Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Like PHP

beust.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 269 posts

Re: I Like PHP

#231

Post by bermanoid »

chc wrote: post #23

"I don’t even bother writing tests for most of the PHP I write (obviously, I would be a bit more thorough if this code were destined to be used in a more mission critical web site). Not writing tests is not the only software taboo that I break when I write PHP: I happily mix up presentation and logic all the time. That’s just how PHP is supposed to work" And this is why everybody else hates PHP. It tempts you to writ…

And this is why everybody else hates PHP. It tempts you to write bad code, and so most people working in the language end up doing so. I have to periodically stop myself when I'm writing PHP and make sure I'm not falling into bad habits.

You've got to keep in mind what PHP (currently) stands for: "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". Use it for that, and it's great, but try to make it do more and you run into trouble. IMO, PHP should be used in precisely those situations where nobody gives a shit if the code you write is any good or not, and by my reading, this was a valid point in the article.

The way I like to think of it, PHP is like Bash scripting for the web: an indispensable tool that's supported almost everywhere, useful for a quick and dirty (and sure, ugly) drop-in solution, but not a language you should "seriously develop" in. Once a project is complex enough that you need to think about how to organize your PHP files (esp. if it's real back-end PHP, not just HTML pages with functions) or manage dependencies and build processes, you've probably crossed a line and should be considering other solutions.

But on the other side of the coin, you shouldn't be thinking "Rails app" every time you need to add a hit counter and a "current time" display to a static web page, I don't care how much nicer code comes out in Ruby than PHP (and I love Ruby in comparison to PHP)...I'm getting the sense that many people here (nothing that you said, chc, indicates that, but many other comments on this thread seem to) would do exactly that, though, which is disturbing.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I truly believe that once in a while hastily flung together spaghetti code is exactly what's called for in certain situations, and PHP excels at making that very easy to whip together and push out the door.

Re: I Like PHP

#232

Post by j-kidd »

kenjackson wrote: post #131
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…

Everyone is mentioning Python, but also check C# and .NET Fx and ASP.NET MVC. For example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w4hkze5k.aspx or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object.member... You get the syntax (including VB, C++, and F# where availalbe), remarks, examples, version information, platforms, comments, and related content.

MSDN is crap. It is just complete for completeness sake. You get the syntax, remarks, examples, version information, platforms, comments, and related content, but you still can't find what you are looking for.

Re: I Like PHP

#233

Post by keypusher »

kingkilr wrote: post #27

> PHP is like C In all the bad ways, and none of the good ones.

Yeah... the author pretty much lost all credibility after that sentence for me. If C was a Formula 1 race car (fast, dangerous, designed by the most brilliant minds in the industry), PHP would be a Ford Pinto (cheap, convenient, ugly, and very likely to blow up on you out of nowhere).

Re: I Like PHP

#234

Post by keypusher »

Ixiaus wrote: post #47
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…

Um, Python's documentation is separated by release versions - so you can read a doc page that specifically targets the version you are using. That is the right way to do it ; with PHP you would have to read the doc page, then also go read any deprecation warnings or caveats for the possible version you are using. What a nightmare to maintain too. Plus, I have yet to come across a Python doc page that doesn't provide…

So right! PHP is the Basic of web programming languages.

Re: I Like PHP

#235

Post by keypusher »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #123
chc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your description, it sounds like Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts" to me.

For the record, "PHP: The Good Parts" is downright fucking awful. Apologies to the author if he reads this, but I'll buy him a beer and restate my opinion.

Weird, whenever I look up "PHP: The Good Parts" it comes back completely empty.

Re: I Like PHP

#236

Post by DuoSRX »

dadads wrote: post #221
46Bit wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may just be a side effect of PHP's problems, but even the wrong comments tend to be extremely useful when you run into something weird when coding. Of course it's always more fun to bash people & programming languages, so maybe I'll just join in: that bloody Ruby API reference lacks any comments from users who might have noticed something that's causing a strange bug in my script.

As much as I love Ruby, I have to say that the Ruby docs website is shit. No search bar (unlike the PHP docs website).

Agreed. I use http://rdoc.info/stdlib/core/1.9.2/frames which has search and a nice UI.

Re: I Like PHP

#237

Post by simonw »

ZoFreX wrote: post #182
tambourine_man wrote: post #171

The core of C is small enough that you can fit it in your head. PHP has so many functions that it's almost impossible to write it without googling php.net, etc. Not that this matters so much, Google is fast and omnipresent, but in that sense they are definitively not alike.

Almost impossible? Pop quiz: The case-insensitive version of "strpos" is "stripos", what is the case-insensitive version of "strcmp"?

I'm guessing it's stricmp... However off the top of my head I have absolutely no idea what the argument order and return values for any of those four functions will be without looking them up.

Re: I Like PHP

#238

Post by antoncohen »

__rkaup__ wrote: post #175
carbonica wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Facebook uses Haskell to automate changes to their PHP codebase, I'd imagine PHP isn't doing them any favors.

I heard about that tool. Can you tell us more about what it does?

It is called lex-pass [1], it does syntax aware transformations of PHP. Like sed, but specifically for PHP. There is a video that mentions it briefly at 2:00 min [2].

[1] https://github.com/facebook/lex-pass [2] http://www.vimeo.com/6699769

Re: I Like PHP

#239

Post by rb2k_ »

> Not even Ruby on Rails, let alone Java, is available on mainstream providers

Just picking a few of the "big" ones:

dreamhost.com: supports RoR

hostgator.com: supports RoR

bluehost.com: supports ROR

hostmonster.com: supports RoR

godaddy.com: partially supports RoR (fastcgi)

I guess that is simply not true anymore

Re: I Like PHP

#240

Post by keypusher »

bermanoid wrote: post #231
chc wrote: post #23

"I don’t even bother writing tests for most of the PHP I write (obviously, I would be a bit more thorough if this code were destined to be used in a more mission critical web site). Not writing tests is not the only software taboo that I break when I write PHP: I happily mix up presentation and logic all the time. That’s just how PHP is supposed to work" And this is why everybody else hates PHP. It tempts you to writ…

And this is why everybody else hates PHP. It tempts you to write bad code, and so most people working in the language end up doing so. I have to periodically stop myself when I'm writing PHP and make sure I'm not falling into bad habits. You've got to keep in mind what PHP (currently) stands for: "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". Use it for that, and it's great, but try to make it do more and you run into trouble. IMO,…

> hastily flung together spaghetti code is exactly what's called for in certain situations

And this, right here, is how you end up with some godawful clusterfuck of unmaintainable, throwaway spaghetti code that has become some poor fool's nightmare in a couple years. If it's worth writing, it's worth writing well. Otherwise, don't even fucking bother. Maybe this is what separates C from PHP. When Ritchie was creating C, do you think he had any idea it was going to be running the world's infrastructure in 20 years? Do you think he ever wanted to just hack it up real quick with some spaghetti code to get it working for his boss's current project? Sure he did, but instead he did the right thing. I can't imagine that Rasmus Lerdorf had more pressing concerns than the guys that were building the Unix operating system, and yet he decided it would be ok to take all kinds of shortcuts and hacky workarounds and poorly thought out design decisions when he was writing PHP. All of which have somehow permeated the language to such a point that you now have people actually defending bad code and critiquing the use of frameworks and admittedly "nicer" code!

> ...thinking "Rails app" every time you need to add a hit counter and a "current time" display ... I don't care how much nicer code comes out in Ruby than PHP ...I'm getting the sense that many people here ... would do exactly that... which is disturbing.

See, I don't find that disturbing at all. I find it reassuring. The two "simple" examples you give are a hit counter and current time. Sure, it's easy to write some PHP to increment a counter every time a page request is made. But what if it was hit from the same IP twice? And wouldn't you really like to know how long they stayed, and which links they clicked? Or maybe what country were they from and what page referred them? Hmm, maybe you shouldn't be writing a hit counter from scratch after all. At least displaying the time should be pretty simple. But wait, what if the user is in a different time zone? Did you account for daylight savings? What if the user wants a 12 hour clock instead of 24? Oh well, just hack something together real quick and I'm sure there will be plenty of time to fix it later on...

Post reply on HN