41–50 of 285 posts
Why would a new project in 2023 choose PHP over anything else (modern Java, Kotlin, C#, etc.)?
I used to work way back in the day on PHP too, but even though I'm sure this will be downvoted, it's really sad people still take it seriously as a language in 2023. There's nothing remotely elegant about it. It's not expressive or programmatically succinct in the way Ruby is. It's not beautifully well thought-out the way Python is. It's not fast and modern in the way Rust is. It's not elegant or composable or client…
Ease of use and deployment, breadth, availability, low cost of maintaining, are sometimes more important, and PHP offers plenty of value in these respects.
I don't want to work with it, but I will never presume to look down on people that do. PHP has been a cornerstone for a whole generation of programmers and I think the current web-development ecosystem would not be where it is without it.
I used to work way back in the day on PHP too, but even though I'm sure this will be downvoted, it's really sad people still take it seriously as a language in 2023. There's nothing remotely elegant about it. It's not expressive or programmatically succinct in the way Ruby is. It's not beautifully well thought-out the way Python is. It's not fast and modern in the way Rust is. It's not elegant or composable or client…
I used to work way back in the day on PHP too, but even though I'm sure this will be downvoted, it's really sad people still take it seriously as a language in 2023. There's nothing remotely elegant about it. It's not expressive or programmatically succinct in the way Ruby is. It's not beautifully well thought-out the way Python is. It's not fast and modern in the way Rust is. It's not elegant or composable or client…
Python is not beautifully well thought out, the syntax is awful and the version conflicts make it a mess.
You’re comparing to React which is not a language or in the same domain is confusing and makes me doubt your credibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As of PHP 5, it lost its way and started imitating the Java OO model with a worse botched-on syntax. PHP 4 used to be a compact "hypertext preprocessor" with many built-in groups of functions, enabling you to process forms, talk to databases or process images without much code.
Those functions are all still there. You can still do if you like.
I used to describe PHP as the spac filler of the web, holding all the good stuff together. Then I had to pick up a Laravel project and - for me - Laravel alone has resuscitated PHP's reputation.
I honestly don't know if this is supposed to be a good or bad thing.
PHP was my first language back when I was a teenager in highschool - it all started because I wanted to get some data from users and store it (I just knew basic HTML and CSS back then), when a friend mentioned he used a PHP snippet to send an email from a website. That sounded like magic to me so I bought a book on PHP and my mind was blown by the possibilities. Several websites and years later I had a pretty good un…
That was serverless before serverless was even a thing.
However it came with its fair share of problems. One being that to be usable on a wide range of hosting providers, applications had to be written for the least common denominator.
It's been 10 years since "PHP: a fractal of bad design" [1] was written. It's remarkable how the language evolved, and how many of the issues mentioned have been fixed and improved over the last ten years. 1. https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
I used to work way back in the day on PHP too, but even though I'm sure this will be downvoted, it's really sad people still take it seriously as a language in 2023. There's nothing remotely elegant about it. It's not expressive or programmatically succinct in the way Ruby is. It's not beautifully well thought-out the way Python is. It's not fast and modern in the way Rust is. It's not elegant or composable or client…
Experienced developers understand that there are different tools for different jobs. They also understand that languages are not successful for 30 years without providing some legitimate value.