5 ms·

Please explain why.

by toddan 11y ago

Please explain why.

rplnt 11y ago
Have you ever worked with php? I have only slightly and it was truly horrible. The library is a complete rubbish. You couldn't create worse one if you tried. The language development is bad. Some developers are bad. Many users are bad. Does these points make the language bad? Yes. New features are incoherent and seemingly random, issues pop in and out (and back in) because tests simply fail, there are unexplainable security issues, documentation is bad, and if you look for any help (documentation comments, stackoverflow) you meet the users and their shitty tips. Response to every criticism is "you just need to learn something". Does that make a good language? No. It's precisely what makes it bad. PS: There's a nice subreddit for fun and laughs /r/lolphp - there are continuously new things as the language evolves, so the shittiness is not going away
- marklgr 11y ago
  PHP is the language many people love to hate; I guess some of them like the idea of being able to point the black sheep of web development, so that they can tell "maybe we have some flaws, but at least we're not one of these PHP shops". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_%28psychology%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_%28psychology%29
  - rplnt 11y ago
    > PHP is the language many people love to hate Do you think there's a reason for that? Maybe a direct one? That it's a bad language for example? Why would it need to be anything more complicated than that. So I don't think your guess is accurate. It's simply a bad language on its own. No need to compare it to anything. And I don't think anyone can deny that, no one will honestly say that "php is a good language". You can say it has some good features, or that it's good for certain tasks, or perhaps that it's better.. but that's all.
    - marklgr 11y ago
      To me, it's a so-so language, with some bad parts, some ok. On the plus side, it's easy to pick up, and it gets the job done for many projects. Perhaps it's a bit like the Ikea of programming languages, if you will--no the best of furniture for sure, but when you need a table and some chairs with little efforts, it's nice to have, and they're not horrendous unless you couldn't build them correctly.
      - rplnt 11y ago
        I like the IKEA parallel as IKEA is cheap. So was php (to host), hence the popularity I guess. And as a result of that, there are lots of developers.. and many equals cheap. And the vicious circle continues. Doesn't make it a good language :) (To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck)
        jacquesm 11y ago
        > To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck Ikea sucks. Quite a bit of the furniture is just painted cardboard, the quality is absolutely horrible. It looks ok but 'under the hood' it is terrible. It is throwaway furniture, the very opposite of sustainable.
        rplnt 11y ago
        Cardboard furniture is great for moving. And for some pieces of furniture is perfectly OK (if you can stand the massive look). They do "regular" furniture as well, not sure about its quality though.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        > Cardboard furniture is great for moving. It isn't because moving implies taking stuff apart and putting it back together again. As you'll find after your move screws won't catch any more, some of your furniture will have been compressed (holes in table surfaces? WTF?, yes this actually happened to me less than 3 months ago). Surface finish is 1/10th of a mm so it'll scratch super easy. That's their 'regular' furniture, I'm not sure if they have anything better either. Ikea put a whole raft of companies out of business with cheap and good stuff, once they achieved market dominance they dropped the quality they are selling to something horrific.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Most of your complaints also apply to JavaScript
  - rplnt 11y ago
    Such as? Maybe the part about users, but I don't see anything else (some I don't know to be fair).
- Joeri 11y ago
  The library is C's fault. PHP is basically a scripting language around the standard C library. It's what makes it the fastest non-JIT scripting language, but also what makes it so inconsistent.
  - Retra 11y ago
    It's not really a matter of fault. If being a wrapper around C is a problem, it's a problem PHP designers made, for better or worse. That's not C's fault.
  - theseoafs 11y ago
    So are Lua and Python and Ruby, but they're not "inconsistent".
    - jack9 11y ago
      That's a matter of perspective. Inconsistency is not objective and Lua has PLENTY of warts (46 max upvalues?)
- echelon 11y ago
  Your tone is a little off for HN, but some of your points are good.
sneak 11y ago
http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  Yes, quote a blog post from NEARLY FOUR YEARS AGO that mostly consists of "I don't like the way this thing is so therefore it's wrong" + "This is a problem that was fixed in a later iteration of PHP" to justify why PHP 7 is bad. One thing I like about PHP 7 is that they had an opportunity to say "Fuck BC" and chose to use this version change to obsolete the shitty tutorials that make bad programmers (mysql_*).
  - appleflaxen 11y ago
    Sorry to be dense... what is "BC"?
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      Sorry. "Backwards Compatibility."
- plug 11y ago
  The first thing I did when I arrived on this page was do a page search for 'fractal'. There's always one.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Yep, I generally take it as a "I don't know what I'm talking about so I'll just post this blog post". Every reddit post about PHP outside /r/php ends up with it as well.

Please explain why.

by toddan 11y ago

Please explain why.

rplnt 11y ago

Have you ever worked with php? I have only slightly and it was truly horrible. The library is a complete rubbish. You couldn't create worse one if you tried. The language development is bad. Some developers are bad. Many users are bad. Does these points make the language bad? Yes. New features are incoherent and seemingly random, issues pop in and out (and back in) because tests simply fail, there are unexplainable security issues, documentation is bad, and if you look for any help (documentation comments, stackoverflow) you meet the users and their shitty tips. Response to every criticism is "you just need to learn something". Does that make a good language? No. It's precisely what makes it bad. PS: There's a nice subreddit for fun and laughs /r/lolphp - there are continuously new things as the language evolves, so the shittiness is not going away

marklgr 11y ago
PHP is the language many people love to hate; I guess some of them like the idea of being able to point the black sheep of web development, so that they can tell "maybe we have some flaws, but at least we're not one of these PHP shops". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_%28psychology%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_%28psychology%29
- rplnt 11y ago
  > PHP is the language many people love to hate Do you think there's a reason for that? Maybe a direct one? That it's a bad language for example? Why would it need to be anything more complicated than that. So I don't think your guess is accurate. It's simply a bad language on its own. No need to compare it to anything. And I don't think anyone can deny that, no one will honestly say that "php is a good language". You can say it has some good features, or that it's good for certain tasks, or perhaps that it's better.. but that's all.
  - marklgr 11y ago
    To me, it's a so-so language, with some bad parts, some ok. On the plus side, it's easy to pick up, and it gets the job done for many projects. Perhaps it's a bit like the Ikea of programming languages, if you will--no the best of furniture for sure, but when you need a table and some chairs with little efforts, it's nice to have, and they're not horrendous unless you couldn't build them correctly.
    - rplnt 11y ago
      I like the IKEA parallel as IKEA is cheap. So was php (to host), hence the popularity I guess. And as a result of that, there are lots of developers.. and many equals cheap. And the vicious circle continues. Doesn't make it a good language :) (To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck)
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        > To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck Ikea sucks. Quite a bit of the furniture is just painted cardboard, the quality is absolutely horrible. It looks ok but 'under the hood' it is terrible. It is throwaway furniture, the very opposite of sustainable.
        rplnt 11y ago
        Cardboard furniture is great for moving. And for some pieces of furniture is perfectly OK (if you can stand the massive look). They do "regular" furniture as well, not sure about its quality though.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        > Cardboard furniture is great for moving. It isn't because moving implies taking stuff apart and putting it back together again. As you'll find after your move screws won't catch any more, some of your furniture will have been compressed (holes in table surfaces? WTF?, yes this actually happened to me less than 3 months ago). Surface finish is 1/10th of a mm so it'll scratch super easy. That's their 'regular' furniture, I'm not sure if they have anything better either. Ikea put a whole raft of companies out of business with cheap and good stuff, once they achieved market dominance they dropped the quality they are selling to something horrific.
ams6110 11y ago
Most of your complaints also apply to JavaScript
- rplnt 11y ago
  Such as? Maybe the part about users, but I don't see anything else (some I don't know to be fair).
Joeri 11y ago
The library is C's fault. PHP is basically a scripting language around the standard C library. It's what makes it the fastest non-JIT scripting language, but also what makes it so inconsistent.
- Retra 11y ago
  It's not really a matter of fault. If being a wrapper around C is a problem, it's a problem PHP designers made, for better or worse. That's not C's fault.
- theseoafs 11y ago
  So are Lua and Python and Ruby, but they're not "inconsistent".
  - jack9 11y ago
    That's a matter of perspective. Inconsistency is not objective and Lua has PLENTY of warts (46 max upvalues?)
echelon 11y ago
Your tone is a little off for HN, but some of your points are good.

sneak 11y ago

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

sarciszewski 11y ago
Yes, quote a blog post from NEARLY FOUR YEARS AGO that mostly consists of "I don't like the way this thing is so therefore it's wrong" + "This is a problem that was fixed in a later iteration of PHP" to justify why PHP 7 is bad. One thing I like about PHP 7 is that they had an opportunity to say "Fuck BC" and chose to use this version change to obsolete the shitty tutorials that make bad programmers (mysql_*).
- appleflaxen 11y ago
  Sorry to be dense... what is "BC"?
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    Sorry. "Backwards Compatibility."
plug 11y ago
The first thing I did when I arrived on this page was do a page search for 'fractal'. There's always one.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Yep, I generally take it as a "I don't know what I'm talking about so I'll just post this blog post". Every reddit post about PHP outside /r/php ends up with it as well.