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PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

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Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer. Pretty much, I've seen PHP powering traditional companies with revenue in the hundreds of millions (approach billions).

Yeah my "niche" right now is consulting for companies that are high revenue but built out their platforms during lean times where they were focused on growth over stability, reliability, or security. "Legacy code" I guess though it's a little more varied than that might imply. Basically the only two technologies I touch these days are rails and php. I'm not filtering out other tech stacks, these two are just absolute…

Sometimes not just "lean startup" type companies.

The place I'm thinking off that I know uses PHP for everything is a bricks and mortar retailer/manufacturer, I think last time I looked their revenue was ~£500m a year.

Their software was however awful in the worst ways :).

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the programmer's fault and responsibility

Not for a programming language calling itself portable Hypertext processor, no. In fact, it's bordering on criminally negligent.

PHP have htmlspecialchars() and parameterized queries since 2000.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the early 2000s - up until maybe 2010 or so (probably a bit later) PHP was the clear leader for anyone who wanted to get something done. There was Rails and ASP.net and Java (I don’t remember anything else that was super popular) but PHP was a million times faster to develop in. Anything you wanted was explained in depth in the first Google result. You want auth? A chat server? File management? You could get…

> PHP was the clear leader for anyone who wanted to get something done. Isn't that still the case? At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer. Every other language for backend development is pretty niche. Sure there is Java (and C#) for the enterprise but that was already there back then. Ruby had a good run but modern PHP with frameworks like Laravel could reclaim m…

> Isn't that still the case?

> At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer.

Here in Norway backend mostly means JVM or dotNet it seems. Last I touched a PHP installation that wasn't a prototype or a blog or something was in the spring of 2009.

That said: In my opinion PHP has been massively underrated in HN circles.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that you need to build some little tooling around it. You have to do the service registration somit auto starts and then you need some form of a harness to restart the go daemon if something goes bad etc. Also the one deploying Go needs system permissions on the machine. For a PHP deployment this is all handled by a fully standardized Apache httpd (at least back in the days, nowadays setups became more fancy) and…

The golang binary file + systemd. Don't run the process as root. Done.

Need ssh access. Can't deploy via ftp. A non-techincal person can deploy a WordPress site they will not be able to deploy a golang binary.

If the binary fails for whatever reason the application is either down or you have to have something ensuring it stays running. With PHP if it breaks, it'll be ok for the next run.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#145

Everyone here is talking about how great PHP is, but why don't we consider it for use nowadays? I know some people still use it, but it's not really an option most people consider anymore. Is that just because it's not cool or modern anymore, or are there some fundamental problems with it that make it a non-starter?

I think it’s still used a lot. The startup I worked with that used php (5 years ago) just got bought.

I think it’s pretty stable and so doesn’t get a lot of mindshare. It not what the cool startups are using but it’s still used. With a framework like Laravel or symfony I enjoy working with it.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#146
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double spaced lines of code? What do you mean? FWIW, I no longer use DocBlocks because PHP's own type system is usually expressive enough.

> PHP's own type system is usually expressive enough. I'd say it's one of the worst type systems. Expressive enough not to need docblocks, ok. Expressive as a type system: hell no.

I meant expressive enough that you don't need DocBlocks as often. We're nowhere near being done, PHP still lacks proper Generics and Algebraic Data Types. Recently we got Union Types (8.0) and will soon have Enums (8.1).

If you really needed generics today, you can do it with DocBlocks and static analyzers like PHPStan: https://phpstan.org/blog/generics-in-php-using-phpdocs>. I'm hopeful that in the future, you won't need a DocBlock for that.

As for ADTs, there's some on going discussions here: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/adts> which would build upon the existing support for Enums (8.1). I'm really looking forward to being able to have something resembling Optional/Maybe.

I'm by no means saying what PHP has is enough today, just that it's less limited than it was a few years ago. It'll be even less limited in the future.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#147
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for a programming language calling itself portable Hypertext processor, no. In fact, it's bordering on criminally negligent.

PHP have htmlspecialchars() and parameterized queries since 2000.

1. XSS != SQL injection

2. Adding a bunch of bogus escaping routines isn't an excuse for an incredibly poorly conceived off language, or continuing using it in production in the presence of superior solutions.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say if you're selling PHP solutions/consulting in this century for apps managing ecommerce or any other kind of PII, you should demand your customer signs a liability waiver. If you can even disclaim liability for gross negligence in your jurisdiction, that is.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#148
post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

Yes but your forgot that you had to setup easy php to get an dev env running. I'd trade easy deployment for easy dev any day.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The golang binary file + systemd. Don't run the process as root. Done.

Need ssh access. Can't deploy via ftp. A non-techincal person can deploy a WordPress site they will not be able to deploy a golang binary. If the binary fails for whatever reason the application is either down or you have to have something ensuring it stays running. With PHP if it breaks, it'll be ok for the next run.

I am not familiar with tooling designed to allow non-programmers to deploy. For a programmer, a single binary is trivial stuff. My point being you can drop a golang in any linux environment and it will just run. It doesn't get simpler than that.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#150

Someone from my dads office gave my some printed pages about ASP from MS. Until that time I was doing all my web dev in Perl (it was basically either that or c) with print " hello... et. After reading about ASP, I concocted my own miserable php-like thing in perl where you could put perl code in between to add logic. I tried to find the code (I have it somewhere in dropbox, I'm sure), but I remember I failed at doing…

> Good memories; deploying a site cheaply by scp/rsync the files. Well. I have a minio instance running for static small sites, every time I wanted to create a new bucket I had to re-read my own notes and fiddle around for half an hour with s3cmd and mc before getting something live. Today I threw the things out and started using scp again. It's much easier, it's not in the way.

Have you tried IaaC Tools like terraform?
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