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Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

codinghorror.com

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Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#11

Post by mgkimsal »

CJefferson wrote: post #7

As time goes by, I think the time to get started in a new system (which for PHP is almost 0 time) is one of the most important things. The problem is that the developers of rails / grails / Wt / SproutCore / Flex / Struts / GWT / Django / Flask / Zope / Merb / Zotonic might be sure their framework is the greatest ever, and clearly worth a couple of days (or even a couple of hours) of someone's time to get it all conf…

Another part of what makes something "best" is... size/scope of developer community. PHP quickly gained a foothold, and, for better or worse, continues to be popular in part because it's popular. I don't mean that as an insult at all, but it's a continued factor. If tomorrow everyone stopped releasing open source code for PHP, it would gradually die off in several years while people transitioned to alternatives, and we'd end up with some other 'largest minorty' tech/stack getting a lot of attention.

You're right about the 1%, and it's why classic ASP did as well as it did for a while too, until that was killed off. The fact that big players who once scoffed at PHP now embrace it (MS is a big one) shows how big PHP is and will continue to be for the foreseeable future Will PHP be here in 3-5 years? certainly. 10 years? possibly, but with a difference at least as big as php/fi -> php5 is, so current php5 skills won't really be of much use on their own.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#12

Post by anthonyb »

Oh great. Another PHP article, where we get to watch all of the defenders of Rasmussen's misbegotten spawn come out from under their rocks...

  "PHP works great for me! It runs tons of websites! I don't know what you're complaining about..."
To address the article's point somewhat - there are already easy to deploy frameworks and languages for the web, and everybody who cares about development is already using them.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#13

Post by mgkimsal »

citricsquid wrote: post #10

I'm a php user. I got involved in programming because I wanted to control my websites and build new ones.my first exposure to php was through modifying open source platforms (eg Wordpress and phpbb). Want to kill PHP? Build alternatives to PHPBB, Wordpress etc that compete on ease of use (incl installing, that means have host gator etc support the language used) and PHP will slowly die out.

agreed. i don't think many other non-php supporters get how ubiquitous PHP (and even has been, for a decade or so) in terms of coming pre-installed everywhere. And apps - yes, have replacement apps that play nicely in shared hosting environments without requiring 30% of the machine's RAM per user/app, and you'll see a replacement.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#14

Post by dasil003 »

scribu wrote: post #6
bobsy wrote: post #5

Sorry Jeff. The only thing broken with PHP is you (and other people like you). How much PHP do you use Jeff? Lets assume none. How is PHP hurting you? I mean seriously, how much contact do you even have with PHP? PHP is easy to learn, easy to make websites with. There are a tonne of paying jobs which require PHP. PHP runs a lot of websites. I am a PHP developer. I prefer Python but my PHP job pays me just fine. There…

Hey, at least he's not just ranting like everyone else; he's trying to bring forward a better alternative. I'm also a PHP dev and I think Python is the safest bet, since it has good support on all platforms already (including Windows).

It read like a pretty vanilla rant to me.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#15

Post by kev009 »

bobsy wrote: post #5

Sorry Jeff. The only thing broken with PHP is you (and other people like you). How much PHP do you use Jeff? Lets assume none. How is PHP hurting you? I mean seriously, how much contact do you even have with PHP? PHP is easy to learn, easy to make websites with. There are a tonne of paying jobs which require PHP. PHP runs a lot of websites. I am a PHP developer. I prefer Python but my PHP job pays me just fine. There…

The "problem" is that PHP's popularity breeds more popularity, uninformed choice, and single-language programmers that only know PHP (a real tragedy!). Bashing PHP is in a serious sense a public service if it can reduce any of these outcomes.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#17

Post by troels »

kev009 wrote: post #15
bobsy wrote: post #5

Sorry Jeff. The only thing broken with PHP is you (and other people like you). How much PHP do you use Jeff? Lets assume none. How is PHP hurting you? I mean seriously, how much contact do you even have with PHP? PHP is easy to learn, easy to make websites with. There are a tonne of paying jobs which require PHP. PHP runs a lot of websites. I am a PHP developer. I prefer Python but my PHP job pays me just fine. There…

The "problem" is that PHP's popularity breeds more popularity, uninformed choice, and single-language programmers that only know PHP (a real tragedy!). Bashing PHP is in a serious sense a public service if it can reduce any of these outcomes.

So, the problem with PHP is that it is popular? I guess it was the same crime that Java committed 10 years ago. And C++ before that.

Makes sense - There's definitely a pattern of bashing the popular languages.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#18

Post by mootothemax »

I agree that it's rather surprising that in this day and age, nothing comes close to the out-of-the-box ease and performance that PHP gives for web development. Install a couple of packages, and BANG, you're up and running. It's been a year since I've taken a look at the rest of the webdev landscape, but it seems that you either lose out to an overly-complex setup (by comparison), or suffer with a memory hog that makes bootstrapping on a 1GB VPS a nightmare.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the high rates my PHP consultancy work commands; it's obviously helped by the number of hit-it-till-it-works web devs out there.

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#19

Post by Produce »

PHP is broken in many little aspects but if you use a high quality framework, it's quite enjoyable to work with. The main gripes I have with it are in the details, like:

You can't do:

$something->doStuff()[0]

if(empty($something->doStuff()))

Overload fucking functions. Fuck.

What sucks:

The namespace separator.

The naming conventions of the core functions.

The speed.

But, overall it works and elegant solutions can be written.

Also, being competent in a market full of incompetents makes you valuable and getting a well paying job is easy. What's not to like about that?

Re: Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity

#20

Post by gaius »

bobsy wrote: post #5

Sorry Jeff. The only thing broken with PHP is you (and other people like you). How much PHP do you use Jeff? Lets assume none. How is PHP hurting you? I mean seriously, how much contact do you even have with PHP? PHP is easy to learn, easy to make websites with. There are a tonne of paying jobs which require PHP. PHP runs a lot of websites. I am a PHP developer. I prefer Python but my PHP job pays me just fine. There…

You see, once they learn Ruby, they're "rockstar ninjas" and can't wait to tell everyone.
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