301–310 of 468 posts
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…
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…
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I used to believe this, but... But that's just not true. All the things you mentioned are a yum/apt/nix/pacman/ install away on Linux, and probably as simple to install on macOS. I'm sure Windows has installers for these, too. So, it's no harder to develop in them than it is in PHP. You could argue it's cheaper because you don't have to pay for a shared hosting provider to host your files. However that's a bit moot s…
I went on a rant, but didn't mean to. I don't have anything against PHP, it's got a valuable and relevant place on the the web. It's important to many people, and like you said you find it fun, which I think is important for our productivity as devs. However, I think this recurring misconceptions how easy PHP is to develop in needs to stop. PHP comes with a lot of complexities. Worst kind of complexity to learn: hidd…
What's been useful about PHP (and many other stacks) is that the good ideas from other worlds usually get assimilated in over time. PHP is not always at the bleeding edge with respect to language development, but that's just fine. The PHP ecosystems often adopt/adapt useful ideas/techniques from other ecosystems relatively rapidly, and that's just fine too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to believe this, but... But that's just not true. All the things you mentioned are a yum/apt/nix/pacman/ install away on Linux, and probably as simple to install on macOS. I'm sure Windows has installers for these, too. So, it's no harder to develop in them than it is in PHP. You could argue it's cheaper because you don't have to pay for a shared hosting provider to host your files. However that's a bit moot s…
If you don’t manage your own servers I don’t think you can call yourself a professional developer. “My hosting provider doesn’t let me do X” is a lame excuse with cloud servers in the $10/mo range. I do a lot of work with PHP, both legacy and new code. The number one mistake I see with PHP sites set up by amateurs or cheap hosting services is running Apache+PHP on the same server as MySQL or Postgres. Separate those…
You can't know everything. Programming is about abstraction; so abstracting away devops is a feature (in some contexts), lack of that is a downside (in some contexts).
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.
For people of a certain age and job history, the worst code they've ever inherited was written in PHP. I think JS can be worse. There are things that are possible with dynamic languages that are literally impossible with static ones. So think of PHP less as a "bad language" and more of a code smell.
Surely that depends on when the PHP in question was originally written.
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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don’t manage your own servers I don’t think you can call yourself a professional developer. “My hosting provider doesn’t let me do X” is a lame excuse with cloud servers in the $10/mo range. I do a lot of work with PHP, both legacy and new code. The number one mistake I see with PHP sites set up by amateurs or cheap hosting services is running Apache+PHP on the same server as MySQL or Postgres. Separate those…
This is the classic "everyone who does not know how to X is not a real Y". Every single software dev can make such a list. Very few reflect on the fact that no two of those lists look the same. You can't know everything. Programming is about abstraction; so abstracting away devops is a feature (in some contexts), lack of that is a downside (in some contexts).
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My favorite thing about PHP is the execution model. Every single request is brand new and runs the whole program start to finish. IMO that's extremely powerful in its simplicity and while you can get it in other languages, it feels like like a "core competency" for PHP (just like how async code is easier in javascript than in python, because JS kind of had it from day 1)
Forgive me for going a little off topic here but is it really true that JS was async-friendly from day 1? When I started using JS seriously 8 years ago, async code was horrible (callback hell, etc.) The web standards guys retrofitted native async way after the matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite thing about PHP is the execution model. Every single request is brand new and runs the whole program start to finish. IMO that's extremely powerful in its simplicity and while you can get it in other languages, it feels like like a "core competency" for PHP (just like how async code is easier in javascript than in python, because JS kind of had it from day 1)
Forgive me for going a little off topic here but is it really true that JS was async-friendly from day 1? When I started using JS seriously 8 years ago, async code was horrible (callback hell, etc.) The web standards guys retrofitted native async way after the matter.
The original promises syntax and chaining in ES6 were not particularly user friendly.