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PHP needs a vision

news.php.net

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Re: PHP needs a vision

#31

Post by Tichy »

benatkin wrote: post #9
jtreminio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty, non-contributing comments like yours that appear in every single thread about PHP on HN need to stop being posted. Not sorry, I mean it. Stop.

Your comment made me curious about it and I see that Tichy has about 15K in karma. If he and a hundred people like him quit HN it would probably fix a lot of what's wrong with it.

I got curious, too. The last comment you made before this one was this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008026

Very constructive :-)

Re: PHP needs a vision

#32

Post by cies »

nikic wrote: post #22
cies wrote: post #2

Too late if you ask me, let me explain: Programming languages are hard to change, very hard, because it will certainly break programs written in it in many places. So if you want a programming language with a vision you should start with it, or simply accept it has no vision and it merely goes with the whim of its maintainers. The latter is what I believe happened to PHP. No biggy, there are plenty of languages that…

PHP has changed a lot over time. It moved from a C-style procedural language to very Java-esque object oriented language. "PHP" hasn't been "PHP" for a long time already. It's always hard to do large language changes, but it's not impossible. E.g. consider the change that PHP did from version 4 to 5. That was a pretty major paradigm shift, with lots of broken code, but it worked out well in the end :)

To me the OO features of PHP have always felt 'bolted on', yet Java is OO from-head-to-toes. It only emphasizes my point: unlike a startup, a programming language cannot pick/change vision when it is a grown-up.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#33

Post by cies »

Tichy wrote: post #30
jtreminio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty, non-contributing comments like yours that appear in every single thread about PHP on HN need to stop being posted. Not sorry, I mean it. Stop.

I admit I only now followed the link to the article, that is how biased I am. Turns out it is an article that basically says "we have no idea how to get out of the mess we created". How much content is in that? I stand by my statement... Is it not a valid opinion to sometimes say it is time for a thing to die? Why keep investing in hopeless tech?

> Why keep investing in hopeless tech?

Because your codebase relies on it.

Death will be hard for any mainstream language (proof: COBOL), especially open source ones.

It might find not many new projects are started in it.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#34

Post by jspthrowaway2 »

spdy wrote: post #18
herge wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python has often been called an easy to learn language and a good first start because it tries to be easy to read. Does that mean that it is also a beginner's language that people eventually are supposed to move on from?

People who pickup Python will always stay and never move on completely. My programming carear startet with perl -> php -> python and i found one holy grail to solve most of my problems. Python had an easy entry point the same as PHP but when you jumped over the first learning curve and discovered the complete ecosystem it`s mindblowing. I never had that feeling with PHP you could do websites and thats it. And most of…

> People who pickup Python will always stay and never move on completely.

To be blunt, that's not universally true. I've moved on to Go, with an eye for more functional languages this year.

Python is great, but it's not the last language.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#35

Post by memla »

Tichy wrote: post #30
jtreminio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty, non-contributing comments like yours that appear in every single thread about PHP on HN need to stop being posted. Not sorry, I mean it. Stop.

I admit I only now followed the link to the article, that is how biased I am. Turns out it is an article that basically says "we have no idea how to get out of the mess we created". How much content is in that? I stand by my statement... Is it not a valid opinion to sometimes say it is time for a thing to die? Why keep investing in hopeless tech?

There is some value in comments like yours. It brings to light just how many of these PHP bashing statements are biased and uninformed knee-jerk reactions, and therefore, should not be taken seriously by any rational person.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#36

Post by Tichy »

cies wrote: post #33
Tichy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I only now followed the link to the article, that is how biased I am. Turns out it is an article that basically says "we have no idea how to get out of the mess we created". How much content is in that? I stand by my statement... Is it not a valid opinion to sometimes say it is time for a thing to die? Why keep investing in hopeless tech?

> Why keep investing in hopeless tech? Because your codebase relies on it. Death will be hard for any mainstream language (proof: COBOL), especially open source ones. It might find not many new projects are started in it.

So you would upvote an article about "COBOL needs a new vision" on HN?

Re: PHP needs a vision

#37

Post by Tichy »

memla wrote: post #35
Tichy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I only now followed the link to the article, that is how biased I am. Turns out it is an article that basically says "we have no idea how to get out of the mess we created". How much content is in that? I stand by my statement... Is it not a valid opinion to sometimes say it is time for a thing to die? Why keep investing in hopeless tech?

There is some value in comments like yours. It brings to light just how many of these PHP bashing statements are biased and uninformed knee-jerk reactions, and therefore, should not be taken seriously by any rational person.

How do my comments reveal how informed I am? You know nothing about my experiences with PHP.

Anyway, don't bother - I'll let you own your little PHP discussion now, moving on. My comments on HN won't stop the calamity anyway.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#38

Post by verelo »

Some of the statements there such as this really disappoint me.

"PHP is what people use to get their first site off the ground. PHP is what a web designer learns when he/she wants to go into programming. PHP is what a random Joe uses when he needs to whip up a page and he's in "do it yourself" mind."

PHP is a great language in that its very flexible and quick to get going with, the sad thing is people don't want it to grow up...after all, so many massive companies (FB?) use PHP for core components. Why can't those internally have a slightly larger vision...

Re: PHP needs a vision

#39

Post by programminggeek »

PHP is for webdev. That's it. Go outside the bounds of that and it loses its magic. On its own it's great for spitting out a webpage. It's a scripting and templating language in one, which is kind of cool.

That said, outside of that to make PHP work on bigger projects you end up with a lot of structure and ceremony that make PHP suck, not quite as much as Java, but it's not amazing.

Thiings like testing and testability aren't much fun in PHP. For a long time package management was a joke.

PHP is for webdev. That's it.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#40

Post by blantonl »

I think PHP (5.x/6x) is still applicable to any developer, new or old, experienced or not. Many of us cut our teeth on PHP's simple scripting concepts, and that shouldn't change. And from what I've seen from past history, it won't.

There is a tremendous amount of backwards compatibility in current versions of PHP that allows one to follow the same approach to Web development that those did back 10-15 years ago with PHP 4. No, it is not "Enterprise", and yes there are security considerations to account for. But the process of adoption is key, and PHP continues to be adopted by a lot of startups/projects. Those that choose to adopt the PHP language as their advanced vernacular moving forward still continue to have a number of more advanced programming language concepts to utilize in PHP with each new release, with barely any breakage with other approaches to using PHP.

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