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Announcing a specification for PHP

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Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#141

Post by Pacabel »

Dewie wrote: post #132
revscat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Contrary to what many HN hipsters seems to believe, PHP is quite a capable language, and HHVM / Hack is really pushing things forward. This attitude really frustrates me. I'm a developer with over 20 years of experience. I don't use PHP because (a) I have had poor experiences with it in the past, (b) I am enjoying my current stack (Java8/Clojure/Groovy), and (c) would go with stacks like RoR over PHP if I had to ch…

Meanwhile, that user presumably has the impressive track record of 2 days of posting on HN, making him/her a true expert on the HN crowd.

Don't assume that just because an account is new that the person behind the account hasn't been reading the site for years.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#142

Post by sheetjs »

debaserab2 wrote: post #137
DigitalSea wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laravel alone was enough to bring me back to PHP. It seriously has made PHP exciting again (I come from a Codeigniter and Zend background). It takes all of the things people love about Ruby on Rails and brings them to a PHP framework utilising modern features like traits alongside the fantastic selection of packages like Cashier. The even more surprising aspect of Laravel isn't how great it is, but rather the fact it…

If you like it because it's like rails, why not just use rails? The rails ecosystem is undoubtedly stronger than laravel's, and it's a more mature framework. I don't see where laravel fits in the spectrum of PHP frameworks.

Using Rails requires Ruby, and arguably the PHP ecosystem is stronger than the Ruby ecosystem.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#143

Post by krallja »

Zelphyr wrote: post #86
lnanek2 wrote: post #58

I'm not really a fan of having a second source of truth compared to in depth material already on php.net. The two will invariably start to disagree and php.net is much, much better than any spec or documentation I have ever read. Using Android is a nightmare compared to php.net because every single thing on php.net has extensive user generated documentation whereas Android is just some broken official docs. I submitt…

I think a spec benefits language implementors more than it does every-day users. Sure, it will influence things in every-day PHP programming but ultimately I think the target audience is different. Think of it as what the ECMA spec is to the Node.js API docs. Rarely does a user writing JS code using Node need to reference the ECMA spec (though they should by all means be familiar with it!) but they almost certainly h…

The ECMAScript spec might be a bad example, simply because Annotated ES5 is so good. http://es5.github.io/

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#144

Post by Pacabel »

duaneb wrote: post #135
thathonkey wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about people who need websites in general. Not your fancy startup. Also please name me a single startup that for some reason could not flourish using PHP as opposed to some other language? It's really more about the talent of your team than the language you choose to write your app(s) in.

> It's really more about the talent of your team than the language you choose to write your app(s) in. If you have a talented team, why on earth did you choose PHP?

It's too bad to see that your comment was voted down. It's a legitimate question, deserving of an answer.

It isn't the late 1990s any longer. Perl and PHP aren't the only viable options available for web development. We have more alternatives now than ever before.

It was one thing when a team chose to use PHP because it was all that their preferred hosting provider supported, for instance, but those days are long gone. There really is very little reason to use PHP these days, especially for new development.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#145

Post by Dewie »

Pacabel wrote: post #141
Dewie wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, that user presumably has the impressive track record of 2 days of posting on HN, making him/her a true expert on the HN crowd.

Don't assume that just because an account is new that the person behind the account hasn't been reading the site for years.

That's why I said "presumably", and only referring to posting on HN, specifically (i.e. could have had previous accounts).

This is very subjective, but I find people who (again, presumably) haven't been involved in a community who all of a sudden start right off the mark by posting in that community with a phrases like "HN hipsters", to be rude.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#146

Post by Pacabel »

mehrdada wrote: post #62

> PHP is definitely the lingua-franca of the internet. Definitely wrong. If there's a lingua-franca of the internet, it's JavaScript.

Sorry, that's total nonsense. Far more of the Internet depends on C, C++, or some mix of the two. Software written in them runs the networking gear, the servers, and the clients that are critical to the Internet's existence.

And keep in mind that the major JavaScript implementations today are all built using C and/or C++ in one way or another. So pretty much anywhere that JavaScript is being used, then C and C++ are being used, too.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#147

Post by lolpep8 »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #125
spacemanmatt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't found the Clojure haters yet but I can find a Ruby hater without looking too hard.

Curious about the hate. As far as languages go Ruby is as coherent as it gets.

All the reflection and abuse of mixins are pretty worthy of hate.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#148

Post by Dewie »

Pacabel wrote: post #140
DigitalSea wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to rag on a programming language on a site like Hacker News my advice would be to make sure you know what you are on about before you do. There isn't a programming language out there that doesn't have its quirks, look at Javascript, it has more quirks than you can poke a stick at, but that doesn't make it a bad language. In your examples I am not seeing the issue? Am I missing something here? Your exa…

The presence of some quirks isn't the issue. Of course every programming language has some. PHP and JavaScript, however, have unjustifiable quirks with some of their most basic functionality. We're talking about stuff as basic as their comparison operators being quite broken, for example. That's where the problem is. Furthermore, the fact that these issues have been around for well over a decade or more without being…

> The presence of some quirks isn't the issue. Of course every programming language has some.

It is a very weird argument that often comes up when discussing programming languages - "Lang X is weird/stupid in some ways, but no language is perfect, so it's fine and there is no reason to call it out."

So, because nothing is perfect (almost by definition), it apparently isn't a big deal that some things are weird/dumb/broken. And let's also just muddy the waters by implying that, since all languages have imperfections, talking about some other language's imperfections is just being pointlessly selective (even though one of the languages imperfections are much more horrible).

It's just overall a non-argument. Maybe the point is to come off as being "above" the opposite camp (which are: mindless language bashers). But it's about as intellectually stimulating as mindless language bashing: it doesn't take much intellectual curiosity or rigour to bash a language, and neither does being perfectly neutral and non-offensive by throwing around platitudes like "no language is perfect", "choose the right tool for the job", etc.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#149

Post by teh_klev »

debaserab2 wrote: post #137
DigitalSea wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laravel alone was enough to bring me back to PHP. It seriously has made PHP exciting again (I come from a Codeigniter and Zend background). It takes all of the things people love about Ruby on Rails and brings them to a PHP framework utilising modern features like traits alongside the fantastic selection of packages like Cashier. The even more surprising aspect of Laravel isn't how great it is, but rather the fact it…

If you like it because it's like rails, why not just use rails? The rails ecosystem is undoubtedly stronger than laravel's, and it's a more mature framework. I don't see where laravel fits in the spectrum of PHP frameworks.

>"If you like it because it's like rails, why not just use rails?"

PHP is ubiquitous on shared hosting platforms, there aren't that many "shared" Rails hosters out there. Morts still use shared hosters.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#150

Post by dubcanada »

Dewie wrote: post #145
Pacabel wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't assume that just because an account is new that the person behind the account hasn't been reading the site for years.

That's why I said "presumably", and only referring to posting on HN, specifically (i.e. could have had previous accounts). This is very subjective, but I find people who (again, presumably) haven't been involved in a community who all of a sudden start right off the mark by posting in that community with a phrases like "HN hipsters", to be rude.

Alright, I'll say it then. I've had an account for 1300~ days, 3 times as long as you and I've been reading for longer then that.

HN hipsters dislike PHP.

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