PHP is much better than what you think • Hacker News Board

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#41

Post by Kudos » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:12 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #37

illumen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook.

Yes. And now Facebook is spending a ton of resource and man-hours programming around this. They had to write their own compiler! Also, I think they are trying to move away from PHP as quickly as possible without rewriting the entire site. The new projects and tools are not in PHP; moreover, I think most of the new people they hire never have to use PHP at all. Finally, just because they managed to use PHP to run a bi…

The same argument could be made of Ruby on Rails, just look at Twitter moving core infrastructure to the JVM.

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#42

Post by tikhonj » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:14 AM UTC

Kudos wrote: post #41

tikhonj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And now Facebook is spending a ton of resource and man-hours programming around this. They had to write their own compiler! Also, I think they are trying to move away from PHP as quickly as possible without rewriting the entire site. The new projects and tools are not in PHP; moreover, I think most of the new people they hire never have to use PHP at all. Finally, just because they managed to use PHP to run a bi…

The same argument could be made of Ruby on Rails, just look at Twitter moving core infrastructure to the JVM.

It could, and I think it should. I am no fan of Rails. But that is a different story for a different time.

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#43

Post by tomelders » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:14 AM UTC

talkingquickly wrote: post #36

illumen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the worlds most popular websites, and the vast millions of PHP programmers must all not really exist. They can't exist, and can't be making good stuff, because PHP is just doesn't work. Here is a list of template languages people on 'real' platforms use: Python. Airspeed, Castalian, Chameleon, Cheetah, CubicTemp, Django template system, Elements, EmPy, Evoque, HRL Powerful macro preprocessor for HTML, Genshi,…

Saying PHP is good because Facebook use it is kind of like saying phone hacking is good because it was utilised but some of the UK's most popular newspapers... I'd be interested to know if there's any commentary from people high up in Facebook on whether they'd use PHP again if they were starting now?

No, it's nothing like that.

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#44

Post by Seldaek » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:14 AM UTC

alexatkeplar wrote: post #25

If Fabpot seriously believes Composer is better than Bundler/apt/Maven, then he's crazy.

Have you used it at all? I'm not going to pretend it's better than Bundler, we took a lot of inspiration from it and we may have a few unique features compared to it, but that's it. apt is pretty different anyway since it does system level stuff. Maven I think is insane, it does way more than a package manager should do. That said when you look at Python for example, the package management landscape is a scattered mess, and there is a new "greater better" solution every couple years. I wouldn't call that a better situation than what we now have with Composer.

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#45

Post by jfarmer » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:14 AM UTC

talkingquickly wrote: post #36

illumen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the worlds most popular websites, and the vast millions of PHP programmers must all not really exist. They can't exist, and can't be making good stuff, because PHP is just doesn't work. Here is a list of template languages people on 'real' platforms use: Python. Airspeed, Castalian, Chameleon, Cheetah, CubicTemp, Django template system, Elements, EmPy, Evoque, HRL Powerful macro preprocessor for HTML, Genshi,…

Saying PHP is good because Facebook use it is kind of like saying phone hacking is good because it was utilised but some of the UK's most popular newspapers... I'd be interested to know if there's any commentary from people high up in Facebook on whether they'd use PHP again if they were starting now?

Look at Quora, Path, and Asana, the three most successful consumer startups started by former Facebookers.

None use PHP.

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#46

Post by diamondhead » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:14 AM UTC

var_dump("gotta be kidding dude!")

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#47

Post by OyoKooN » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:15 AM UTC

illumen wrote: post #24

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very specifically didn't say that PHP couldn't be used to build real products, but that still doesn't (at least on it's own) make it good or make it the best.

I guess the worlds most popular websites, and the vast millions of PHP programmers must all not really exist. They can't exist, and can't be making good stuff, because PHP is just doesn't work. Here is a list of template languages people on 'real' platforms use: Python. Airspeed, Castalian, Chameleon, Cheetah, CubicTemp, Django template system, Elements, EmPy, Evoque, HRL Powerful macro preprocessor for HTML, Genshi,…

Yeah. That's why they completety rewritten it...

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#48

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:15 AM UTC

This post reminds me of the infamous Chris Rock routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4#t=130s

"I take care of my kids! I ain't never been to jail!"

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#49

Post by aidos » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:17 AM UTC

Kudos wrote: post #38

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #7

"PHP is the best web platform ever", because it (finally) has a decent package manager. And don't mind that far fetched statement, the author will surely delete any rude comments. Congrats, PHP has a package manager. This does nothing to shake my feeling that PHP's most ardent advocates have little hands-on experience with the more full-featured alternatives. You know, like the ones that also have decent package mana…

When I first started looking for work here in Dublin, Ireland a few years ago, I saw tens of PHP web stack jobs, 1 RoR job and no Python jobs. While the tides have turned slightly, PHP web stack jobs here still far outnumber Ruby and Python equivalents, especially at the entry level. Some developers like PHP because they can get easily work doing it. Businesses likes PHP because they can more easily hire people. Argu…

It's a bit of a Catch22 as well. We switched to using PHP for our agency client work because it was easier to hire developers. Not only that, but clients actually ask for it by name (and we lost a number of jobs because we didn't want to use PHP). The cycle continues.

Re: PHP is much better than what you think

#50

Post by notinfinland » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:18 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #35

Namespaces, closures and traits are "all the bells and whistles you might dream of in a modern web language"? Really? Now I understand why Lisp users are smug. And that's ignoring the basic syntax touted as a feature . What I actually dream of in a web language (or any language, for that matter) is quite a bit more. I want to be able to get event-driven IO without writing event-driven code. I want to get parallelism…

Well, we can all dream, but what are you using now do get things done and make a living? I'm pretty sure Python and Ruby fail your criteria.

Using the "perfect language" is a luxury that I for one can't afford. I need something that I can use reasonably easy and that is sought by employers. The fact that is has event-driven IO and parallelism (what kind of parallelism do you need for web sites?) is nearly irrelevant.