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Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

slack.engineering

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Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#51

Post by paxys »

munk-a wrote: post #26
paxys wrote: post #18

The best language for a startup is one the founders know the best. Every other discussion will at best make a 1% difference.

Close I think - the best language to use is the one you will have the easiest time hiring good talent for. If you found a startup and all really love and are fluent in COBOL that's great but... good luck when it comes time to hire another employee.

If you have a good product new engineers will learn whatever language it is in. This very article is a perfect example. I'm sure Slack isn't hiring kids out of college with extensive PHP experience.

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#54

Post by pentium166 »

zug_zug wrote: post #11
apeace wrote: post #6

So the entire argument is that PHP is single threaded and each request starts with no state? Am I missing anything else? I’m trying so hard not to rant here, so I just wanted to confirm that those are the only positives he outlines about the language.

IMO it's such a good thing about PHP that I think other stacks should follow that model (I assume ROR does). I think it's a superior model to the long-running application. Unless your company has 0 developers in it who make a memory leak, or make a fatal uncaught exception.

Ruby on Rails lives inside a long-running application server. In development, it has dynamic class loading and will reload on file changes, but in production an app can have a lengthy startup time. It does have the memory problem, but I have never seen the server crash outright as a result of an exception while handling a request.

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#55

Post by okareaman »

I've used a lot of PHP in my life and now feel Go is better suited for my needs. My gut tells me Go libs are written by professionals, while there is a ton of PHP code written by amateurs to contend with. I'll know more once I get further into Go.

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#56

Post by throw_m239339 »

latenightcoding wrote: post #46

Somewhat unrelated comment, but the fact that PHP got so good and most people are still not willing to give it a second chance goes to show how hard it is for a language to regain market share after people left for greener pastures.

> Somewhat unrelated comment, but the fact that PHP got so good and most people are still not willing to give it a second chance goes to show how hard it is for a language to regain market share after people left for greener pastures.

I guess some of the reasons why some devs would not chose PHP (horrid syntax, std lib mess, stupid error reporting system, language inconsistencies, the very existance of php.ini, overreliance on C extensions for speed ...), haven't changed. As companies move to single page applications backed by javascript and REST API, PHP CGI style classic execution model provides no advantage, when it comes to generating or serving web content.

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#57

Post by [deleted] »

ransom1538 wrote: post #22

Long live PHP. 15 years of PHP dev work. Games, mobile apps, health care, etc. I have been unemployed for 2 days in 15 years. PHP runs %80 of the internet. Talk to anyone at facebook that wears a suit on friday -- they code PHP (and it seems to scale for them). I think I will be 90 years old hacking on PHP.If you really don't like how the arguments are passed just use an IDE. Or get stuck with real problems like a tr…

[deleted]

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#58

Post by meritt »

blibble wrote: post #13

how's PHP's websocket support? presumably if it's a thread per websocket then they're using something else to serve that?

Swoole (module) is extremely performant in anything networking, including as a websocket server. There are other php-only options (amphp/websocket-server, ratchetphp/Ratchet) but if performance is your need, stick with swoole.

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#59

Post by spacemanmatt »

paxys wrote: post #18

The best language for a startup is one the founders know the best. Every other discussion will at best make a 1% difference.

I espoused this sort of rhetoric until I worked at a PHP shop. Every other discussion was about problems posed by the shortcomings of the language, crossed with mistakes made by past staff. It's so easy to make assumptions about "good actors" and "reasonable developers" that just fly out the window with a team that picks PHP and/or doesn't know much else.

Re: Taking PHP Seriously (2016)

#60

Post by i_like_to_post »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #56
latenightcoding wrote: post #46

Somewhat unrelated comment, but the fact that PHP got so good and most people are still not willing to give it a second chance goes to show how hard it is for a language to regain market share after people left for greener pastures.

> Somewhat unrelated comment, but the fact that PHP got so good and most people are still not willing to give it a second chance goes to show how hard it is for a language to regain market share after people left for greener pastures. I guess some of the reasons why some devs would not chose PHP (horrid syntax, std lib mess, stupid error reporting system, language inconsistencies, the very existance of php.ini, overr…

> As companies move to single page applications backed by javascript and REST API, PHP CGI style classic execution model provides no advantage, when it comes to generating or serving web content

I lol'd.

SPAs are a fad. Apps that rely heavily on REST API and browser rendering rank terribly on Google.

Create a SPA and help your customers discover your competitor on the first page of Google.

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