11–20 of 514 posts
That's a problem? I think it's a problem if new functionality can't be implemented as part of a library. I think it's a problem if the best way of implementing new functionality is always to have new syntax.
PHP wasn't "designed" ... it evolved. Pieces were added, here and there, re-factored, deprecated, etc. etc.
PHP is a natural language. It wasn't fabricated at some university, nor in the lab of some billion dollar company. It evolved.
That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything.
And that is why it is the most popular programming language.
Not popular with stuck-up pretentious twits who have nothing better to do than to offer their opinion to the world. No, it is popular with people who build things and get things done.
That's what it's for. To build. If the clown who wrote that article had spent as much time programming, as he did writing that drivel, we might have something useful to praise him for. Even if it was written in PHP.
If I could get away with it, I'd never again trust my credit card number to a system based on PHP, but I suspect that that's about as easy as never trusting your credit card to an ATM/point-of-sale machine based on Windows.
A nice long list of things all concisely put into one blog - I'm sure this took some time to write. Can we move on though? Seriously - no one's forcing you to use PHP, so in your own worlds "It has paltry few redeeming qualities and I would prefer to forget it exists at all." do just that - forget it exists and wake up tomorrow a bit less grumpy. Trust me, you'll feel better!
I don't really have a choice. I can't afford to move (no, seriously, I can't), and there is no other work that I'm able to do.
I dislike PHP. I wish my boss would let me explore alternatives. :(
> PHP ... bad design PHP wasn't "designed" ... it evolved. Pieces were added, here and there, re-factored, deprecated, etc. etc. PHP is a natural language. It wasn't fabricated at some university, nor in the lab of some billion dollar company. It evolved. That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything. And that is why it is the most popu…
That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything.
Programming languages are not human languages. Programming languages are engineering tools. Would you cross a dangerous river on a shaky, lashed together bridge that had "evolved over time from a single plank"? Or would you rather cross via well designed, properly tested bridge, even if it was made from the same materials as the evolved design?
> PHP ... bad design PHP wasn't "designed" ... it evolved. Pieces were added, here and there, re-factored, deprecated, etc. etc. PHP is a natural language. It wasn't fabricated at some university, nor in the lab of some billion dollar company. It evolved. That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything. And that is why it is the most popu…
We are all aware of that. We don't like that. Not because of its genesis, but because of the result of that process.
> PHP is a natural language. It wasn't fabricated at some university, nor in the lab of some billion dollar company. It evolved.
> That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything.
You have to purposefully design a language that can't be "used for everything". And boy, the way PHP has "adapted" could be done by any language or designer or committee if they were just to lower their standards enough. But most haven't, and have adapted with more success. Why did PHP barely get (half-assed) closures just now?
> And that is why it is the most popular programming language.
Where?
(Though I think IHBT)
> PHP ... bad design PHP wasn't "designed" ... it evolved. Pieces were added, here and there, re-factored, deprecated, etc. etc. PHP is a natural language. It wasn't fabricated at some university, nor in the lab of some billion dollar company. It evolved. That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything. And that is why it is the most popu…
One of the reasons I hate Ruby is that nearly every person I've come across that likes it is exactly how you describe. It seems to be part of the Ruby culture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For someone coming from other language background, including C#, JavaScript, Ruby, I find PHP absolutely unconventional, odd, unexpected, and inconsistent. This is not a language, where you expect intuitively on what method to call unless you do a StackOverFlow search on existing problems, raised by others like me. Yet, I currently develop a web app on PHP. Certainly, I can't wait to move over to Ruby or other langua…
I'm not defending PHP, and I'm not claiming the author "has no right" to make their post. What I am saying is that this post has no value, as it's simply a summary of the same posts we see here week after week. This isn't just stating the obvious, this is literally rehashing the posts (he even cites the sources, which I do commend him on) that have already been made. The point is the PHP circle jerk is getting old. I…
Actually, I would state that, "a summary of the same posts we see here week after week," does indeed have value. Now you can bludgeon the next guy who posts a PHP rant with a link to this one.
I'm a Facebook engineer who works on the HipHop compiler and HipHop virtual machine. It's in PHP, absolutely full stop.
It's amazing how much the fact that g++ is involved somewhere in the toolchain confuses people in this matter. C++ is just an intermediate representation; the source language really is warts-and-all PHP.
> PHP ... bad design PHP wasn't "designed" ... it evolved. Pieces were added, here and there, re-factored, deprecated, etc. etc. PHP is a natural language. It wasn't fabricated at some university, nor in the lab of some billion dollar company. It evolved. That is its strength. It is the most adaptable language around. It can be used for anything and it has been used for everything. And that is why it is the most popu…
No. That's it's weakness. Programming languages are not like natural languages. PHP did not emerge spontaneously from conversations amongst PHP programmers -- people actually sat down and wrote code. When that happened, they had the choice to exercise some degree of higher thought. They did not do so.
PHP is a perfect example of how local optimality -- slap on the first thing that "works" -- can lead to wildly suboptimal global outcomes. PHP is a system that is a constant state of partial failure.
> And that is why it is the most popular programming language.
This is demonstrably false. Folk didn't adopt PHP because of some hand-wavy, post hoc, revisionist bullshit about linguistic evolution. They did so because in the late 1990s it was not possible to run multiple mod_perl applications on a single Apache process, but mod_php could do so.
That's it. Perl's horse wasn't shod. The rest is merely a painful, expensive, misbegotten parade of path dependency.