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PHP is worth learning and using

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Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#201

Post by rambambram »

cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #42

I don't really understand the reasons for using PHP outside of that people are already familiar with it and like working with it or want to find jobs in that area. If someone is new to software development and in an area of the world where it's not mostly PHP shops, so bigger cities, I don't really understand the benefit. PHP is often used to do certain things or it may be faster for you to whip something up in Larav…

Not a completely fair comparison. Then at least also tell readers that the 'old cars' you talk about are not in the museum or on the junkyard, but make up half of all the active cars on the road. That's not nostalgia.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#202

Post by mhio »

Uehreka wrote: post #132
mhio wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat related, what's the Go laravel/rails/django equivalent?

There's Hugo (mentioned elsewhere ITT) and I hear it's pretty good. If I were making my own personal site that I was going to spend a lot of time on and I was more into Go than I am (I like Go but prefer Node.js) I'd totally use it. But if you need a site spun up for something and it's not the main focus of your business, shooting for the middle of the market makes a lot of sense. Wordpress is super easy to set up an…

Hugo is a static site generator, it's like jekyll or pelican.

I was more thinking if you want to build an interactive site, what is the go to Go web framework?

Along the same lines with the Wordpress example, I'd choose Ghost for that as I come from the JS end of the spectrum also. I wonder what the Go based options are here? If I ran a Go shop I'd probably lean towards that (unless, of course, they're all horrible :)

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#203

Post by joelbluminator »

solraph wrote: post #166
joelbluminator wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best since everyone is thinking along the same lines Javascript/Python/Go developers are quickly becoming a commodity; e.g there are millions or tens of millions of developers who learn them as their 1st language (many of them are now hirable remotely). Just worth noting I think...

From brutal experience I can tell you that's also been true for PHP programmers for a long time.

Maybe still. But I'm pretty sure 5-10 years from now PHP devs will be in demand since everyone is moving to Node/Go/Other Hype.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#204

Post by Master_Odin »

rp1 wrote: post #43
brandon272 wrote: post #14

I have used PHP for years. Like it. Have accomplished some nice things with it. Think it's evolved nicely in recent years. Feel it's a great tool for particular problems. Will continue to use it. Will always be open to alternatives. Will never understand why some people find that so offensive and will tell you that you mustn't use it or imply that you are ignorant or stupid for using it.

I haven’t used PHP in over a decade. I can never forgot how much PHP got wrong in terms of how application development on the internet would happen. The ergonomics of using it were just… bad compared to other frameworks that came on the market. I remember when rails came out and it was so mind blowing compared to PHP. The language was certainly useful for a time, and I’m sure the language has progressed since, but sw…

Comparing Rails to PHP is unfair given that one is a framework and one is a programming language. Compare PHP and Ruby or Rails and Laravel to keep things apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#205

Post by motogpjimbo »

rp1 wrote: post #43
brandon272 wrote: post #14

I have used PHP for years. Like it. Have accomplished some nice things with it. Think it's evolved nicely in recent years. Feel it's a great tool for particular problems. Will continue to use it. Will always be open to alternatives. Will never understand why some people find that so offensive and will tell you that you mustn't use it or imply that you are ignorant or stupid for using it.

I haven’t used PHP in over a decade. I can never forgot how much PHP got wrong in terms of how application development on the internet would happen. The ergonomics of using it were just… bad compared to other frameworks that came on the market. I remember when rails came out and it was so mind blowing compared to PHP. The language was certainly useful for a time, and I’m sure the language has progressed since, but sw…

I'd be interested to know what you think PHP got wrong with respect to web development? The majority of the web is running on PHP to this day, so at least in terms of popularity it seems people don't feel this way generally. Furthermore, if one were philosophically-minded, it could be argued that PHP's "shared nothing/one thread per page" execution model is the very quintessence of HTTP.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#206

Post by NorwegianDude »

skinkestek wrote: post #169
pdimitar wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Elixir has transparent parallelism and trivially scales to 2000 reqs/second on a $5 VPS even though it's a dynamic language, oh and because it has LiveView which eliminates the need for most of the JS in a project (if latency isn't critical), so now a backender can take care of 100% of a web project. I worked with PHP 9-10 years ago. Still not impressed to this day. Why should I use it? Terrible type coercion…

I haven't worked in PHP for years but 2000request/second doesn't sound unreasonable for PHP either? And that with a language that everyone can use.

2k requests might range from nothing to to hard, depending on what the page does.

A simple PHP page 10 years ago on a low-end server using mod_php could do 100k+ rps. Add more logic to it and performance will decrease.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#207

Post by skinkestek »

pdimitar wrote: post #175
skinkestek wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't worked in PHP for years but 2000request/second doesn't sound unreasonable for PHP either? And that with a language that everyone can use.

All languages can be used by everyone.

That is probably false for all practical values of "used".

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#208

Post by pdimitar »

heurisko wrote: post #187
pdimitar wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

None of what you enumerate is game-breaking, at least in a chunk of the programming area. You seem to be referring to an area where people pay pennies + have almost zero programming experience so they want to launch a project with clicks.

Sure. In that area PHP still more or less dominates. But I thought we were discussing the actual programming?

> I thought you were asking a question.

That's exactly why I said what you quoted me on: to reassert that I am looking for a good answer on "what does PHP do better" and I am not in fact seeking to change hearts per se.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#209

Post by pjmlp »

echelon wrote: post #119
brandon272 wrote: post #14

I have used PHP for years. Like it. Have accomplished some nice things with it. Think it's evolved nicely in recent years. Feel it's a great tool for particular problems. Will continue to use it. Will always be open to alternatives. Will never understand why some people find that so offensive and will tell you that you mustn't use it or imply that you are ignorant or stupid for using it.

Here's a choose your own adventure for people new to the field. Pick something you want to build, then see which languages are the best suited. If you want to build several things, see which languages are the most recurring and versatile: - Web frontend: Javascript/TypeScript - Web backend: Javascript/TypeScript, Python - Performant backend (where you manage threads and queues): Go, Java, Rust - Machine learning: Pyt…

Rust is great, but if one is looking for a job in systems programming, C and C++ is what gets one hired, regardless of their flaws.

Recent example, while Android has adopted Rust for replacing their bluetooth stack, the newly introduced Android Games Development SDK focus on C and C++.

Or Microsoft, despite all their security speech, Azure Sphere OS and RTOS only support C on the official SDK, and the new WinUI components are all based on C++.

And naturally anyone wanting to contribute to the Rust compilers, most likely will need to brush up their C++ skills if they intend to mess with GCC or LLVM internals.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#210

Post by mickael-kerjean »

echelon wrote: post #78
wly_cdgr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are y'all arguing about this when you already learned like 20% of php by reading the OP. Learning enough of a high level scripting language like php to be able to be useful and productive in it is not some huge time sink, it's a few dozen hours of reading docs and tinkering

Opportunity cost. Those "few dozen hours" reading PHP docs and tinkering could also be used to learn Python, Ruby, or Javascript, each of which are almost certainly better choices with broader applicability and more modern ergonomics. Python gets you web backend + ML, Javascript gets you web backend + web frontend. Ruby gets you a multi-paradigm language with nice ergonomics and cats. PHP gets you job offers customiz…

> PHP has a lot of incredibly compelling alternatives

There's no alternative to dropping a file on a LAMP server that goes with almost 0 maintenance for price that goes to almost 0 with 0 downtime whenever you make a change.

PHP is my tool of choice whenever I need to create an simple endpoint but don't want to deal with the hassle of running and monitor a full blown application. At best, the alternative to that is AWS Lambda but that's a wall garden in itself

> then you could choose to pick up ..... better to have a new kind of tool in your belt than a second hammer.

Different tools for different job

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