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

181–190 of 468 posts

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#181

Post by yegle »

azophy_2 wrote: post #74
yegle wrote: post #70

For me the main turndown of using PHP is when I need to host the PHP website, php-fpm and Apache+mod_php seem to be the only two options. (FastCGI doesn't even have a proper specification).

swoole is a pretty interesting alternative as it allows asynchronous programming in PHP. roadrunner is a PHP server developed using golang, utilizing goroutines for high performance. both used by Laravel Octane, providing very easy integration with the framework. Other than that, php-fpm & FastCGI allows integration with many interestin webserver including Nginx, Caddy, Lighttpd, etc.

Roadrunner looks cool, thanks for the recommendation!

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#182

Post by moooo99 »

jansommer wrote: post #145
kkarpkkarp wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK what is a good salary in US/Canada, I live in European Union. My salary as WordPress developer is more than 4,5k USD/month and I see job offers with 8k USD as well (still for WP developers, this is my specialization and I know this field the most; I expect for better recognized PHP fields like modern frameworks like Laravel it could be more) And yes, 4,5k USD/month is massively good salary for Europe. On the othe…

I also live in the EU, and 4,5k is not a massively good salary for a programmer in my country (Denmark). This is usually what a junior is paid.

Absolutely agree, 4.5K USD (3,970€) is certainly not a "massively good salary for Europe" although that heavily depends on the country. Here in Germany its about entry level for a CS major

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#183

Post by 0xad »

dagw wrote: post #180

As someone actually did (re)learn PHP (last time I used PHP was PHP4) last year for a gig, I would probably say no. Don't get me wrong, it is a much better language now and Laravel is a great framework. With the two you can no doubt build fantastic applications. But I didn't feel it was 'better' in any way than anything else. With Python, Go, Rust, Elixir, TypeScript etc. I can all point to a thing they do and say "i…

Here's one: If you want your operations to be as easy as they can be (LAMP), go with PHP.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#184

Post by Grumbledour »

dagw wrote: post #180

As someone actually did (re)learn PHP (last time I used PHP was PHP4) last year for a gig, I would probably say no. Don't get me wrong, it is a much better language now and Laravel is a great framework. With the two you can no doubt build fantastic applications. But I didn't feel it was 'better' in any way than anything else. With Python, Go, Rust, Elixir, TypeScript etc. I can all point to a thing they do and say "i…

I always suspect modern php makes the language nicer but actually reduces it's core feature, the ease of use.

Don't get me wrong, I would not like to use older php these days. But just throwing 2 files onto an ftp was always php's biggest strength. It somewhat retains that for "installing" php, which still is often just "copy to server" which makes it really nice for users. But I feel it mostly lost that ease of use for people learning to program.

Now, it is still a solid language considering performance and such. It has proven itself to be. But without the easy way from zero to programmer, I am also not sure it is a better choice than anything else. Especially since it always had so many terrible footguns and at least in my opinion is also atrocious to look at.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#185

Post by kettleballroll »

dagw wrote: post #180

As someone actually did (re)learn PHP (last time I used PHP was PHP4) last year for a gig, I would probably say no. Don't get me wrong, it is a much better language now and Laravel is a great framework. With the two you can no doubt build fantastic applications. But I didn't feel it was 'better' in any way than anything else. With Python, Go, Rust, Elixir, TypeScript etc. I can all point to a thing they do and say "i…

off-topic, but: Go and Rust seem to aim for the same space (system programming), so when is one preferable to the other, in your opinion?

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#186

Post by hagbard_c »

tehbeard wrote: post #148
unobatbayar wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like PHP and still use it today. But never in my life heard PHP is cool. Am I missing something?

They're making a rhetoric against JS style of development... Though I question what they mean by fake compilers...

A compiler translates code from a source language into a target language, normally targeting either physical hardware or some virtual machine. That is not what happens when "compiling" - or more accurately, "transpiling" [1] - JS-related software where what often feels like the JS-related dialect of the day (coffee-, mocha-, type-, tea-, frappucino-, latte-, pilzener-script) is converted into the resident JS dialect, discombobulated through some language feature thingamajig, transmogrified by some other package-combining gizmo (not the same gizmo as you used last week, that is now ancient technology, the new one is sooo much slower^Wbetter and has a snazzy content-less website to prove it), mixed and matched with a bunch of related packages many of which are marked with dire warning about bugs and staleness by the helpful package manager thing (which you had to update before even trying to proceed since the current version was no longer supported even though you're running version 12 and the box stated you needed at least version 9), uglified (as if it wasn't ugly enough already) and zipped up.

Doesn't all that make you long for the days of ./configure --prefix=/somewhere/sane && sudo install -d -o yourusername /somewhere/sane && make install? Just add empscripten to the tool chain and you can do web things with it, sort of...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#187

Post by heurisko »

pdimitar wrote: post #173
heurisko wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're happy with Elixir, just use Elixir. But companies might want to use PHP, because it has a rich ecosystem, which handles corner cases. Chances are, if you want to send out bulk email, or connect to a payment provider, there's going to be a library in PHP that allows you to do that, often with long term support from an agency. A corner-case I recently had was needing to decode an email. There's a function for…

> If you're happy with Elixir, just use Elixir. It's not that I never tried anything else. I got through 8 languages and made what I feel is an informed choice. > Much of this can also be said of the Java ecosystem. And yet, so many programmers and companies moved on from both Java and PHP to other tech and are managing very well. The company I work for has mere 6 backenders and we serve millions of visitors regularl…

You asked

> So tell me again, why should I use PHP? How will it truly help me? What does it do better than everyone else?

I gave some reasons, citing problem domains for which there are stable, supported solutions in PHP. e.g. payment gateways, email handling, and citing the availability of programmers who can support medium bespoke or tailored systems. This isn't an "appeal to statistics" it's a strength about the ecosystem.

Similar to Python having many solutions and libraries built around data science.

> I'm not going to try and convince anyone to stop using PHP or Java.

I thought you were asking a question.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#188

Post by mhio »

jusssi wrote: post #141
Darmody wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you pick any other language instead of PHP for web dev?

Is there now a reliable non-hacky way to do threads or async, to run queries to multiple dbs or backend systems simultaneously in PHP?

Maybe Amp - https://amphp.org/

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#189

Post by omnimus »

jusssi wrote: post #141
Darmody wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you pick any other language instead of PHP for web dev?

Is there now a reliable non-hacky way to do threads or async, to run queries to multiple dbs or backend systems simultaneously in PHP?

Roadrunner or Swoole. Integrated into Laravel as Laravel Octane. Depends what is your definition of hacky.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#190

Post by kettleballroll »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #178
unobatbayar wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like PHP and still use it today. But never in my life heard PHP is cool. Am I missing something?

If people call something "cool" - that's actually a red flag for me.

That sounds fairly childish. Aside from the very obvious fact that you'll miss out on a lot of cool stuff, if you don't agree with the value judgements of your peers, the problem most likely resides with your choice of peers.
Post reply on HN