do people bring this up so often in 2020? When you can have a $5/month Linode and install anything you need. I like PHP a lot, but wouldn't want to use / learn it in a constrained environment of an old-school webhost.

Cloud-based hosting services personally give me too much analysis paralysis. Sometimes I just want old school shared hosting that already has an Apache config that is sensible for most small-mid scale work because it's more intuitive to deploy.

Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#18

Post by amazonavocado »

wprapido wrote: post #6

PHP is not going away anytime soon. The only downside, it has no use beyond web. If you're new to programming, no. Better focus on Python, Node, Go, Java, or even JavaScript. There's still a strong and in certain niches growing demand for PHP, but definitely not suitable for a beginner, as lots of that work involves maintaining and / or upgrading legacy code.

I consider "no major uses beyond web" to be a strength. Whereas other languages were adapted into use for HTTP servers, PHP was a tool for HTML rendering from the ground up, and therefore a specialist. I tend to trust specialists overall when it comes to tools, wouldn't you agree?

Re: Ask HN: Should I be learning PHP in 2020?

#20

Post by wprapido »

amazonavocado wrote: post #18
wprapido wrote: post #6

PHP is not going away anytime soon. The only downside, it has no use beyond web. If you're new to programming, no. Better focus on Python, Node, Go, Java, or even JavaScript. There's still a strong and in certain niches growing demand for PHP, but definitely not suitable for a beginner, as lots of that work involves maintaining and / or upgrading legacy code.

I consider "no major uses beyond web" to be a strength. Whereas other languages were adapted into use for HTTP servers, PHP was a tool for HTML rendering from the ground up, and therefore a specialist. I tend to trust specialists overall when it comes to tools, wouldn't you agree?

Completely. That's why it's my bread and butter
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