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PHP needs a vision

news.php.net

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41–50 of 182 posts

Re: PHP needs a vision

#41

Post by lucasmullens »

verelo wrote: post #38

Some of the statements there such as this really disappoint me. "PHP is what people use to get their first site off the ground. PHP is what a web designer learns when he/she wants to go into programming. PHP is what a random Joe uses when he needs to whip up a page and he's in "do it yourself" mind." PHP is a great language in that its very flexible and quick to get going with, the sad thing is people don't want it t…

Facebook hates PHP, but it would be too expensive to convert their 3 million lines of code. They just use HipHop to compile it to C++.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#42

Post by pavel_lishin »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #21
jtreminio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty, non-contributing comments like yours that appear in every single thread about PHP on HN need to stop being posted. Not sorry, I mean it. Stop.

It's not an "empty, non-contributing comment" to those of us who have had to use PHP, especially after years of using far better languages. It rings especially true to us who have seen the horror systems implemented in PHP can be.

I'm one of the "us" you mention, and in fact I'm still working with PHP.

The comment added nothing to the discussion, and was still useless. I'm aware of the drawbacks of PHP. I look forward to a day when I'm no longer using it on a daily basis. But Tichy's comment added nothing to this discussion.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#43

Post by sauravc »

cies wrote: post #11
h2s wrote: post #5

That closing appeal to deal with the abusiveness of the php.internals list fell a little flat given the opening statement of "shut up". I loved Rasmus' answer to this though. http://news.php.net/php.internals/64771 > The vision has been the same for years. A general purpose scripting > language with a focus on web development. You are simply saying you want > the vision to be more specific than that because everyone…

Personally I find nothing much 'general purpose' about PHP. The language has configuration files! That alone prohibits me from doing anything generic with it. So all that's left for me is 'focus on web development'. And to be honest: I think today it is not even so good at that. We have server side JS (Node), Ruby, Python and Java -- all freely available with huge communities. Does PHP stack up against these today? I…

"I find nothing" is a fairly strong statement. There are plenty of general purpose scripts one can write in PHP. Also config files don't preclude 'general purpose'. For example, run anything in Java and you'll find out there are plenty of defaults running on the JVM that you can override. Yet no one would argue Java isn't a general purpose language. The fact that PHP keeps these defaults in a file is inconsequential.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#44

Post by pavel_lishin »

Tichy wrote: post #37
memla wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some value in comments like yours. It brings to light just how many of these PHP bashing statements are biased and uninformed knee-jerk reactions, and therefore, should not be taken seriously by any rational person.

How do my comments reveal how informed I am? You know nothing about my experiences with PHP. Anyway, don't bother - I'll let you own your little PHP discussion now, moving on. My comments on HN won't stop the calamity anyway.

Your original comment revealed nothing. I think that's probably why it was downvoted.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#45

Post by cowboyhero »

cies wrote: post #11
h2s wrote: post #5

That closing appeal to deal with the abusiveness of the php.internals list fell a little flat given the opening statement of "shut up". I loved Rasmus' answer to this though. http://news.php.net/php.internals/64771 > The vision has been the same for years. A general purpose scripting > language with a focus on web development. You are simply saying you want > the vision to be more specific than that because everyone…

Personally I find nothing much 'general purpose' about PHP. The language has configuration files! That alone prohibits me from doing anything generic with it. So all that's left for me is 'focus on web development'. And to be honest: I think today it is not even so good at that. We have server side JS (Node), Ruby, Python and Java -- all freely available with huge communities. Does PHP stack up against these today? I…

> We have server side JS (Node), Ruby, Python and Java --

Hey now. Let's not forget everyone's first love: Perl. :D

It's still quietly running quite a few big sites out there, and is currently enjoying something of a renaissance with frameworks like Mojolicious & Dancer, not to mention the releases of 5.10-5.16.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#46

Post by VMG »

spdy wrote: post #18
herge wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python has often been called an easy to learn language and a good first start because it tries to be easy to read. Does that mean that it is also a beginner's language that people eventually are supposed to move on from?

People who pickup Python will always stay and never move on completely. My programming carear startet with perl -> php -> python and i found one holy grail to solve most of my problems. Python had an easy entry point the same as PHP but when you jumped over the first learning curve and discovered the complete ecosystem it`s mindblowing. I never had that feeling with PHP you could do websites and thats it. And most of…

I picked up Python and am now using Node/CoffeScript for web dev. I'll probably transition to Clojure in the future and I'll try Haskell after that.

> PHP will slowly phase out over the next decade.

Wanna bet on it?

Re: PHP needs a vision

#47

Post by VMG »

nikic wrote: post #22
cies wrote: post #2

Too late if you ask me, let me explain: Programming languages are hard to change, very hard, because it will certainly break programs written in it in many places. So if you want a programming language with a vision you should start with it, or simply accept it has no vision and it merely goes with the whim of its maintainers. The latter is what I believe happened to PHP. No biggy, there are plenty of languages that…

PHP has changed a lot over time. It moved from a C-style procedural language to very Java-esque object oriented language. "PHP" hasn't been "PHP" for a long time already. It's always hard to do large language changes, but it's not impossible. E.g. consider the change that PHP did from version 4 to 5. That was a pretty major paradigm shift, with lots of broken code, but it worked out well in the end :)

> PHP has changed a lot over time.

Mostly in the way that stuff was added.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#48

Post by cowboyhero »

spdy wrote: post #18
herge wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python has often been called an easy to learn language and a good first start because it tries to be easy to read. Does that mean that it is also a beginner's language that people eventually are supposed to move on from?

People who pickup Python will always stay and never move on completely. My programming carear startet with perl -> php -> python and i found one holy grail to solve most of my problems. Python had an easy entry point the same as PHP but when you jumped over the first learning curve and discovered the complete ecosystem it`s mindblowing. I never had that feeling with PHP you could do websites and thats it. And most of…

> PHP will slowly phase out over the next decade.

Wordpress.

It's become a full blown CMS and its own platform. Half the media sites out there are running it, or hosting with Wordpress Pro. Then there's a horde of casual bloggers managing their own installs.

Granted, there's movement away from this kind of publishing model(Facebook, Twitter, G+), but as long as Wordpress is still the go to, "set it and forget it" app on $5 webhosts, PHP will not die.

Re: PHP needs a vision

#50

Post by olleicua »

I think this may be too optimistic. It seems to me that PHP's lack of vision has already made it a horrifically bad language. The problem is not that it tries to do OO while also not really trying to do OO (don't get me wrong though, that is a problem). The problem is that it tries to do OO like Java. Get with the times and learn Ruby already.
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