7 ms·

I think the question is why should you bother with PHP at all? It had its time in the history of the web but that time has passed, long, long ago.

jacquesm 11y ago
What would you use instead and why?
Scarblac 11y ago
Wordpress alone runs 25%+ of all websites. PHP's time is clearly still now. I probably won't bother with PHP, but it can't hurt to keep my idea of what it's like up to date. It's only technology, no need to be fanatical about it.
- sneak 11y ago
  Just because a lot of sites run it doesn't mean it's not crap. A lot of companies still host stuff on Windows like it's still 2002, as well. PHP has no place in modern development.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Killswitch 11y ago
    You do realize that the number 2 ranked website on the internet runs on PHP. Get over your elitest attitude. PHP is a fine language and has it's warrants of use. Speaking of, 2 days ago marked a year since I last used PHP.
    - ihsw 11y ago
      Are you talking about Facebook? They're transitioning over to Hack. http://hacklang.org/ http://hacklang.org/ As far as I understand, most/all new development is done in Hack. Granted, a lot of Hack features are starting to make their way into PHP (much like how exciting new TypeScript features are making their way into ES6 and above), but focus has been shifted to Hack.
      - Killswitch 11y ago
        Hack is derived from PHP, they've only tuned the engine for their own usecase, and not to mention anyone in the PHP community can use Hack. Hack is basically the TypeScript of PHP. Regular PHP works fine on Hack, but you can start incorporating Hack things into your PHP. If you want to go that route, then my site is actually powered by Babel and not JavaScript.
    - sneak 11y ago
      The number one bank runs FORTRAN. What is the point you are trying to make?
    - Shish2k 11y ago
      > number 2 ranked website on the internet runs on PHP The frontend is "PHP", but with a replacement engine, a replacement language, and a replacement standard library... Having written a bunch of facebook-style Hack and wordpress-style PHP, I would personally consider them about as similar as C++ and Java.
  - claar 11y ago
    You're not only wrong, you're extremely rude. How many professional PHP developers do you estimate are in the world currently? "no place" indeed. If you've truly taken the time to understand modern PHP and want to discuss its weaknesses, by all means proceed. Otherwise bashing the professional work of your peers is simply rude.
    - estefan 11y ago
      As I read it he's saying the language is crap not his peers who use it.
      - ceejayoz 11y ago
        "PHP has no place in modern development" implies that peers choosing PHP for new dev are essentially incompetent.
        sneak 11y ago
        Correct, though I would go with "ignorant of the state of the art", though "incompetent" means the same thing.
- shadowmint 11y ago
  To be fair, don't just down vote the parent comment because your don't like someone bashing php; it's a pretty reasonable question to ask. Most people don't actually know that php powers such a large portion of the internet, because globally there's waning interest in php (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/PHP.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/PHP.ht...) and it's generally dreaded by developers (http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#techSuper-dreaded http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech...). In all seriousness, why would you get into php at this point? Do you want to go and work for Wordpress.com? (I mean, heck, they're building node sites now (https://developer.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-story-behind-the-new-wordpress-com/) https://developer.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-story-behind-...). Are there really that many php jobs floating around? I'm certainly not seeing it. There are a tonne of 1-click-wordpress-for-$10 companies out there, making $10 websites using it... sure, and certainly, plenty of people use it as a blog; but is there really a professional path for a php developer? There's no where near the interest in it that there is in engineers using say, java or C#, or heck, even javascript. I mean, I'm totally down with looking up composer and php classes if you're curious to see what 'modern' php is like, but I certainly couldn't come up with a good reason to do it other than curiosity.
  - pwm 11y ago
    Not arguing, just saying that for example London continuously offers lots of good php contract opportunities. Day rates are slightly less compared to some other tech (mostly tech used in finance), but still decent. It is still very popular in media, e-commerce, publishing, with digital agencies and in various other fields.
  - Scarblac 11y ago
    I never suggested I wanted to get into PHP, I just want to see modern PHP to see how much of its reputation is still deserved. Curiosity is a perfectly good reason to do things, isn't it?
  - greyman 11y ago
    You don't have to work for wordpress.com, though. For example, I do some PHP coding for a media company, which also happens to use Wordpress - WP with redis caching can run a big site also. So yes, there is still php work floating around. Incidentally, their internal tools (content auditing, SEO, ...) is also being done in PHP...
- djsumdog 11y ago
  Cobol is still in use. That doesn't make it good. PHP is a poorly written language. From comparisons to namespaces to other gotchas, it's just pigs guts. From the ground up, it's a badly designed language. Look up "Fractal of bad design" for a better understanding of why.
  - lghh 11y ago
    But Cobol isn't used by 25% of all websites. It's just a tool, one that learning will give you access to a large share of jobs on the market. Plus, who cares if anyone learns Cobol? If they want to, there is not reason to stop them.
  - Scarblac 11y ago
    Yes, so everybody says, but I prefer forming my own opinion! I simply don't like to call something that millions of programmers work with "pigs guts" if I haven't actually looked at it for about a decade.
  - Diamons 11y ago
    The numbers tell a different story. Wordpress powers 25% of the entire web. That is a quarter of the entire internet. It's pretty much your opinion vs the entire internet. You can see how your opinions come off as ludicrous ?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - estefan 11y ago
      Not really. How many owners of those 25% of web sites are programmers who have any opinion whatsoever about programming languages?
      - Diamons 11y ago
        Who cares about the coding language when the market is telling you otherwise? Isn't that the very essence of starting a startup, YCombinator, the whole Silicon Valley mantra? Listen to your customers. The customers are telling you PHP is preferred to other languages and is here to stay as evidenced by 25% of the web using a single PHP application as the backend.
- gibrown 11y ago
  WordPress is a big part of it, but PHP goes even beyond that. 81% of all sites are powered by PHP. http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming...
pwm 11y ago
Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSQlYX5DU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSQlYX5DU0 Erik Meijer likes php.
erik14th 11y ago
I think PHP is ok for simple stuff. Every other stack I know of needs you to install and configure lots of stuff. If you know how to program but is bad at sysops PHP might be the choice for you since you can just install one of the many Lamp packages and used managed hosting. But if you can set up a decent webserver on a VPS you're probably better with something else.
nivla 11y ago
>I think the question is why should you bother with PHP at all? Because some people just prefer it. They know its warts and have learned to work around it. For me it is a much easier prototyping tool. The crazy number of built in functions and libraries out there makes it so. Eg: Want to turn on and off an IoT device at sunrise and sunset? Well for other languages you have to go find some library or depend on an external service but no not for PHP. For PHP there is freaking built in date_sunrise and date_sunset functions! [1] [1]http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-sunrise.php http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-sunrise.php

jacquesm 11y ago

What would you use instead and why?

Scarblac 11y ago

Wordpress alone runs 25%+ of all websites. PHP's time is clearly still now. I probably won't bother with PHP, but it can't hurt to keep my idea of what it's like up to date. It's only technology, no need to be fanatical about it.

sneak 11y ago
Just because a lot of sites run it doesn't mean it's not crap. A lot of companies still host stuff on Windows like it's still 2002, as well. PHP has no place in modern development.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Killswitch 11y ago
  You do realize that the number 2 ranked website on the internet runs on PHP. Get over your elitest attitude. PHP is a fine language and has it's warrants of use. Speaking of, 2 days ago marked a year since I last used PHP.
  - ihsw 11y ago
    Are you talking about Facebook? They're transitioning over to Hack. http://hacklang.org/ http://hacklang.org/ As far as I understand, most/all new development is done in Hack. Granted, a lot of Hack features are starting to make their way into PHP (much like how exciting new TypeScript features are making their way into ES6 and above), but focus has been shifted to Hack.
    - Killswitch 11y ago
      Hack is derived from PHP, they've only tuned the engine for their own usecase, and not to mention anyone in the PHP community can use Hack. Hack is basically the TypeScript of PHP. Regular PHP works fine on Hack, but you can start incorporating Hack things into your PHP. If you want to go that route, then my site is actually powered by Babel and not JavaScript.
  - sneak 11y ago
    The number one bank runs FORTRAN. What is the point you are trying to make?
  - Shish2k 11y ago
    > number 2 ranked website on the internet runs on PHP The frontend is "PHP", but with a replacement engine, a replacement language, and a replacement standard library... Having written a bunch of facebook-style Hack and wordpress-style PHP, I would personally consider them about as similar as C++ and Java.
- claar 11y ago
  You're not only wrong, you're extremely rude. How many professional PHP developers do you estimate are in the world currently? "no place" indeed. If you've truly taken the time to understand modern PHP and want to discuss its weaknesses, by all means proceed. Otherwise bashing the professional work of your peers is simply rude.
  - estefan 11y ago
    As I read it he's saying the language is crap not his peers who use it.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      "PHP has no place in modern development" implies that peers choosing PHP for new dev are essentially incompetent.
      - sneak 11y ago
        Correct, though I would go with "ignorant of the state of the art", though "incompetent" means the same thing.
shadowmint 11y ago
To be fair, don't just down vote the parent comment because your don't like someone bashing php; it's a pretty reasonable question to ask. Most people don't actually know that php powers such a large portion of the internet, because globally there's waning interest in php (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/PHP.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/PHP.ht...) and it's generally dreaded by developers (http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#techSuper-dreaded http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech...). In all seriousness, why would you get into php at this point? Do you want to go and work for Wordpress.com? (I mean, heck, they're building node sites now (https://developer.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-story-behind-the-new-wordpress-com/) https://developer.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-story-behind-...). Are there really that many php jobs floating around? I'm certainly not seeing it. There are a tonne of 1-click-wordpress-for-$10 companies out there, making $10 websites using it... sure, and certainly, plenty of people use it as a blog; but is there really a professional path for a php developer? There's no where near the interest in it that there is in engineers using say, java or C#, or heck, even javascript. I mean, I'm totally down with looking up composer and php classes if you're curious to see what 'modern' php is like, but I certainly couldn't come up with a good reason to do it other than curiosity.
- pwm 11y ago
  Not arguing, just saying that for example London continuously offers lots of good php contract opportunities. Day rates are slightly less compared to some other tech (mostly tech used in finance), but still decent. It is still very popular in media, e-commerce, publishing, with digital agencies and in various other fields.
- Scarblac 11y ago
  I never suggested I wanted to get into PHP, I just want to see modern PHP to see how much of its reputation is still deserved. Curiosity is a perfectly good reason to do things, isn't it?
- greyman 11y ago
  You don't have to work for wordpress.com, though. For example, I do some PHP coding for a media company, which also happens to use Wordpress - WP with redis caching can run a big site also. So yes, there is still php work floating around. Incidentally, their internal tools (content auditing, SEO, ...) is also being done in PHP...
djsumdog 11y ago
Cobol is still in use. That doesn't make it good. PHP is a poorly written language. From comparisons to namespaces to other gotchas, it's just pigs guts. From the ground up, it's a badly designed language. Look up "Fractal of bad design" for a better understanding of why.
- lghh 11y ago
  But Cobol isn't used by 25% of all websites. It's just a tool, one that learning will give you access to a large share of jobs on the market. Plus, who cares if anyone learns Cobol? If they want to, there is not reason to stop them.
- Scarblac 11y ago
  Yes, so everybody says, but I prefer forming my own opinion! I simply don't like to call something that millions of programmers work with "pigs guts" if I haven't actually looked at it for about a decade.
- Diamons 11y ago
  The numbers tell a different story. Wordpress powers 25% of the entire web. That is a quarter of the entire internet. It's pretty much your opinion vs the entire internet. You can see how your opinions come off as ludicrous ?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - estefan 11y ago
    Not really. How many owners of those 25% of web sites are programmers who have any opinion whatsoever about programming languages?
    - Diamons 11y ago
      Who cares about the coding language when the market is telling you otherwise? Isn't that the very essence of starting a startup, YCombinator, the whole Silicon Valley mantra? Listen to your customers. The customers are telling you PHP is preferred to other languages and is here to stay as evidenced by 25% of the web using a single PHP application as the backend.
gibrown 11y ago
WordPress is a big part of it, but PHP goes even beyond that. 81% of all sites are powered by PHP. http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming...

pwm 11y ago

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSQlYX5DU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSQlYX5DU0 Erik Meijer likes php.

erik14th 11y ago

I think PHP is ok for simple stuff. Every other stack I know of needs you to install and configure lots of stuff. If you know how to program but is bad at sysops PHP might be the choice for you since you can just install one of the many Lamp packages and used managed hosting. But if you can set up a decent webserver on a VPS you're probably better with something else.

nivla 11y ago

>I think the question is why should you bother with PHP at all? Because some people just prefer it. They know its warts and have learned to work around it. For me it is a much easier prototyping tool. The crazy number of built in functions and libraries out there makes it so. Eg: Want to turn on and off an IoT device at sunrise and sunset? Well for other languages you have to go find some library or depend on an external service but no not for PHP. For PHP there is freaking built in date_sunrise and date_sunset functions! [1] [1]http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-sunrise.php http://php.net/manual/en/function.date-sunrise.php