Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

High Quality PHP

acquia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: High Quality PHP

#21

Post by Iftheshoefits »

exizt88 wrote: post #16
nkuttler wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author loses a lot of credibility by calling those three apps "great". If the article is about high quality PHP I'm interested in that, and not the poster children for PHP's popularity. As a user, phpBB is a nightmare to use, as a developer, WordPress is spaghetti code at it's worst. Edit: What's even worse is that we don't get examples of PHP code that was actually written with proper development procedures from…

Wordpress isn't the prettiest blog engine out there, but once you get its way of doing things, it's remarkably easy to get things done with it without your code devolving into an unmaintainable mess.

A thing doesn't devolve into a state it starts in.

Re: High Quality PHP

#22

Post by maw »

programminggeek wrote: post #3

It is really easy to talk smack about PHP because as a language it is not the prettiest, best designed, or cleanest language out there. It often leads to some very gross code. However, programmers write ugly code in every language and even in a much more beautiful language like Ruby, there are so many projects that end up with ugly codebases, poor performance, etc. that PHP by no means holds an exclusive ownership of…

You can trot out the trope about how you can write good code or bad code in any language as many times as you wish but it will not change the fact that php makes it unnecessarily difficult to write good code and, through both the language's and its standard library's misfeatures as well as the surrounding culture of sloppiness, encourages writing bad code.

Re: High Quality PHP

#24

Post by d23 »

debacle wrote: post #15
nkuttler wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author loses a lot of credibility by calling those three apps "great". If the article is about high quality PHP I'm interested in that, and not the poster children for PHP's popularity. As a user, phpBB is a nightmare to use, as a developer, WordPress is spaghetti code at it's worst. Edit: What's even worse is that we don't get examples of PHP code that was actually written with proper development procedures from…

WordPress is great software, even if it isn't written well - from the end user's point of view, it is exceptional.

Until you upgrade a plugin. Whoops, your whole site is broken!

Re: High Quality PHP

#25

Post by berkes »

debacle wrote: post #15
nkuttler wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author loses a lot of credibility by calling those three apps "great". If the article is about high quality PHP I'm interested in that, and not the poster children for PHP's popularity. As a user, phpBB is a nightmare to use, as a developer, WordPress is spaghetti code at it's worst. Edit: What's even worse is that we don't get examples of PHP code that was actually written with proper development procedures from…

WordPress is great software, even if it isn't written well - from the end user's point of view, it is exceptional.

> from the end user's point of view, it is exceptional.

I beg to differ. Disclaimer: I am an ex-drupal-developer, now-ruby-developer working at a startup for managed WordPress hosting.

Many people use WordPress because they know of nothing else. They don't find it good, exceptional or bad: they find nothing of it: it is all they know. They can't compare.

Again many people have severe issues with WordPress, ranging from security-holes, infected code, poorly maintained plugins to, most often, poorly implemented themes and horrible performance.

Then, some, really like it. But those are a minority. I've heard many WordPress-developer and -user utter the same words Dries (after Boris Mann) wrt Drupal has uttered: "This CMS sucks least".

You'll have to dig deep in order to find developers, users and other stakeholders, with the ability to compare it to many other alternatives, and who find it "exceptional". I've yet to meat one; eventhough all our customers are WordPress users.

Re: High Quality PHP

#26

Post by UK-AL »

programminggeek wrote: post #3

It is really easy to talk smack about PHP because as a language it is not the prettiest, best designed, or cleanest language out there. It often leads to some very gross code. However, programmers write ugly code in every language and even in a much more beautiful language like Ruby, there are so many projects that end up with ugly codebases, poor performance, etc. that PHP by no means holds an exclusive ownership of…

That's true. But why make it worse by choosing a bad language. Surely you have good practice and a language that makes it easier.

Re: High Quality PHP

#27

Post by venomsnake »

girvo wrote: post #18
polysics wrote: post #5

I left PHP about 3 years ago, and I have recently had to look into it again due to a new course I am preparing to teach. The PHP I knew is no more, and it is leaps and bounds ahead of what it used to be. But using Drupal as an example is really a bad choice. Talk about Laravel, Composer, new language features, but not crappy giant codebases.

It's great isn't it? Variadic functions is about to land, as is splats, and some other neat features like "use function", which will mean a simple module setup with namespacing without classes. Oh and phpdbg built in! I went to leave PHP this year, and didn't end up doing it, because of how much has changed lately. It's a good language, with awesome tooling know. I can write well-tested, easily readable, maintainable…

the main problem with that is that most of the big php deployments are moving at their own pace. So ... anything new can trickle down in years. And you rarely have the luck of finding clean slate php project nowadays.

Re: High Quality PHP

#28

Post by ThomPete »

evilduck wrote: post #20
programminggeek wrote: post #3

It is really easy to talk smack about PHP because as a language it is not the prettiest, best designed, or cleanest language out there. It often leads to some very gross code. However, programmers write ugly code in every language and even in a much more beautiful language like Ruby, there are so many projects that end up with ugly codebases, poor performance, etc. that PHP by no means holds an exclusive ownership of…

This argument makes no sense. You're conflating people and behavior with tools. Bad tools make it easier to do a bad job in any field of work. Novices with good tools will still do a bad job. This is a weak justification for promoting bad tools.

Bad tools? In what alternative universe is PHP a bad tool?

It is one of the easiest to get started with, most documented, best supported and flexible tools out there for 90% of the things you see on the internet today.

Re: High Quality PHP

#29

Post by ThomPete »

UK-AL wrote: post #26
programminggeek wrote: post #3

It is really easy to talk smack about PHP because as a language it is not the prettiest, best designed, or cleanest language out there. It often leads to some very gross code. However, programmers write ugly code in every language and even in a much more beautiful language like Ruby, there are so many projects that end up with ugly codebases, poor performance, etc. that PHP by no means holds an exclusive ownership of…

That's true. But why make it worse by choosing a bad language. Surely you have good practice and a language that makes it easier.

You wanna know why PHP is so popular and why many people chooses it?

Because it's so easy to get started using. Compare that to almost any other language out there that is a nightmare to set up.

At the end of the day the code if it works it works and PHP just simply works. Not for everything but for most things.

Re: High Quality PHP

#30

Post by shekmalhen »

ThomPete wrote: post #29
UK-AL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. But why make it worse by choosing a bad language. Surely you have good practice and a language that makes it easier.

You wanna know why PHP is so popular and why many people chooses it? Because it's so easy to get started using. Compare that to almost any other language out there that is a nightmare to set up. At the end of the day the code if it works it works and PHP just simply works. Not for everything but for most things.

The same thing could have been said about visual basic... one of the worse language ever made.
Post reply on HN