PHP: the quiet powerhouse • Hacker News Board

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#11

Post by debacle » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

warmwaffles wrote: post #6

I enjoyed PHP. I enjoyed Ruby. If I was to do a complex project that would require a lot of integration with external services, I would want a good OOP language like python or ruby. There are something PHP does nicely than Ruby does. Visa versa. However in all the PHP apps I have made / used, their structures started out with good intentions and then descended into pure chaos. There isn't a unified package manager fo…

If you come from a namespaced language, using PHP namespacing will only make you want to hunt down the PHP devs, point to PHP's namespacing implementation and say "Are you proud of what you've done?!?!?" over and over.

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#12

Post by guard-of-terra » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

You're killing kittens by using PHP.

PHP could be a wonderful thing if not for its original sins. It is easy and fast, but it is also bad. It is "good enough", and for many years it prevented just "good" from arising and gaining adoption.

I would pick "good" over "good enough" even if it costs me a bit because I think this is fundamentally right.

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#13

Post by debacle » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #10

dansingerman wrote: post #3

I have a few nits with this post, but am mostly irked by the comparisons between PHP (a language) and Rails (a framework)

I'm just mad about the title. The post was about how PHP is quick and dirty for simple stuff. The reason all of the other web frameworks exist is because once you get past the learning curve, you can accomplish a lot in a very short span of time. If anything, they are the powerhouses, not PHP.

PHP has some of the most robust and modern frameworks available today. Symfony draws on the best of almost every modern framework, and leaves a lot of the crap behind.

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#14

Post by dansingerman » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:51 PM UTC

lucperkins wrote: post #4

dansingerman wrote: post #3

I have a few nits with this post, but am mostly irked by the comparisons between PHP (a language) and Rails (a framework)

You're quite right that the analogy isn't perfect. The point I was trying to make, though, is precisely that PHP development can proceed without any recourse whatsoever to a framework. Jumping straight into web dev without an accompanying framework like Rails or Sinatra is a complete non-starter if you're a Rubyist. So you're quite right, but I hope you would agree that the Rails/PHP comparison, in spite of its imper…

Yes, I agree. You make the point a lot better here than in your linked post - i.e. with PHP, you can 'just start'. With Ruby you need to choose a framework, understand enough about how it works, and where things go before you can even start to do "hello world"

Although that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#15

Post by testing12341234 » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:56 PM UTC

http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...

9600+ generally concise words on many, but not all, of the issues with PHP. As a summary, PHP isn't "out of fashion" as much as people are tired of continuously being misled and abused by their language of choice.

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#16

Post by lucperkins » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:56 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #2

"Dozens of new language-specific communities have now entered the fray and brought along their legions of devotees with them, and many of those devotees see PHP as being passé. I even had the following happen to me, and this is absolutely a true story and can be verified by our VP of Operations, Richard Kotulski: I was in an elevator with O’Reilly’s very good “PHP Cookbook” in hand and an older gentleman scoffed at m…

1. The gentleman's comment was indeed quite curious, and I wish that I could have used this info as a comeback. Thanks! 2. Direct HTML embedding could be seen as a weakness, yes, but that all depends on the kind of project. That's why I describe it as a good language for beginners and don't make any claims for or against it beyond that (beyond its demonstrated scalability, which I can only imagine being quite difficult in light of the security and other concerns that you voice).

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#17

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:58 PM UTC

warmwaffles wrote: post #6

I enjoyed PHP. I enjoyed Ruby. If I was to do a complex project that would require a lot of integration with external services, I would want a good OOP language like python or ruby. There are something PHP does nicely than Ruby does. Visa versa. However in all the PHP apps I have made / used, their structures started out with good intentions and then descended into pure chaos. There isn't a unified package manager fo…

[deleted]

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#18

Post by lucperkins » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:00 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #10

dansingerman wrote: post #3

I have a few nits with this post, but am mostly irked by the comparisons between PHP (a language) and Rails (a framework)

I'm just mad about the title. The post was about how PHP is quick and dirty for simple stuff. The reason all of the other web frameworks exist is because once you get past the learning curve, you can accomplish a lot in a very short span of time. If anything, they are the powerhouses, not PHP.

It depends on how you define powerhouse. Is PHP my favorite language or framework? No. But the use cases I provide show that it's worthy of consideration.

Perl, on the other hand...

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#19

Post by josegonzalez » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:01 PM UTC

warmwaffles wrote: post #6

I enjoyed PHP. I enjoyed Ruby. If I was to do a complex project that would require a lot of integration with external services, I would want a good OOP language like python or ruby. There are something PHP does nicely than Ruby does. Visa versa. However in all the PHP apps I have made / used, their structures started out with good intentions and then descended into pure chaos. There isn't a unified package manager fo…

Composer exists for PHP and most major frameworks are moving towards it: http://getcomposer.org/

Re: PHP: the quiet powerhouse

#20

Post by mschalle » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 10:03 PM UTC

I agree that PHP is good for starting learning web development and for small sample apps, but from experience I really think that large-scale PHP applications are not easy to manage. The codebase becomes disorganized very quickly, and tracking down a piece of code's "hierarchy" (what it inherits from, what methods it has available, etc.) can be a whole new kind of hell. IMO, of course.