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An Internet of PHP

timotijhof.net

261–270 of 333 posts

Re: An Internet of PHP

#261
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…

That's a good point, I imagine doing that would screen out companies run by language snobs. My go to for this is to say "I don't think Typescript is needed most of the time". The snobs look at you like you just farted in their face. But having done some coding interviews where time and space complexity were a factor, I found it easier to succeed with Python.

> "I don't think Typescript is needed most of the time

This is a terrible example, typescript (especially in 2023) is basically free with most setups (including vanilla) and easy to ignore for velocity then optionally enforce typechecking later.

A much better hill to die on would be large frameworks/tooling like react/angular/webpack.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#262
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and made millions of dollars

It relocated wealth, but it did not create it. There are lots of industries that are lucrative , but there's clearly no linear correlation to quality or societal benefit.

> did you make the pie bigger or did you take a bigger slice?

I think PHP did make the pie bigger, but there won't be shortage of companies who used PHP to only take a bigger slice.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#263

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

If you apply the same level of thoughtlessness to any other framework, I assure you bots will grab your config also.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#264
post #119

As an ex-PHP developer (almost 10 years now), I do not miss it. As a language, it is a scripting language with an okay interpreter. But as an eco-system, it is a hot mess. It has both the worst software developers (and I was one of them) as well as the worst clients (and the cheapest, regardless of geography). It is not a surprise that PHP is running the web. That's because WordPress made sites/e-commerce accessible…

This just reminds me of what originally got me into PHP as a teenager. Creating a site for our gaming community in PHP-Nuke was all too easy. Extending it with plugins, and eventually writing my own plugins to show live data from our game server. Now I look back on PHP3/PHP4 with disgust. Globals, function names, massive pieces of code right in the middle of HTML, shell_exec.

What's the closet think to a modern PHP nuke?

Re: An Internet of PHP

#265
post #30
post #9

I learned how to code when I was a kid with a mixture of C++ my dad showed me on our Dell running Windows 95 and PHP that I taught myself in the years after. All through my teenage years into my early 20s, anything I wanted to make I made in PHP. I still have some PHP projects online, but recently when I want to make anything, I set up an API in Python and build the front with a JS framework. Is part of this just get…

None of the cleanliness of Python will ever justify the dependency management madness it brings over simply using composer in PHP. It’s not in the same league, not even playing the same game. Give me composer and I’ll get you reproducible installations in CI and prod in three minutes. With Python? The gurus are still discussing the best package manager after the first two days.

I've never used composer, so can't really comment. I'll check it out sometime! Thanks for the tip.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#266
post #246

As soon as WASM is able to draw to the canvas, we can stop using the DOM for anything and everything and pick up where we left off with GUI development in the 1990s.

Dealing with text would still be a huge problem. Drawing text on canvas and making it selectable is still a hard problem, you have to think about all the intricacies of text (character widths, spacing, RTL, etc)

Re: An Internet of PHP

#267
post #33

"PHP is dead" is dead. The amount of people praising PHP these days is quite high and increasing. Of course I may also be in a bubble (of php devs), but I have seen a constant increase from JS-people starting to look (and in some cases, convert to) php. Also, many new youtube videos highlighting the new stuff in the language, how modern it is, etc. Honestly, anyone that blindly criticizes or dismisses php these days,…

It’s like meeting someone in 2023 who hates Micro$oft WinBLOWZ. Have they been stuck in stasis for 20 years? What other values from the 9/11 era do they hang on to?

lolwut windows is worse now than it was 20 years ago.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#268
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense as a criticism. What do you think a blog post or an essay is?

To declare that blog posts, essays and propaganda are functionally the same thing is wickedly cynical, don't you think?

No i don't. Perhaps we have a different definition of the word propaganda?

Re: An Internet of PHP

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot and hate of criticism of PHP out there, so some praise and sane opinions are nice to balance it out.

Hate almost always comes from people who haven't used PHP in a very long time or touched it briefly at some point. Fanboyism serves no purpose. Experienced developers understand that programming languages are just tools each with their own trade-offs.

> Experienced developers understand that programming languages are just tools each with their own trade-offs.

Which is literally what the article said.

Re: An Internet of PHP

#270
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PHP has its fair share of snobbery as well. Non-framework devs look down on Symfony, who in turn look down on Laravel devs, and everybody looks down on WordPress devs.

I would look down on any group not using a framework, or rolling their own.
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