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Announcing a specification for PHP

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Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#181

Post by [deleted] »

colordrops wrote: post #177
randomdrake wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only real reasonless difference is string functions are haystack / needle, whereas array functions are needle / haystack There's a trick to this that isn't too hard to remember. Searching for a value in an array is much more akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. So, for array functions, it's like searching for a needle in a haystack. For string functions, you're searching in a haystack for a needle. I'm…

> searching for a needle in a haystack > searching in a haystack for a needle wait, what's the difference?

[deleted]

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#182

Post by adamors »

DigitalSea wrote: post #166
Gigablah wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The even more surprising aspect of Laravel isn't how great it is, but rather the fact it was built by one guy ... using mostly 3rd party components, the majority from Symfony. So no, it's not "built by one guy".

Irrespective of the fact that Laravel is made up from some Symfony components, before Laravel came along no other framework (not even Symfony) managed to turn the tide. Zend was seen as this mammoth framework not targeted at the mainstream, Codeigniter was at a cross-roads losing prominent developers in the community and lacking in features (PHP 4 support as well). The issue with Symfony is that it is inaccessible, I…

PHP was always stupid easy to use (and abuse), the fact that Laravel is another easy framework doesn't turn any tides. The actual tide was turned by Symfony2 which was the first well architected, well designed PHP framework when it came out in 2011. Since then a mature, knowledgeable community created a lot of great components.

Laravel on the other hand is exactly where Codeiginiter was: easy to pick up, and easy to write crap code in. The whole Facade nonsense is already being abused to no end, not to mention the ORM, Eloquent. Similarly to CI, if you want to do something remotely advanced with it, you end up reading the code constantly, because the "great" 10 page documentation is only for absolute beginners.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#184

Post by Kiro »

chatmasta wrote: post #172
teh_klev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

This was a much more compelling argument when shared hosting was still cheaper than a VPS with root access. But now you can get a VPS from any slew of providers, like digitalocean, for $5 a month. Root access computing has never been more accessible, and shared hosting is rapidly losing any value proposition it once had. So targeting PHP purely because it's more ubiquitous on shared hosting than Rails, is making less…

I don't want root access. I want to sign up, upload my files through FTP and have it working instantly without having to worry about anything else.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#185

Post by chatmasta »

Kiro wrote: post #184
chatmasta wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a much more compelling argument when shared hosting was still cheaper than a VPS with root access. But now you can get a VPS from any slew of providers, like digitalocean, for $5 a month. Root access computing has never been more accessible, and shared hosting is rapidly losing any value proposition it once had. So targeting PHP purely because it's more ubiquitous on shared hosting than Rails, is making less…

I don't want root access. I want to sign up, upload my files through FTP and have it working instantly without having to worry about anything else.

... which you can also do on platforms like digitalocean. Just spin up a preconfigured dokku droplet and git push.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#186

Post by adamors »

hrktb wrote: post #94
wiremine wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's changed a lot since I first used it. Have any good examples? I haven't used the language in years, would love to see what "modern" PHP looks like. (Seriously, not trolling at all)

Apart from the language in itself, the ecosystem has matured leaps and bounds. Symfony is the poster child of the new frameworks: easy to use, flexible and powerful. I haven't used rails but I heard it's going the same direction. Sometimes I feel we're getting too close to Java territory in terms of abstraction and reliance on libraries, but that would also be a sign of maturity.

Symfony2 is definitely not going in the direction of Rails. It was and will be Rails' opposite: built around a dependency injection container, favors configuration over convention and uses as little magic as possible.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#187

Post by surreal »

chatmasta wrote: post #172
teh_klev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

This was a much more compelling argument when shared hosting was still cheaper than a VPS with root access. But now you can get a VPS from any slew of providers, like digitalocean, for $5 a month. Root access computing has never been more accessible, and shared hosting is rapidly losing any value proposition it once had. So targeting PHP purely because it's more ubiquitous on shared hosting than Rails, is making less…

That's still $60 a year, which is at least double the price of a simple reliable shared hosting package. The shared hosting has other conveniences too. I'm not saying it's without downsides, but there are cases for choosing it, and therefore for choosing PHP.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#188

Post by lambada »

59nadir wrote: post #180
maaaats wrote: post #23

After recently having to work with modern PHP, I have to say a lot of the criticism of the language is unfounded. It's changed a lot since I first used it. But the stdlib is still hard to manage. Different naming conventions, different order on the parameters for functions that do almost the same thing, and every function is global. Couldn't they keep all that for backwards compatibility, but create more sane wrapper…

> After recently having to work with modern PHP, I have to say a lot of the criticism of the language is unfounded. It's changed a lot since I first used it. Criticism doesn't become unfounded because things become better. Things become better because of criticism.

But if things have got better, then perhaps the criticism is no longer valid? Criticism leads to things getting better which leads to the (original) criticism having been resolved and no longer applicable to the current versions.

(I'm not going to weigh in on whether any of the criticisms have been resolved in PHPs case specifically, as I've been away from PHP long enough to not be able to talk on any problems with the current language)

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#189

Post by dspillett »

lambada wrote: post #188
59nadir wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After recently having to work with modern PHP, I have to say a lot of the criticism of the language is unfounded. It's changed a lot since I first used it. Criticism doesn't become unfounded because things become better. Things become better because of criticism.

But if things have got better, then perhaps the criticism is no longer valid? Criticism leads to things getting better which leads to the (original) criticism having been resolved and no longer applicable to the current versions. (I'm not going to weigh in on whether any of the criticisms have been resolved in PHPs case specifically, as I've been away from PHP long enough to not be able to talk on any problems with t…

> But if things have got better, then perhaps the criticism is no longer valid?

Part of that is due to the share amount of code out there doing things bad ways that were almost encouraged years ago, and tutorials still out there teaching people to do things the old less good ways.

Of course a lot of it is people who haven't touched the language for many years (such as myself) who are at this point a lot less informed than they think they are!

Another issue is that the new frameworks seem to get the positive news, not the core. The language use to describe PHP related libs/frameworks is different in my experience which makes a perception difference: PHP frameworks are often referred to as "making PHP behave" or "removing the cruft from your workflow" where frameworks for other platforms would be described as "helping you make the most of " and "increasing your efficiency".

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#190

Post by Dewie »

jasonlotito wrote: post #157
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.

2522 days here. He's pretty much spot on. You, however, with your trivial sub-500 day membership, don't understand why calling out such things are immature and not welcomed here on HN. Seriously, calling people out merely for their account age? Really? You really think that's a valued contribution? I mean, your comment amounts to nothing more than a weakly flung insult.

Really? Seriously!? Really? You're hard-hitting reply makes me feel filled with shame. I repent!
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