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Google App Engine finally supports PHP

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Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#41

Post by dageshi »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #33
shocks wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it doesn't need to be pointed out by 100 people every single time the language comes up in conversation. PHP has its place. HNs typical "PHP LOL OMFG WTF SHIT" reaction is childish.

Such flaws should be pointed out whenever possible by however many people feel like pointing them out. I think that the skilled members of any community or industry have a duty to stand against technology that is inherently broken. This is quite distant from being "childish". In fact, it's a sign of maturity when one can unemotionally analyze a given tool and deem it to be of an insufficient quality for practical use…

It isn't inherently broken, if it were inherently broken nobody would be using it, which is quite obviously not the case.

From my point of view, ruby, python all the rest are inherently broken because nobody makes any damned products from them which aren't used by other programmers or sold as a service.

You don't need to be a programmer to use Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB and the endless list of customer facing, customer usable PHP apps. You don't need to be a programmer to configure their environments and get them running. You don't need to be a programmer to extend them, you just need to find the right plugin/module to suit your needs.

I cannot think of any other web based language that even comes close in this regard. Why is that? If these languages are so good, why is no one making any software with them that ordinary people and not programmers can actually use?

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#42

Post by danbruc »

Kiro wrote: post #36

I am no hardcore programmer and PHP is perfect for me. Tbh I haven't encountered one single bad thing about it during my 5 years programming, although I understand there are major flaws in it. What I'm saying is that for most people PHP works completely fine and is as good as anything.

Of course, you can build working stuff with PHP. It is good enough for weekend projects and prototyping stuff. Companies like Facebook have even proved that you can build huge things with it.

Put that's not the point. It's not about bashing PHP for the sake of it. A large number of software projects is behind schedule and over budget. Why? Because developing software is hard and humans are bad at estimating effort.

Now why should we make the situation even worse by using tools that are not as good as possible while we are completely aware of the flaws (and good things) in our current tools?

Pointing out PHP's flaws over and over again while seeing that its usage does not drop tells us something - there seems to be no (obvious) better alternative. »PHP sucks!« is crying for help. Someone please build an obviously better alternative. Ideally as compatible as possible to make porting from PHP not practically infeasible.

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#43

Post by elbear »

Killswitch wrote: post #38
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's good for people to be extremely vocal about technologies riddled with serious flaws. It's unfortunate, but ultimately beneficial, even when they have to do this repeatedly. It doesn't matter if we're talking about PHP or JavaScript, or a web framework like Ruby on Rails, or various NoSQL databases, or even certain operating systems. Even if people have used such technologies with some degree of success in th…

Except nobody jumps in for a karma train of circle jerking each other about flaws in Python, Ruby or anything else.. Just PHP... Because it's the new cool hip thing to do.. Bash PHP... If you don't, then you won't get high fives from the rest of your hipster friends. I've been writing PHP for 12 years... I've learned that its got flaws... Just like anything else... I've gotten over it... Why? Because I actually enjoy…

It's not a cool hip thing to bash PHP. It's been happening for quite some time and Python and Ruby don't get as much flak, because they don't deserve as much.

I realize it's annoying for you, someone who enjoys writing PHP, to keep hearing people complain about PHP, but it's always going to happen. And although it won't convince you to stop using it, it will surely convince others to think about trying something else.

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#44

Post by mscarborough »

joeblau wrote: post #22

This move doesn't make much sense to me. Most of the websites built in PHP are huge CMS services like Weebly, Wordpress, Joomla, or old social networks like Facebook. I don't see any of these large services switching over to get hosted on Google. Plus PHP in general is disorganized and slow compared to more contemporary languages with well defined frameworks.

In addition to those hosted services, is all of the self-hosted Wordpress, Joomla, Zencart, etc. Plus all of the business and personal sites built on Zend, Symfony, Cake.

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#45

Post by voidlogic »

gngeal wrote: post #25
flixic wrote: post #2

They seem to twist the facts ever so slightly. PHP is not "most popular computing language on the planet", it's the most popular web coding language; C is the most popular "computing" language, whatever that means. And in linked article they make it seem that PhoneGap apps are more native than they are, "built-in PhoneGap integration so developers can publish native app packages to the various app stores". Not factua…

I'd say that Java is the most popular one, but C does all the hard work!

When people say C is the most popular, this is the metric they are often referring too: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#46

Post by PommeDeTerre »

sbarre wrote: post #34
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's good for people to be extremely vocal about technologies riddled with serious flaws. It's unfortunate, but ultimately beneficial, even when they have to do this repeatedly. It doesn't matter if we're talking about PHP or JavaScript, or a web framework like Ruby on Rails, or various NoSQL databases, or even certain operating systems. Even if people have used such technologies with some degree of success in th…

Except his two-line post didn't actually say anything other than a long-winded version of "PHP sucks!" and that gets really old really fast...

Those two sentences say a lot more to those of us who have used PHP extensively. This is especially true for those of us who have had to maintain relatively old PHP applications developed by numerous (often inexperienced) developers over the course of many years. And it says even more to those of us who also have had many years of experience with other, better tools.

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#47

Post by voidlogic »

velodrome wrote: post #16
jrockway wrote: post #8

Google App Engine was almost a science project for the first few years, only supporting languages that Google used internally. Python?

Python, Java

My understanding is Google uses: Python, Java, C++ and Go and language choice is at the discretion of team involved.

Re: Google App Engine finally supports PHP

#49

Post by dragonwriter »

dageshi wrote: post #41
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such flaws should be pointed out whenever possible by however many people feel like pointing them out. I think that the skilled members of any community or industry have a duty to stand against technology that is inherently broken. This is quite distant from being "childish". In fact, it's a sign of maturity when one can unemotionally analyze a given tool and deem it to be of an insufficient quality for practical use…

It isn't inherently broken, if it were inherently broken nobody would be using it, which is quite obviously not the case. From my point of view, ruby, python all the rest are inherently broken because nobody makes any damned products from them which aren't used by other programmers or sold as a service. You don't need to be a programmer to use Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB and the endless list of customer facing,…

> From my point of view, ruby, python all the rest are inherently broken because nobody makes any damned products from them which aren't used by other programmers or sold as a service.

Even assuming that this is true (which its not, but we'll get to that later on) How does this matter? And, particularly, how is "sold as a service" an issue?

> You don't need to be a programmer to use Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB and the endless list of customer facing, customer usable PHP apps. ou don't need to be a programmer to configure their environments and get them running. You don't need to be a programmer to extend them, you just need to find the right plugin/module to suit your needs.

How is this different from Plone or any of the other CMS, blogging, and discussion platforms built in Python, Ruby, and other non-PHP languages, that likewise are designed to be installed and configured by non-programmers and which are extensible via plugin/module systems?

> I cannot think of any other web based language that even comes close in this regard.

What is a "web based language"? But I suspect the reason you can't think of any other language has nothing to do with what is actually true of other languages, and more about you.

> If these languages are so good, why is no one making any software with them that ordinary people and not programmers can actually use?

Software that is successfully sold as a service to ordinary people is software that ordinary people and not programmers can actually use. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sales.

As are a lot of other things you seem unaware of built with non-PHP languages.

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