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

221–230 of 468 posts

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#221

Post by pjmlp »

nicoburns wrote: post #219
pjmlp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compo…

> 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. That's true, but as a beginner I feel like starting with Rust is a lot more accessible, and could help someone switch into C++ later.

That I can fully agree on, after all it was learning systems programming via BASIC and Turbo Pascal, that made me adopt best practices in C and C++ from the get go.

So from that point of view, learning about lifetimes, modular code, and that bounds checking isn't evil are already good education stepping stones.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#222

Post by makeitdouble »

nick0garvey wrote: post #134
juxtapose wrote: post #68

Hmmm... Most points in this article are shouting "yeah we have those too!!" but it didn't give any convincing arguments why I (or anybody who doesn't already know PHP) would like to learn and use PHP over other decent modern languages and ecosystems, which happen to have those points as well.

The best part of PHP is the development model. You copy some files to a server, and load the page. That's it. It is really hard to beat how easy it is to iterate, even if the language is truly terrible.

That ship has sailed a long time ago (or you're just playing around and most languages will have a REPL nowadays)

Modern PHP wears a business suit and wants to buddy the "big boys" (Java/C#) of the world. You'll have deployment pipelines, strong push towards classic OOP, strict type checking etc.

I personally think ruby for instance is leaner in its dev process in most real world projects.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#223

Post by nicoburns »

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…

> If someone is new to software development and in an area of the world where it's not mostly PHP shops, so bigger cities

In Europe there is a lot of PHP. Even in the bigger cities. And as someone who knows a lot of different programming languages, modern PHP with Laravel is pretty hard to compete with on a productivity basis.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#224

Post by theov »

skinkestek wrote: post #168
nick0garvey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part of PHP is the development model. You copy some files to a server, and load the page. That's it. It is really hard to beat how easy it is to iterate, even if the language is truly terrible.

I have seen people deploy php this way but I'm not aware of anyone who'd do it today. Locally however it is save, alt-tab, ctrl-r and immediately you see the result. Absolutely no waiting. These days I rather use Quarkus for this but until Quarkus arrived this was a huge advantage that PHP had over every other language and framework I was aware of. Also the documentation was fantastic compared to most of the stuff I…

I use PHP this way and I think it's great :)

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#225

Post by nicoburns »

mikl wrote: post #13
Uehreka wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP. You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go? Hell no. You hire someon…

> Do you write that site in Go? Yes! https://gohugo.io/ would be a great choice for that kind of thing.

That would likely then require a developer to update the content. Not ideal for a marketing website.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#226

Post by makeitdouble »

ammmir wrote: post #163

Most arguments against PHP miss the point. You know why you should use PHP? Because it's fun and you can get something running much quicker than figuring out the Elixir, Ruby, Rust, whatever ecosystem and paradigm. Maybe PHP is not so good at WebSockets or async worker threads, but most projects don't need that. There's no shame in doing long polling, users can't tell the difference anyway! PHP shines when you're try…

You mention it in passing, how much ruby on rails experience have you ?

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#228

Post by herbst »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #220
skinkestek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen people deploy php this way but I'm not aware of anyone who'd do it today. Locally however it is save, alt-tab, ctrl-r and immediately you see the result. Absolutely no waiting. These days I rather use Quarkus for this but until Quarkus arrived this was a huge advantage that PHP had over every other language and framework I was aware of. Also the documentation was fantastic compared to most of the stuff I…

I deploy with a git pull Which I suppose is just a fancy way of a copying files to the server.

Same. And git doesn't care if I add a build process or not, or which language I am pushing.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#229

Post by herbst »

MattGaiser wrote: post #127
kkarpkkarp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me the biggest advantage is the size of the market. I know Python and PHP quite decent but I've never found any quick job (or long time job) for my Python skills. For PHP I have to convey some of jobs to others, I am getting so much of them (I even run some job advertisement site only for the purpose to redirect people pinging me with offers, really). But maybe this is just me.

Good jobs though? Lots of PHP jobs in Canada, but the salary is nearly universally always laughably low.

Same here in Switzerland. And other than working on actual modern PHP these jobs are usually maintaining old software with weird custom scripting languages like typoscript xsml ...

I'd consider a PHP job, but only if they quarantee they don't have any of those legacy maintaining things lying around.

Re: PHP is worth learning and using

#230

Post by chinathrow »

makeitdouble wrote: post #222
nick0garvey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part of PHP is the development model. You copy some files to a server, and load the page. That's it. It is really hard to beat how easy it is to iterate, even if the language is truly terrible.

That ship has sailed a long time ago (or you're just playing around and most languages will have a REPL nowadays) Modern PHP wears a business suit and wants to buddy the "big boys" (Java/C#) of the world. You'll have deployment pipelines, strong push towards classic OOP, strict type checking etc. I personally think ruby for instance is leaner in its dev process in most real world projects.

OP is correct, you still can develop like this with PHP, and no the ship has not sailed for many.

You can have deployment pipelines etc, but if you like, you can still develop the ancient way - it still works.

Post reply on HN