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

PHP is worth learning and using

bulletproofphp.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 468 posts

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#11

Post by mikl »

PHP is an ok language for web frameworks. But for most other things, it is a poor fit.

There’s a reason why people are generally not doing scientific computing, machine learning, hardware integration, systems programming, etc. in PHP (yes, there are likely some obscure projects doing all of those, but in general, it’s not done because of limitations in the PHP runtime).

If you already know PHP, you can probably have a long and healthy career in that space. But if you’re new to programming, you’ll probably be better off learning Python or Rust, or maybe one of the platform-oriented languages like C#, Kotlin or Swift. JavaScript is also a very popular choice, because it’s currently the only thing you can easily use in the browser, but that might change with the rise of WASM.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#12

Post by Uehreka »

dolni wrote: post #3

This seems like a desperate attempt to justify not moving on from a language whose death knell rang a long time ago. You might as well try to convince me I should start my next business with cutting edge software written in Fortran or COBOL.

Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP.

You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go?

Hell no. You hire someone cheaper whose skillset isn’t systems programming or ML, and they spit out a templated site in a weekend that looks sleek and makes a good impression, and when you need more content you tell them and they turn it around in an hour, and you spend your time on the Go stuff.

And that market, the market for Good Enough sites that front Really Good products and are fast to work with: that’s a great market for a lot of people who want to sling some code, get things done, clock out at 5 and spend time with their kids in a nice house in the suburbs. That’s why for people who want that kind of life, I recommend learning some PHP (or rather, learning the super-common frameworks that use PHP).

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#13

Post by mikl »

Uehreka wrote: post #12
dolni wrote: post #3

This seems like a desperate attempt to justify not moving on from a language whose death knell rang a long time ago. You might as well try to convince me I should start my next business with cutting edge software written in Fortran or COBOL.

Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP. You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go? Hell no. You hire someon…

> Do you write that site in Go?

Yes! https://gohugo.io/ would be a great choice for that kind of thing.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#14

Post by brandon272 »

I have used PHP for years. Like it. Have accomplished some nice things with it. Think it's evolved nicely in recent years. Feel it's a great tool for particular problems. Will continue to use it. Will always be open to alternatives.

Will never understand why some people find that so offensive and will tell you that you mustn't use it or imply that you are ignorant or stupid for using it.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#15

Post by innocenat »

mikl wrote: post #13
Uehreka wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP. You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go? Hell no. You hire someon…

> Do you write that site in Go? Yes! https://gohugo.io/ would be a great choice for that kind of thing.

But you don't write Go if you use hugo?

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#16

Post by mikl »

innocenat wrote: post #15
mikl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you write that site in Go? Yes! https://gohugo.io/ would be a great choice for that kind of thing.

But you don't write Go if you use hugo?

Depends a bit on how fancy your Hugo-site is. Unless you’re just feeding markdown into a pre-made template, you’ll at least use the Go template syntax, since that’s what Hugo’s templates are written in.

And if you want to integrate Hugo with anything, Go is the way.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#18

Post by marcosdumay »

Uehreka wrote: post #12
dolni wrote: post #3

This seems like a desperate attempt to justify not moving on from a language whose death knell rang a long time ago. You might as well try to convince me I should start my next business with cutting edge software written in Fortran or COBOL.

Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP. You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go? Hell no. You hire someon…

> Do you write that site in Go?

Hum... Probably. (I personally have a thing or two against Go, but yes, probably.)

Is the site some empty generic marketing that you'll put up to fill a feature list or is it meant to be useful? On the first case, sure, go offshore to somebody cheaper.

But on the second case, the time you can waste due to language, framework, software architecture and every other technical aspect is almost irrelevant near the time you will spend creating content. And you can't offshore the content if you want it to be great.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#19

Post by cityzen »

brandon272 wrote: post #14

I have used PHP for years. Like it. Have accomplished some nice things with it. Think it's evolved nicely in recent years. Feel it's a great tool for particular problems. Will continue to use it. Will always be open to alternatives. Will never understand why some people find that so offensive and will tell you that you mustn't use it or imply that you are ignorant or stupid for using it.

and the best part is they're probably javascript developers that don't understand the hell they're living in.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#20

Post by crate_barre »

cityzen wrote: post #19
brandon272 wrote: post #14

I have used PHP for years. Like it. Have accomplished some nice things with it. Think it's evolved nicely in recent years. Feel it's a great tool for particular problems. Will continue to use it. Will always be open to alternatives. Will never understand why some people find that so offensive and will tell you that you mustn't use it or imply that you are ignorant or stupid for using it.

and the best part is they're probably javascript developers that don't understand the hell they're living in.

Now, why’d you have to get JavaScript involved? Can’t something else be a punching bag?
Post reply on HN