13 ms·

Ewww, You Use PHP? (2010)

90 points by yarapavan 10y ago

yarapavan 10y ago
* Update (12/9/14): We’ve grown a lot since this post was written 4 years ago. Currently, our 7 million users send 400 million emails every day, which works out to just north of 12 billion emails a month. And yes, we still use PHP.
- shunyaloop 10y ago
  Related slack php usage thread, Taking PHP Seriously, is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12703751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12703751
  - yarapavan 10y ago
    Thanks for posting this. Some great discussion going on there.
- danesparza 10y ago
  Facebook also uses PHP and has written some great open source tools to speed it up, as well: https://code.facebook.com/projects/backend https://code.facebook.com/projects/backend
yarapavan 10y ago
Link to dailymotion php deployment usecase - http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/ http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-daily...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ggregoire 10y ago
> It’s always been difficult for us to hire really good developers, just because of where we are. Our office is here in Atlanta GA [...] A lot of talented developers are looking for remote jobs.
- s_q_b 10y ago
  It would be economically sensible to take at least a 10% haircut on my salary to not have to commute, just based on the time-value of my labor. I look at a commute the same way I look at travel: it is a cost to me and I expect to be compensated for that. As a decent dev with a decent CV, it would make complete economic sense for me to work for a company remotely.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
toxican 10y ago
I won't call this theme of anti-PHP submissions/discussions in the past 24 hours a circlejerk, as this isn't reddit, but at this point I can't tell the difference.
shylor 10y ago
It would be interesting to see what PHP 7's speed can do for them.
- arenaninja 10y ago
  Speed and lower memory utilization are great, but PHP7 really is just full of goodies: * Scalar type declarations * Return type declarations * null coalescing operator (the real MVP) * spaceship operator * introduced Throwable, big improvement to error handling * removed PHP4 style constructors * removed the old mysql extension Most modern PHP codebases should be able to upgrade from PHP5.6 to PHP7 seamlessly
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    > * null coalescing operator (the real MVP) I'm glad someone appreciates it that much! Since helping introduce it, I haven't found as much use for it as I expected.
    - arenaninja 10y ago
      25 uses in my current codebase vs 5 for spaceship It's not so much about the count though, but the beauty of it: $id = trim($options[$longCamelCaseID]['abcdefg'] ?? ""); A real godsend
importantbrian 10y ago
Today is apparently PHP day on the HN front page. I'm happy to see a different take on it than the normal hate I see it get.
- edwinnathaniel 10y ago
  It might be a sign that after churns of programming languages (explosion) in the last 2 years, people get bored re-writing solved-problems and started to focus on the real thing: solving newer problems and/or making money. Or... could be a sign that the community is maturing :)
ubuntuftw 10y ago
My company's product backend is written in PHP. I'm currently rewriting it, and when I started the process, I tried doing it in Node.js because 1) the possibility of client/server code sharing and 2) that's what all the cool kids were doing. That lasted all of a few weeks before the async nature of Node made my head nearly explode. I scraped that and went back to PHP where you can depend on code being executed line-by-line, synchronously, without hacks. As a language, PHP definitely has some warts. But, it's come a long way, and it keeps getting better all the time. Personally, I don't think it deserves all the hate it gets. Some criticism is warranted, but definitely not all of it. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that the language is so easy to learn and lets you do things your own way, which (at least in the early days) led to a lot of newbies writing insecure code. See: register_globals (since removed). That all said, I love PHP. It's simple, yet powerful. It grows with you, and most importantly, it gets the job done.
- mordocai 10y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but people still write horribly insecure code in PHP because it is so easy.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  "the possibility of client/server code sharing" I have yet to see a good example where this was worth even considering. Model validation seems to be the only real use case and there are so many potential non-JS based clients that you'll likely need a more general solution for that problem anyway. And even for JS based clients, usually the big pain is the UI logic for showing users the errors and helping them correct it, stuff you won't use on the server side.
  - golergka 10y ago
    I had one example of client/server sharing with C#. It was ASP.NET on the server and Unity3d client: all the data model objects were shared and serialization in both direction was a breeze.
    - 10y ago
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
PHP might be getting better. But have you considered that most programmers just don't want to use it? They've already invested in learning better langauges and they aren't waiting on them to get better. The most important choice you can make when starting a project is picking the right tools for it, and PHP probably isn't the one. Lots of other tools are just as capable, and often more so.

90 points by yarapavan 10y ago

* Update (12/9/14): We’ve grown a lot since this post was written 4 years ago. Currently, our 7 million users send 400 million emails every day, which works out to just north of 12 billion emails a month. And yes, we still use PHP.

shunyaloop 10y ago
Related slack php usage thread, Taking PHP Seriously, is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12703751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12703751
- yarapavan 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this. Some great discussion going on there.
danesparza 10y ago
Facebook also uses PHP and has written some great open source tools to speed it up, as well: https://code.facebook.com/projects/backend https://code.facebook.com/projects/backend

yarapavan 10y ago

Link to dailymotion php deployment usecase - http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/ http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-daily...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ggregoire 10y ago

> It’s always been difficult for us to hire really good developers, just because of where we are. Our office is here in Atlanta GA [...] A lot of talented developers are looking for remote jobs.

s_q_b 10y ago
It would be economically sensible to take at least a 10% haircut on my salary to not have to commute, just based on the time-value of my labor. I look at a commute the same way I look at travel: it is a cost to me and I expect to be compensated for that. As a decent dev with a decent CV, it would make complete economic sense for me to work for a company remotely.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

toxican 10y ago

I won't call this theme of anti-PHP submissions/discussions in the past 24 hours a circlejerk, as this isn't reddit, but at this point I can't tell the difference.

shylor 10y ago

It would be interesting to see what PHP 7's speed can do for them.

arenaninja 10y ago
Speed and lower memory utilization are great, but PHP7 really is just full of goodies: * Scalar type declarations * Return type declarations * null coalescing operator (the real MVP) * spaceship operator * introduced Throwable, big improvement to error handling * removed PHP4 style constructors * removed the old mysql extension Most modern PHP codebases should be able to upgrade from PHP5.6 to PHP7 seamlessly
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  > * null coalescing operator (the real MVP) I'm glad someone appreciates it that much! Since helping introduce it, I haven't found as much use for it as I expected.
  - arenaninja 10y ago
    25 uses in my current codebase vs 5 for spaceship It's not so much about the count though, but the beauty of it: $id = trim($options[$longCamelCaseID]['abcdefg'] ?? ""); A real godsend

importantbrian 10y ago

Today is apparently PHP day on the HN front page. I'm happy to see a different take on it than the normal hate I see it get.

edwinnathaniel 10y ago
It might be a sign that after churns of programming languages (explosion) in the last 2 years, people get bored re-writing solved-problems and started to focus on the real thing: solving newer problems and/or making money. Or... could be a sign that the community is maturing :)

ubuntuftw 10y ago

My company's product backend is written in PHP. I'm currently rewriting it, and when I started the process, I tried doing it in Node.js because 1) the possibility of client/server code sharing and 2) that's what all the cool kids were doing. That lasted all of a few weeks before the async nature of Node made my head nearly explode. I scraped that and went back to PHP where you can depend on code being executed line-by-line, synchronously, without hacks. As a language, PHP definitely has some warts. But, it's come a long way, and it keeps getting better all the time. Personally, I don't think it deserves all the hate it gets. Some criticism is warranted, but definitely not all of it. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that the language is so easy to learn and lets you do things your own way, which (at least in the early days) led to a lot of newbies writing insecure code. See: register_globals (since removed). That all said, I love PHP. It's simple, yet powerful. It grows with you, and most importantly, it gets the job done.

mordocai 10y ago
I agree with the sentiment, but people still write horribly insecure code in PHP because it is so easy.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
"the possibility of client/server code sharing" I have yet to see a good example where this was worth even considering. Model validation seems to be the only real use case and there are so many potential non-JS based clients that you'll likely need a more general solution for that problem anyway. And even for JS based clients, usually the big pain is the UI logic for showing users the errors and helping them correct it, stuff you won't use on the server side.
- golergka 10y ago
  I had one example of client/server sharing with C#. It was ASP.NET on the server and Unity3d client: all the data model objects were shared and serialization in both direction was a breeze.
  - 10y ago

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

PHP might be getting better. But have you considered that most programmers just don't want to use it? They've already invested in learning better langauges and they aren't waiting on them to get better. The most important choice you can make when starting a project is picking the right tools for it, and PHP probably isn't the one. Lots of other tools are just as capable, and often more so.