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>PHPs reputation seems to surround the fact that it tends to be (or was) the first language amateur coders dabbled with. That's certainly part of it. JavaScrip

>PHPs reputation seems to surround the fact that it tends to be (or was) the first language amateur coders dabbled with. That's certainly part of it. JavaScript suffers the same hate today -- amateur and junior developers produce thousands of lines of crap per year, and people blame it on the language. But PHP itself is just a mess. I'm an experience developer (about 30 years at this point), and about 12 years ago I decided to do a volunteer project for a nonprofit in PHP. Finished the project and the nonprofit used it for at least 10 years -- they may still be using it for all I know. Never. Again. I can't stand PHP and I will avoid its language and ecosystem like the plague. Even if they've fixed some of the problems in the core language and added types, the "standard" libraries were a random pile of mismatched garbage where the mysql_xxxx functions could have parameter signatures in different orders than the pg_xxxx versions. Maybe they've fixed that as well, but they'd have to break backward compatibility in pretty awkward ways to achieve that. I don't even remember all the other things that tortured me, but it wasn't fun. And it's not asynchronous. There's not even a good reason to use a synchronous language for web development today. Not to mention the ease of running NodeJS code in a debugger, or running tests in a browser and debugging it there... I'm using TypeScript and Go for all my web related code moving forward. Something better comes along, and I'll consider it. But PHP was just a nightmare. (Elm on client? Maybe, under the right circumstances?)

marklgr 10y ago
Sounds like you just had a very bad experience with PHP, but it could have happened with most languages, honestly. I got (only) 20-year experience, but I have come across quite bad C codebases, poor Perl applications and terrible Java code, and I have thought 'never again' more than once, too.
stephenr 10y ago
> I'm an experience developer (about 30 years at this point), and about 12 years ago I decided to do a volunteer project for a nonprofit in PHP > mysql_xxxx functions So, you used PHP 12 years ago and comment based on that. You have a point though. I used this internet thing about 17 years ago, it was terrible. Only dial-up. SLOW! And don't talk to me about browsers. Netscape? Internet Explorer? Ugh. Forget it. I don't care what they might have changed, or replaced or completely removed, its always terrible. The language/runtime have problems, just like every other language/runtime that exists, but complaining about a version from 12 years ago and comparing functions that aren't even part of the language anymore seems a little odd to me.
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  >You have a point though. I used this internet thing about 17 years ago, it was terrible. Only dial-up. SLOW! And don't talk to me about browsers. Netscape? Internet Explorer? Ugh. Forget it. I don't care what they might have changed, or replaced or completely removed, its always terrible. We have only one Internet. But we have a lot of alternatives for Php to choose from. If you have an Internet provider that gave you horrible service, will you give them another try even when your current provider is great in every way, just because the only good thing with your past provider was they gave you a connection in a day, instead of 3 days as with your current provider....
  - corobo 10y ago
    After 12 years? I wouldn't consider them to be the exact same as when I left them at least.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      But what is the reason why I would look back at PHP, when there have been better alternatives available for quite a while now?
      - corobo 10y ago
        I'll be honest I don't really care what languages people use, not my place to convince you back. Just saying there's quite high chances PHP has changed at least a tiny bit over the past 12 years
        Drdrdrq 10y ago
        I started using PHP when it was in version 3 and still use it occassionally. It has changed, but not considerably. The function naming is still a mess (backwards compatibility), arrays are completely inappropriate (naming them "bags" would be better), some decisions were so baffling (safe mode and magic quotes, superglobals, square brackets for arrays...) that I simply don't trust PHP to ever get better. But there was a reason for experienced developers to use it - hosting. You could write a web app, ftp it somewhere and it would just work. There was no other platform aside from asp which would offer that. Nowadays this doesn't matter much, but 10 years ago it was great. As a language though? Ugly. Just plain ugly.
jwdunne 10y ago
In fairness, PHP was in a different place 12 years ago. The language has improved in that time. There are still lots of warts but the language and ecosystem have worked together to push it forward. I'm going to be honest, I only use it because of company lock in. I hated it for many years but some of the stuff released and some of the stuff on the way in the internals is quite exciting.
babyrainbow 10y ago
>JavaScript suffers the same hate today.. The difference between Php and Javascript is that Javascript have competent people driving it forward. Php is still developed by college students with no real world programming experience, in their spare time.... Downvotes? Don't think this is true? See the following. These are couple of most prominent people working in the language. [1] https://nikic.github.io/aboutMe.html https://nikic.github.io/aboutMe.html [2] https://ajf.me/ https://ajf.me/
- Gigablah 10y ago
  Not impressed by your comment at all. If you think that the age of Nikita Popov or Andrea Faulds is any indicator of their "competence" I suggest you actually take a look at their contributions.
  - babyrainbow 10y ago
    My comment just said that they are just college students. And the links are to prove that. Those are just facts. I don't know why people are pissed. Edit: It is not just their age. I have seen their contributions (RFC's and implementations) and had conversations with them. And my opinion is also based on that...
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  There are lots of PHP-lovers in this thread. My above comment got voted down to -2 as of right now. Everyone focuses on the "my experience is old" and not on the "it's not an asynchronous language" part. Oh well, I lost some Internet points.

marklgr 10y ago

Sounds like you just had a very bad experience with PHP, but it could have happened with most languages, honestly. I got (only) 20-year experience, but I have come across quite bad C codebases, poor Perl applications and terrible Java code, and I have thought 'never again' more than once, too.

stephenr 10y ago

> I'm an experience developer (about 30 years at this point), and about 12 years ago I decided to do a volunteer project for a nonprofit in PHP > mysql_xxxx functions So, you used PHP 12 years ago and comment based on that. You have a point though. I used this internet thing about 17 years ago, it was terrible. Only dial-up. SLOW! And don't talk to me about browsers. Netscape? Internet Explorer? Ugh. Forget it. I don't care what they might have changed, or replaced or completely removed, its always terrible. The language/runtime have problems, just like every other language/runtime that exists, but complaining about a version from 12 years ago and comparing functions that aren't even part of the language anymore seems a little odd to me.

babyrainbow 10y ago
>You have a point though. I used this internet thing about 17 years ago, it was terrible. Only dial-up. SLOW! And don't talk to me about browsers. Netscape? Internet Explorer? Ugh. Forget it. I don't care what they might have changed, or replaced or completely removed, its always terrible. We have only one Internet. But we have a lot of alternatives for Php to choose from. If you have an Internet provider that gave you horrible service, will you give them another try even when your current provider is great in every way, just because the only good thing with your past provider was they gave you a connection in a day, instead of 3 days as with your current provider....
- corobo 10y ago
  After 12 years? I wouldn't consider them to be the exact same as when I left them at least.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    But what is the reason why I would look back at PHP, when there have been better alternatives available for quite a while now?
    - corobo 10y ago
      I'll be honest I don't really care what languages people use, not my place to convince you back. Just saying there's quite high chances PHP has changed at least a tiny bit over the past 12 years
      - Drdrdrq 10y ago
        I started using PHP when it was in version 3 and still use it occassionally. It has changed, but not considerably. The function naming is still a mess (backwards compatibility), arrays are completely inappropriate (naming them "bags" would be better), some decisions were so baffling (safe mode and magic quotes, superglobals, square brackets for arrays...) that I simply don't trust PHP to ever get better. But there was a reason for experienced developers to use it - hosting. You could write a web app, ftp it somewhere and it would just work. There was no other platform aside from asp which would offer that. Nowadays this doesn't matter much, but 10 years ago it was great. As a language though? Ugly. Just plain ugly.

jwdunne 10y ago

In fairness, PHP was in a different place 12 years ago. The language has improved in that time. There are still lots of warts but the language and ecosystem have worked together to push it forward. I'm going to be honest, I only use it because of company lock in. I hated it for many years but some of the stuff released and some of the stuff on the way in the internals is quite exciting.

babyrainbow 10y ago

>JavaScript suffers the same hate today.. The difference between Php and Javascript is that Javascript have competent people driving it forward. Php is still developed by college students with no real world programming experience, in their spare time.... Downvotes? Don't think this is true? See the following. These are couple of most prominent people working in the language. [1] https://nikic.github.io/aboutMe.html https://nikic.github.io/aboutMe.html [2] https://ajf.me/ https://ajf.me/

Gigablah 10y ago
Not impressed by your comment at all. If you think that the age of Nikita Popov or Andrea Faulds is any indicator of their "competence" I suggest you actually take a look at their contributions.
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  My comment just said that they are just college students. And the links are to prove that. Those are just facts. I don't know why people are pissed. Edit: It is not just their age. I have seen their contributions (RFC's and implementations) and had conversations with them. And my opinion is also based on that...
SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
There are lots of PHP-lovers in this thread. My above comment got voted down to -2 as of right now. Everyone focuses on the "my experience is old" and not on the "it's not an asynchronous language" part. Oh well, I lost some Internet points.