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PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

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Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#121
post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

I was once asked in an interview for a PHP role what was my favourite feature of PHP and my answer was deployablitiy. In my opinion it can't really be matched on how easy it is to deploy. I can deploy any other language but it is never as easy as deploying PHP. The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.

> The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.

I wonder what would be the proper answer. Also if there is a proper answer, they shouldn't ask what your favourite feature is.

I hate it when people ask questions where they expect some sort of exact question to see if you think in the exact same manner as they do. Just ask me what you want to know or I'll pack my shit and leave.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#122
post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

I was once asked in an interview for a PHP role what was my favourite feature of PHP and my answer was deployablitiy. In my opinion it can't really be matched on how easy it is to deploy. I can deploy any other language but it is never as easy as deploying PHP. The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.

Golang web apps are probably the simplest to deploy.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#123
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Foreign keys? Let the business layer worry about rules like that! Rails made this approach viable at the time.

I still don't like using foreign keys. They just make things harder to work with for very little gain. Wait for the crows.

Care to elaborate? It felt like the best thing ever when switching to InnoDB.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once asked in an interview for a PHP role what was my favourite feature of PHP and my answer was deployablitiy. In my opinion it can't really be matched on how easy it is to deploy. I can deploy any other language but it is never as easy as deploying PHP. The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.

Golang web apps are probably the simplest to deploy.

For that you need to build some little tooling around it. You have to do the service registration somit auto starts and then you need some form of a harness to restart the go daemon if something goes bad etc. Also the one deploying Go needs system permissions on the machine.

For a PHP deployment this is all handled by a fully standardized Apache httpd (at least back in the days, nowadays setups became more fancy) and the PHP.user just uses (s)ftp to copy the files in and all works magically. Need to update? - Just copy the new files. This is the unbeaten simplicity. (Of course that breaks at some point, like imma high traffic site simply copying the files via sftp will lead to some request in the middle having inconsistent state etc.)

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#125

Everyone here is talking about how great PHP is, but why don't we consider it for use nowadays? I know some people still use it, but it's not really an option most people consider anymore. Is that just because it's not cool or modern anymore, or are there some fundamental problems with it that make it a non-starter?

PHP is still the dominant backend language world wide and lot's of new projects are started with it. Might just be your bubble.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It basically did for simple web programming what visual basic did for Windows desktop toys: allowed you to throw some UI together (drag & drop components in the VB case, any old HTML with links or forms for PHP) then start stringing bit of code in haphazardly to link it together. No need to learn a more complex compiler or other build tools, worry about configuring CGI or other web server tech (unless running PHP you…

Injecting strings from user input into generated HTML? Sure, to hell with checking if it contains script tags and/or onclick= attributes, or perform any kind of escaping alltogether for that matter.

this is the programmer's fault and responsibility

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once asked in an interview for a PHP role what was my favourite feature of PHP and my answer was deployablitiy. In my opinion it can't really be matched on how easy it is to deploy. I can deploy any other language but it is never as easy as deploying PHP. The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.

> The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer. I wonder what would be the proper answer. Also if there is a proper answer, they shouldn't ask what your favourite feature is. I hate it when people ask questions where they expect some sort of exact question to see if you think in the exact same manner as they do. Just ask me what you want to know or I'll pack my sh…

You're right, and donwvotes are from that kind of people.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the early 2000s - up until maybe 2010 or so (probably a bit later) PHP was the clear leader for anyone who wanted to get something done. There was Rails and ASP.net and Java (I don’t remember anything else that was super popular) but PHP was a million times faster to develop in. Anything you wanted was explained in depth in the first Google result. You want auth? A chat server? File management? You could get…

> PHP was the clear leader for anyone who wanted to get something done. Isn't that still the case? At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer. Every other language for backend development is pretty niche. Sure there is Java (and C#) for the enterprise but that was already there back then. Ruby had a good run but modern PHP with frameworks like Laravel could reclaim m…

> At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer.

Pretty much, I've seen PHP powering traditional companies with revenue in the hundreds of millions (approach billions).

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Golang web apps are probably the simplest to deploy.

For that you need to build some little tooling around it. You have to do the service registration somit auto starts and then you need some form of a harness to restart the go daemon if something goes bad etc. Also the one deploying Go needs system permissions on the machine. For a PHP deployment this is all handled by a fully standardized Apache httpd (at least back in the days, nowadays setups became more fancy) and…

The golang binary file + systemd. Don't run the process as root. Done.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Injecting strings from user input into generated HTML? Sure, to hell with checking if it contains script tags and/or onclick= attributes, or perform any kind of escaping alltogether for that matter.

this is the programmer's fault and responsibility

Not for a programming language calling itself portable Hypertext processor, no. In fact, it's bordering on criminally negligent.
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