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

An Internet of PHP

timotijhof.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 333 posts

Re: An Internet of PHP

#91

Post by oaiey »

mattnewton wrote: post #31
dvdkon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not for the user, at least not directly, but developer experience is something to optimise for. PHP is also the one language whose choice can make an impact on users' experience, since its shared-nothing (sans caches) runtime model is almost CGI-like and can, in my experience, lead to higher latency, as each request simply does more. Maybe some experienced PHP devs can tell me how they combat this?

The most common defense I hear here is that the inefficiency just never mattered.. and if it did it was because the product was a blockbuster success and you could hire to rewrite the slow parts or adopt hack or whatever.

It does not when your project has not 100s of users hitting at the same time. And honestly, which application survives that at first sight and does not need to solve the problem one level higher (like building for load balancing, writer/read databases, etc ).

Re: An Internet of PHP

#92

Post by samsquire »

Things I really like about PHP:

Once the file is on the filesystem, it's deployed.

Each invocation to run PHP is stateless and it parallelises effectively. (There's no communication, synchronization between PHP instances.)

Re: An Internet of PHP

#94

Post by gumballindie »

1023bytes wrote: post #87
anonymous344 wrote: post #36

php runs securely in 5minutes in any web server 3-10$/month. Every other tech, it's complicated servers or complicated billing, not to mention depencies and build tools. thats why php

Well it's not exactly secure by default. I was deploying an app to a new server and some bot grabbed my .env file before I finished the Apache config. Ultimately it's my own stupidity, but you don't have to worry about that with most other languages

Yes but that’s a framework specific issue. And usually your documentroot would point to a directory below that which holds .env. Oh the memories of apache and php.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#95

Post by oaiey »

ahoka wrote: post #54

The internet is full of spam sites made with Wordpress. This means nothing for PHP as a language.

Spammers are also coders. We all do not like them, but they are. Their pages and system are part of the system.

If you are spammer and read this: search a different job and drop all tables before you leave!

Re: An Internet of PHP

#96

Post by azlev »

nasretdinov wrote: post #56
quickthrower2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why it is downvoted as this is true. That said it is more to do with shared hosts culture choosing PHP than PHP itself. (They tend to support Ruby and Node but not as well)

PHP is also pretty easy to support for shared hosting, as what they essentially need is just an Apache module (+ nginx probably), some clever filesystem permissions and they're done. For node, Python, etc, you actually need to keep the application servers running, which has to stay running even when they're completely idle. So I think PHP is a natural choice for shared hosting for those reasons too.

I worked 10+ years in a web hosting company. PHP was chosen not because it was easy, it's because most people just use a CMS or something in PHP.

Keep a shared host secure, PHP or something else was not an easy task, most people installed unsecure versions or misconfigure something.

Also it was a pain to support PHP versions after EOL (yes, money), and multiple versions .

Re: An Internet of PHP

#97

Post by nolok »

matthiaswh wrote: post #88
jalapenos wrote: post #6

I've always liked PHP. You wouldn't pick it for your job interview's coding test if you had a choice (Python all the way there), but it's so intertwined with the internet and what we've learned about programming over the years. First mover advantage kind of deal. And I've never had to deal with ESM/CJS/AMD whatever module nonsense with PHP. No transpiling anything, just edit and refresh. And so many useful functions…

PHP is akin to, I don't know, the Subway (fast food restaurant chain) of programming languages? You don't hear too much about it. You almost never notice it unless you're actually looking for it, unlike McDonald's with its ostentatious golden arches. It's popularity is waning. But it's still everywhere. [0] There are a hundred other sandwich chains that have tried to do it better but none have managed the ubiquity of…

> It's popularity is waning.

I don't think that applies though. If anything, laravel is pushing PHP into another "golden age" not seen since code igniter 2, with again a framework that does things not quite how they should be under the hood, but definitely how people need them to be to be fast and efficient, except this time backed up by a proper package management system, a much better and stronger language and an ecosystem based on reusable modules.

Does it have the favor of the modern hype or new language seeker or anything like that ? No, absolutely not, but when has PHP ever had that ?

Re: An Internet of PHP

#98

Post by dageshi »

brendamn wrote: post #47

From W3Tech; > PHP is used by 77% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know. I had a quick look at the methodology section, but it’s not clear to me how accurate this data is. Determining whether a site uses PHP can be relatively straightforward (especially with default extensions / if Wordpress is used / etc), but if a site (potentially using a different language) is behind a reverse proxy/u…

The vast majority of websites are probably small business websites which almost all run Wordpress.

That number doesn't surprise me.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#99

Post by oaiey »

aaviator42 wrote: post #15
kxrm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't pick it for your job interview's coding test if you had a choice (Python all the way there), I do actually pick it for several reasons. 1. I want to know if the environment I am going into is pragmatic about languages. If you are going to refuse to continue working with me over something so minor as PHP then we aren't a culture fit. 2. I want to showcase my best. I know this language in and out. It's t…

Your comment articulates my thoughts on PHP very succinctly. Especially the culture fit bit. PHP is so insanely pragmatic that if someone looks down on it due to false preconceived notions then they're not the kind of person I can probably work happily with anyway. It's also the thing I'm best at!

And they are humble. They know their state, the flaws in their language and the long problematic history they have.

They cherish their languages but are not fanatics.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#100

Post by l5870uoo9y »

kxrm wrote: post #10
jalapenos wrote: post #6

I've always liked PHP. You wouldn't pick it for your job interview's coding test if you had a choice (Python all the way there), but it's so intertwined with the internet and what we've learned about programming over the years. First mover advantage kind of deal. And I've never had to deal with ESM/CJS/AMD whatever module nonsense with PHP. No transpiling anything, just edit and refresh. And so many useful functions…

> You wouldn't pick it for your job interview's coding test if you had a choice (Python all the way there), I do actually pick it for several reasons. 1. I want to know if the environment I am going into is pragmatic about languages. If you are going to refuse to continue working with me over something so minor as PHP then we aren't a culture fit. 2. I want to showcase my best. I know this language in and out. It's t…

Not to nitpick but choosing a programming language isn't a minor decision nor is switching programming style, e.g. OOB vs FP. Of course I agree with the intend and I too want to work in pragmatic and explorative programming environments trying out different programming languages and styles depending on the project.
Post reply on HN