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I Like PHP

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Re: I Like PHP

#51

Post by twism »

skrebbel wrote: post #37
freshhawk wrote: post #30

There's a regular stream of "defending PHP" posts but they all seem to miss the point. No one bashes PHP because it can't do these things, or that it isn't easy. People bash PHP because there are objectively better languages and platforms out there and objectively bad decisions made by those guiding the PHP language. If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easi…

> If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easily in almost every semi-modern web ecosystem Did you ever read Python's documentation? Or Ruby's? Or Java's? Show me one popular web programming language which has a full page, up to date, with examples and user comments and version incompatibility info, per function . Of course, it's just one point and I otherwise…

User comments in PHP doc pages IMO is a whole lot of noise. Not that I am saying there isn't a place for something like that but the official doc is just not the place.

Re: I Like PHP

#52

Post by skrebbel »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #41
skrebbel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easily in almost every semi-modern web ecosystem Did you ever read Python's documentation? Or Ruby's? Or Java's? Show me one popular web programming language which has a full page, up to date, with examples and user comments and version incompatibility info, per function . Of course, it's just one point and I otherwise…

Python's got excellent documentation, both official and third party.

Oh! Well, I must've missed that train (haven't done py for a few years). A couple of years ago, you had to get your info from a mix of a tutorial and a library reference, and most functions were documented with 3-4 sentences max and no examples.

Hmm, that said, that's still exactly what I find on the official Python site (e.g. http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods - PHP beats this by lightyears with a single page with examples and comments per function). Which 3rd party thing should I be looking for? (genuinely interested btw - the docs is one thing i dislike about python, and maybe unrightfully so, apparently)

Re: I Like PHP

#53

Post by Ixiaus »

yid wrote: post #46

From TFA: > * I have yet to see this kind of universal support for any other language than PHP. Not even Ruby on Rails, let alone Java, is available on mainstream providers, thereby validating the claim I made five years ago that Ruby on Rails won’t become mainstream (I regularly receive emails about this article asking me this question, and I keep responding “Nope, still not mainstream”).* If your provider doesn't s…

You can do cheaper than that - WebFaction will give you an $8 a month shared hosting account and you can run anything you want! They have a really cool automated setup system for more involved projects like Django/Pyramid/Sinatra/Rails and lots of others.

Re: I Like PHP

#54

Post by adambard »

mbrzuzy wrote: post #39

Is PHP that much worse where it's worth it to jump onto the ruby ship? I'm just starting to code one of my current projects, but in PHP. Should I consider ruby instead?

Here is some PHP code:

$x = "0"; if(!$x){ echo "0 is false"; }

If you understand why it's crazy that PHP prints "0 is false" when you execute that, you're probably better off jumping ship now. If you don't, you'll probably appreciate the low barrier to entry for PHP more than any benefit you'd gain.

Re: I Like PHP

#55

Post by rick888 »

rick888 wrote: post #17

One of the reasons I like PHP is that it still lets you get to a lower level of coding. Many of the newer languages and frameworks that have become popular in the past couple of years abstract things such as database connectivity away (Django is a good example of this) and it makes it difficult to optimize queries effectively without hacking onto the framework.

Wow, It's pretty apparent that there are a lot of young programmers here on HN. I was just stating my opinion and I got downvoted because I talked bad about your precious frameworks.

Re: I Like PHP

#56

Post by twism »

otterley wrote: post #50
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python's got excellent documentation, both official and third party.

Python itself does, but the third party modules (which do most of the heavy lifting) generally don't. See: Twisted.

Third party documentation doesn't count in this discussion.

Re: I Like PHP

#57

Post by adambard »

adambard wrote: post #54
mbrzuzy wrote: post #39

Is PHP that much worse where it's worth it to jump onto the ruby ship? I'm just starting to code one of my current projects, but in PHP. Should I consider ruby instead?

Here is some PHP code: $x = "0"; if(!$x){ echo "0 is false"; } If you understand why it's crazy that PHP prints "0 is false" when you execute that, you're probably better off jumping ship now. If you don't, you'll probably appreciate the low barrier to entry for PHP more than any benefit you'd gain.

Actually, here's a more insane version:

  $x = 0;

  if(!empty($x)){

    echo '"0" is empty';

  }

Re: I Like PHP

#58

Post by grncdr »

skrebbel wrote: post #37
freshhawk wrote: post #30

There's a regular stream of "defending PHP" posts but they all seem to miss the point. No one bashes PHP because it can't do these things, or that it isn't easy. People bash PHP because there are objectively better languages and platforms out there and objectively bad decisions made by those guiding the PHP language. If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easi…

> If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easily in almost every semi-modern web ecosystem Did you ever read Python's documentation? Or Ruby's? Or Java's? Show me one popular web programming language which has a full page, up to date, with examples and user comments and version incompatibility info, per function . Of course, it's just one point and I otherwise…

I'll bite, speaking for Python, because that's the one I'm more familiar with.

1. Python doc has full up to date documentation for everything shipped with the standard library (which dwarfs PHPs grab bag of globally scoped functions)

2. The comments in PHP documentation are frequently out of date, misleading, or flat out wrong. Among the people I work with (who are working on PHP web apps, full time) everybody routinely advises the PHP noobs to ignore the comments.

3. The standard library functions shipped with most languages don't require a full page with multiple examples to explain how they work.

Don't get me wrong, the documentation for PHP is excellent, but it's a small win for a language that has so many real --language level-- issues.

Re: I Like PHP

#59

Post by adambard »

rick888 wrote: post #55
rick888 wrote: post #17

One of the reasons I like PHP is that it still lets you get to a lower level of coding. Many of the newer languages and frameworks that have become popular in the past couple of years abstract things such as database connectivity away (Django is a good example of this) and it makes it difficult to optimize queries effectively without hacking onto the framework.

Wow, It's pretty apparent that there are a lot of young programmers here on HN. I was just stating my opinion and I got downvoted because I talked bad about your precious frameworks.

The comparison between PHP and frameworks isn't valid. Writing PHP on a framework probably abstracts away SQL too, just like writing CGI in Python gives you lower-level control.

Re: I Like PHP

#60

Post by yid »

Ixiaus wrote: post #53
yid wrote: post #46

From TFA: > * I have yet to see this kind of universal support for any other language than PHP. Not even Ruby on Rails, let alone Java, is available on mainstream providers, thereby validating the claim I made five years ago that Ruby on Rails won’t become mainstream (I regularly receive emails about this article asking me this question, and I keep responding “Nope, still not mainstream”).* If your provider doesn't s…

You can do cheaper than that - WebFaction will give you an $8 a month shared hosting account and you can run anything you want! They have a really cool automated setup system for more involved projects like Django/Pyramid/Sinatra/Rails and lots of others.

...which leads me to think that the poster is confusing "mainstream" with "GoDaddy".
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