171–180 of 286 posts
PHP has a lot of warts, and I mean a lot , but one thing I really like about PHP that virtually no other Web languages offer is that I can just drop code in my Web server's document root, go to that path in my browser, and it runs, without needing to deal with frameworks, boilerplate, compiling, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Code that passes type checks can also fail to solve the user's problem, make 10,000 database calls, or render a page that is completely unreadable. The human in the loop is a good thing. All things being equal, the type system is also a good thing, but what usually happens is that you end up checking your page once a minute or once every 10 minutes, not 50 times in a minute. That difference can make or break a projec…
It depends a lot on what you're working on. If you are building a front end with PHP as your templating language, then yes, the ability to instantly see your changes is huge. In my experience, when working on back end, the difference isn't that significant because you really want to be using unit tests anyway, not constantly interacting with the front end to test your work. In those back end cases, having a strong ty…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you (and to be fair, many people) are missing a huge part of why PHP is still popular. Saying Ruby can replace PHP sounds to me like saying that Ruby can replace Excel. It's fundamentally misunderstanding _why_ it's popular in the first place. I have a HTML page. How do I add a hit counter to it with Ruby? I can do it right now in PHP with zero dependencies and it'll fit in this comment: You are visitor numbe…
This makes my eyes bleed.
Everyone laughing at PHP hasn't tried it for years, I'd bet. It started clumsy, true, but it became a solid and quite elegant way of doing things. And by things I don't mean just web development. The current limitations I see in PHP is that there is not an official multi-core coroutines solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One comment I heard at a programming meetup recently was "I hate how frameworks like laravel have brought PHP back in to popularity when we had the chance to finally kill it off". I do wonder if there really was value in salvaging PHP when we have a wealth of other languages and frameworks that do a perfectly fine job without any of the legacy mistakes sitting around.
There isn't a language that can replace php in 2021. Javascript doesn't have the size of build-in library. Golang is compiled and limited, blank spaces/tabs will kill a Python program. Ruby /rails is slower. All are harder to host. What could you replace php with? The tales of legacy mistakes holding back php are things with no basis in reality. What legacy mistake holds php back? Method names/parameter ordering? Whe…
I have once heard an ancient prophecy (I think it's Greek) that says "Debating around PHP online summons the ghost of the dark behind your back" or something like that (I don't speak Greek, sorry).
In the Client/Server world now days, the most of the time you only need one or two languages, one running on the Client side (JavaScript for example) and one running on the server (**, Go, Java, JavaScript etc).
In that setting, JavaScript comes with the hard advantage of both-end compatibility, that gives you something like Server-side Rendering, which no other backend-only language could do, at least not "natively". If you have a foundation this good, people will build the library themselves when the language/runtime don't have it built-in. (the same is true when it comes to Swift/Dart/Kotlin. I bet there is someone/company out there writing both their app and their backend in Swift/Kotlin)
For "backend-only" languages, it's largely down to personal/team preference. Some needs performance, some wants "write-friendly" (contains many factors). But the problem is, the market now days is saturated with better options that also do more things (often in a better way). When you bring all the options on the table, then suddenly that-language-the-name-we-shall-not-say started to look way less attractive.
It's just that, comparison/competition kills things, no elite required.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elegant is not the word I'd use to describe PHP. Solid, perhaps. Undoubtedly useful. But if there is elegant PHP, I haven't seen it.
PHP is elegant and useful. The spread operator is ...$array is elegant. $var ? "not found"; is really elegant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a proper type system you don’t need to run your code 50 times a minute.
Well php has strong typing built in now and they have been iterating on it every release. It's well ahead of native js. I can't imagine having any real complaints on using 8.x php for a back end these days.
I've been using PHP since 5.x. Often had to work on older 4.x web apps. I find it interesting when I read people saying "PHP has come a long way. It's a proper language now, etc." If you work long enough with a language and figure out most its quirks, it's a breeze. It's nice that they are adding all these new features, but they are hardly what makes it or break it for me. Here is the one features that is taken for g…
Question: does class_exists still return TRUE when given the QCN to an enum? Because it's not possible to instantiate an enum, if one appears in the constructor of a class it'll break auto-wiring. I've written my own IoC containers and one fundamental assumption in them is that when class_exists returns true, it is what it says on the tin. Using a specialized factory would still be possible. I wonder if other contain…
Internally, Enums inherit a lot from classes. I wrote an indepth article about this: https://php.watch/versions/8.1/enums#enum-exists There is an `enum_exists` function that only returns true for Enums. It's fairly unintuitive to combine class_exists with enum_exists to filter out Enums, I agree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One comment I heard at a programming meetup recently was "I hate how frameworks like laravel have brought PHP back in to popularity when we had the chance to finally kill it off". I do wonder if there really was value in salvaging PHP when we have a wealth of other languages and frameworks that do a perfectly fine job without any of the legacy mistakes sitting around.
other than Phoenix framework maybe are there any others with as much included as laravel has? caching, jobs, docker via sail, authentication and authorization, one command to have a full multi team/tenant SaaS app template via jet stream. even rails doesn't have this, as you need to choose your own implementation for auth and access control, something like sidekick for job queue etc.... plus the ecosystem. I've tried…