Taking PHP Seriously [pdf]

Post by byroot » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 5:52 AM UTC

jronkone wrote: post #75

jdjb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article explicitly states that the author has found (albeit anecdotally) that good engineers are very very productive in PHP. I've found this myself as long as you don't go writing code that sits in PHP's "hmm, what'll happen if I do this..." area.

AFAICT, "good engineers are productive in X" doesn't imply that they wouldn't be yet more productive in Y.

Post by Pitarou » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 6:02 AM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #14

vinight wrote: post #3

obligatory X is better than php flames on the way.. php just works.. end of story

$productid = "0x4zz5"; print $productid + 4; If printing "8" is your idea of a working interpretation of that code, then PHP is the language for you. If not, then PHP doesn't work. End of story.

    // Javascript
    console.log(+(+!![]+(+[]+[]))); // outputs the number 10

    // C, Java

    float celsius, fahrenheit1, fahrenheit2;
    celsius = 100;

    fahrenheit1 = celsius * 9 / 5 + 32;
    fahrenheit2 = 9 / 5 * celsius + 32;

    assert(fahrenheit1 == 212); // OK
    assert(fahrenheit2 == 212); // Oops!  It's 132.  What happened?

Post by kayoone » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 6:34 AM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #52

workhere-io wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could not get php to work for them short of rewriting the core (HPHP ) I've heard this argument before, but it's important to realize that Facebook was able to use standard PHP up until the point when they had roughly 500 million users. Unless your site has a half billion users you can't compare your use case to Facebook's.

They're making three sorts of changes: 1) removing/restricting the footguns in the language 2) adding interesting features taken from other languages (typing, traits, etc). 3) creating a new VM with better performance. As far as I can tell, only 3 is obviously something that only affects whether you can use the language once you have a certain number of users. The first two are really about changing the language.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 6:39 AM UTC

badclient wrote: post #35

Most of the criticism of php seems to contrast it with a language plus a framework. If you really want to compare, compare php with ruby or python, not Django or RoR. As for php encouraging shitty programming, a good bit of that is that so many more people program in php because its easier to get started with. This does not mean that just because php attracts shitty programmers that it doesn't have more or many aweso…

Post by Kiro » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 6:45 AM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #14

vinight wrote: post #3

obligatory X is better than php flames on the way.. php just works.. end of story

$productid = "0x4zz5"; print $productid + 4; If printing "8" is your idea of a working interpretation of that code, then PHP is the language for you. If not, then PHP doesn't work. End of story.