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PHP Addiction

marco.org

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Re: PHP Addiction

#21

Post by alxp »

sho_hn wrote: post #13

That's one of the problems with the now-famous Fractal blog, I think: It was a joy to read in the sense that being a Python programmer, it only heightened my appreciation of the achievement that languages like Python and Ruby represent. It's what conscious, determined design gets you and what mistakes they managed to avoid. But it's preaching to the choir. If you've never seen anything other than PHP, you won't under…

Most PHP developers don't start their first programming project from scratch using PHP to write their first web app. It's far more common to start because you are running a blog on WordPress and you want to make some small change. Then you make another and another, then you're writing plugins and suddenly you're a programmer and PHP is your language.

So to encourage developers to start with something other than PHP you'll need to lower the barrier to entry to modifying existing software, and also make something as popular and widely useful as WordPress and MediaWiki.

This is going to take a while.

Re: PHP Addiction

#22

Post by danso »

I hadn't heard of his Second Crack project until reading this post...it's a static blogging engine similar to Ruby's Jekyll https://github.com/marcoarment/secondcrack

I know it's difficult to compare or find an observer who could adequately judge between the two, but I wonder if Ruby made Jekyll easier to write and maintain? Of course, there's not any easy way to make that judgment without knowing how much effort Marco put into Second Crack versus what was put into Jekyll.

Re: PHP Addiction

#23

Post by sho_hn »

alxp wrote: post #21
sho_hn wrote: post #13

That's one of the problems with the now-famous Fractal blog, I think: It was a joy to read in the sense that being a Python programmer, it only heightened my appreciation of the achievement that languages like Python and Ruby represent. It's what conscious, determined design gets you and what mistakes they managed to avoid. But it's preaching to the choir. If you've never seen anything other than PHP, you won't under…

Most PHP developers don't start their first programming project from scratch using PHP to write their first web app. It's far more common to start because you are running a blog on WordPress and you want to make some small change. Then you make another and another, then you're writing plugins and suddenly you're a programmer and PHP is your language. So to encourage developers to start with something other than PHP y…

Very true, that's how I started out as well (though neither WordPress or MediaWiki existed back then).

Re: PHP Addiction

#25

Post by ojr »

Tumblr, Wordpress, Facebook, Instapaper, Wikipedia... PHP has a stronghold, an opensource equivalent implementation for each platform would take forever

Re: PHP Addiction

#26

Post by wvenable »

jmduke wrote: post #7

I'll sound like a broken record, but I'm convinced Flask is the perfect transition. It's built for smaller web apps, and rapid prototyping. The system of mapping endpoints to functions is incredibly intuitive -- if you've used Python before, learning Flask is incredibly easy.

The problem is, not all PHP apps are small rapid prototypes. If I'm going to migrate away from PHP, might as well go all in. Does that mean something like Django?

Re: PHP Addiction

#27

Post by bmj »

calinet6 wrote: post #16
xyzzyb wrote: post #14

Disclaimer: I'm a Rails programmer for work and hobby. Interested in learning something that isn't PHP to code your web applications in? Ok. You have a ton of options and this is a very exciting time to be a web developer. Do you want to lean towards stability and proven concepts and work within a full application structure? Look at Django and Rails. Do you want to serve up responses from a simple script without a lo…

Do you want to provide an application that anyone can run and easily deploy on their own server with as little configuration as possible? Oh. I hate PHP as much as anyone (of course), but that's what it does.

I wonder if the better course of action would be to lobby the major hosting providers to include Ruby and/or Python with their base plans. Really, isn't that one thing that keeps PHP chugging along? In the consulting work I've done, my clients already have hosting plans for their website, so if I'm adding a sub-app, or even a new app, trying to convince them (and their IT staff) to manage multiple hosts/plans/etc is off the table.

Re: PHP Addiction

#28

Post by adventureful »

Yeah, I wrote Tumblr in PHP, but I'm eager to abandon it. You know, it's just an easy to use, broken language that you can scale a site to 15 billion page views per month with. I'm sure my next project will need a better language, because it's going to scale to 400 billion page views per month, and PHP just isn't going to cut it.

Hilarious suggestions contained throughout his post.

Re: PHP Addiction

#29

Post by runjake »

How do PHP people handle templating simply?

Edit: Perhaps I worded my question wrong. How do PHP programmers try and keep to DRY (ala layouts and view templates)?

Re: PHP Addiction

#30

Post by myearwood »

Hey Marco, Thank you for writing this . This is exactly the situation I am in right now. I love this post because it does not look down on PHP programmers, it beautifully illustrates the situation we find ourselves in . PHP is quick easy , and convenient . We are so comfortable in our current state that we don't want to adapt to a better alternative .

You have built successful and high profile applications in PHP, thus invalidating the argument that PHP is useless . There may be better alternatives , but we must step out of our comfort zone to embrace them .

This post helped me understand the situation so much better. It does not insult or degrade PHP programmers for their language choice , but it gently suggests that better alternatives exist ,and it is worth the short term pain to explore them .

Thanks again , Marco. You've given me a lot to think about .

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