21 ms·

Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community

79 points by jqueryin 10y ago

I consider the HN community, on the whole, to be very much concerned with their professional development. Whether it's taking classes, working on side projects, or reading the latest blogs, everyone seems genuinely interested in learning. Based solely on vote counts alone on the frontpage for the last few days, there appears to be a very large portion of the HN community that both readily follows PHP and/or actively uses it. What I find most interesting, however, is the comments section. There's a large camp of developers on HN that are very outspoken regarding their abhorrence of PHP. The language has been ridiculed for well over a decade, so this is to be expected. What's most intriguing is what you don't see in the comments: the huge number of proponents of PHP. So where does this discrepancy between vote counts and comments stem from? I would venture to guess the vote counts themselves stem from silent proponents. They likely don't provide counter arguments because it's simply not necessary. Nothing is gained. Everyone here has a unified goal of working on cool problems, building amazing applications, and hoping to strike paydirt for all of our hard work. Maybe it's time we all think about why it is we complain about language X vs. language Y and just get back to trying to make our lives and those around us better, through code.

1123581321 10y ago
That's a fair criticism. I do a fair amount of PHP and participate in the community, so I know what you are talking about. That said, to me, the PHP professional development community seems anemic compared to the communities of other languages. I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language.
- throwaway420 10y ago
  > I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language. Is this really the case? I've seen estimates of around 70-80% of websites using PHP as part of their backend. Granted, many of these would be simple Wordpress sites or other blogging/shopping/content management platforms where almost no actual coding by the user is involved.
  - jqueryin 10y ago
    I think 1123581321 may be referring to those that consider themselves professionals as opposed to, say, hobbyists.
  - 1123581321 10y ago
    Sorry, that was unclear. What I mean is that a lower percentage of PHP-using professionals participate in professional development than, say, the percentage of Python-using professionals who do. I agree that PHP is popular.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mtberatwork 10y ago
  > I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language. Indeed, this becomes quite apparent when it comes time to hire. The vast majority of candidates that claim competency in PHP generally fall into two camps: 1) "W3C school grads" 2) Wordpress developers. Both sets drastically increase the signal/noise ratio.
  - NormlOverrated 10y ago
    PHP is too easy to get started with and is too popular. You can even use WYSIWYG tools to create a website, and then proceed to insert small, poorly written PHP scripts in it. Try creating a PHP gig and start looking for developers on many freelance sites - you'll get tons of people who don't even know what the hell a function is, and yet their profile claims they're experienced in PHP. >Wordpress developers No offense to actual Wordpress developers, but many self proclaimed Wordpress "PHP devs" I've seen are only capable of installing Wordpress with a few plugins and select skins. Maybe they know how to edit a file or two in a plugin, but that's about it. And when you ask them what language do they use, they'll obviously pick PHP, even though they couldn't code their way out of a cardboard box. This drives the average wage down, but hell, even mom & pop shops need a dynamic website these days, and Wordpress giveth. In fact, the market really wants Wordpress developers these days. I checked out many freelance sites like freelancer.com and upwork, and there are tons of gigs available for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and shopping cart setups. Hell, I'm currently looking to help out a friend by finding a dev to create a small website in PHP (or any suitable language, don't care), but the local shops only offer Wordpress and Drupal! Won't touch anything else! Try finding a Python, Ruby, Node or Go shop who will only install scripts/CMSes and customize them. Nope, not yet! But given enough time and popularity, they'll have their fair share or developers who have no clue what the hell they're doing and will drive the average wage down. Just wait. C/C++ and Java was like that. Since it was a part of most people's college education, everyone and their mom claimed they knew C++ or Java. It was on their resume, even though their knowledge was superficial at best. In my experience, Indian and Pakistani applicants were the worst offenders in this.
    - 10y ago
throwaway420 10y ago
> So where does this discrepancy between vote counts and comments stem from? People are probably concerned about not being viewed as a good or knowledgeable developer if they admit to using PHP here, so it's probably not a fight that's worth having for most posters. People don't always give their genuine opinions when they think that their personal reputations or livelihoods are on the line. This isn't just the case in technical or career matters, but especially when it comes to personal reputation. Just ask people how many sex partners they've had: the results will probably be skewed up or down in fairly predictable ways if people think there's a chance that they'll be judged somehow based on the answer. Personally I think PHP is a useful (and extremely imperfect) tool that is very appropriate to solve a fairly wide range of problems. For certain problems, it's arguably the best tool. That's why it's going to be around for quite a while.
ryanlm 10y ago
People that state it's such a horrible language are "follow" types. I believe some people actually do think it's a bad language, but for the most part, I would say people are just following the status quo.
- Ysx 10y ago
  I have a differing opinion, and similarly have no way to back it up.
- wnevets 10y ago
  The hive mind is very strong on the internet, even on HN.
  - ryanlm 10y ago
    It's a wasp stronghold.
- nbouscal 10y ago
  I worked professionally in PHP for years, and have since worked professionally in Ruby and Haskell. I'm not following a status quo by saying that working in PHP was exceptionally painful by comparison even to Ruby (despite Ruby being quite painful by comparison to Haskell), and that I'll never work in PHP again. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see any reason to think so.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  I've contributed to the PHP codebase for 3 years, and I think it's bad.
  - NormlOverrated 10y ago
    Hello Andrea... May I ask a question? You're quite critical of PHP, and often claim it's bad and flawed. And yet you're a core contributor, are you not? Well... what are your suggestions? What would you do? What's the future of the language? Should people bail or not?
ryanlm 10y ago
People that state it's such a horrible language are "follow" types. I believe some people actually do think it's a bad language, but for the most part, I would say people are just following the status quo.
ythl 10y ago
People are worried about how they are perceived by other developers. It's the same reason a lot of people loudly pooh-pooh GameMaker (citing Godot, UR4, Unity, etc. as superior) even though it's a super powerful tool that, in the right hands, can be used to rapidly prototype very complicated and versatile games.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  That stigma alone had kept me from trying GameMaker for a long time. Personally, I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger late last year, because it's been a tremendous boost to my output, especially prototypes and cross-platform release. Just released a mobile game, in fact :)
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Game Maker deserves the criticism it gets. It is easy for beginners to learn, but it traps you in its proprietary ecosystem with subpar tools. Moreover, it is designed around bad practices in the name of simplicity. Games cannot be framerate-independent, for example. It may be a useful prototyping tool, but I feel sorry for the people stuck using it when those prototypes turn into full-size games and they can't easily port to something better. It's better to teach people something more flexible and similar to what's used in the real world. PHP doesn't have these problems, it's just painful.
  - krapp 10y ago
    >It may be a useful prototyping tool, but I feel sorry for the people stuck using it when those prototypes turn into full-size games and they can't easily port to something better. On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, I doubt the people who made Undertale are complaining.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
      Tobyfox has said he can't port Undertale to Nintendo consoles because he used Game Maker, despite wanting to.
z0r 10y ago
I've never worked on PHP code in a truly professional context, but I've had one-off (very) small jobs where I've had to perform maintenance on some PHP. I have no doubt that the language and tooling has improved over the years, but I have no desire to ever work on any of it ever again. This is my honest opinion, and I'm not writing it to signal anything. There are dozens of viable production languages and life is short, so why work with one that you find very painful? If PHP works for you, that's fine, but people who don't like PHP are going to be vocal about it because they don't want to find themselves in a situation where they have to write it. You might not end up being forced to write PHP for pay these days, but it's not unrealistic to imagine that you might end up writing (for example) Java because you need a job even if you really don't like it. So you end up with language advocacy and trash talking and there's nothing wrong with any of that, it's just a way to let off steam and preserve your sanity.
tbirrell 10y ago
Because arguing on the internet tends to be an exercise in frustration. If I like PHP and you don't it is unlikely that either of us will change the other's mind. So it's not really worth my time or effort to defend the language to virtual strangers. I can respect your dislike while going off to code in PHP anyway, and the world won't end. If you ask me my opinion, I'll be happy to share it, but I don't feel the urge to offer it unsolicited.
s0l1dsnak3123 10y ago
In British politics we have this concept of "The silent majority" which inevitably gets mentioned at referenda and elections. The effect was probably most prevalent in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 where a no vote of 55% bet a yes vote of 45%. Many many yes voters (including myself) were very surprised by this result - the internet was on fire with grass roots activism of all kinds. Glasgow had weekly rallies with thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) attending. And yet we lost. I can't help but wonder if we're witnessing the same phenomena - a silent majority of people who feel no need to contribute to the discourse but have different opinions and values on the subjects us in the comments section are discussing. Interesting stuff.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  It is same in Spain with Partido Popular (PP). Everyone seems to hate them and talk how corrupt conservative fascists they are. And yet after every election the map of the country is blue - - color that represents PP :))
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    Map for illustration purposes: http://www.levante-emv.com/elementosWeb/gestionCajas/MMP/Image/2016/mapa-provincias3_1.jpg http://www.levante-emv.com/elementosWeb/gestionCajas/MMP/Ima...
- gorbachev 10y ago
  People generally are much more vocal about negative experiences than positive ones. If the thing "just works", what am I going to say? "PHP is nice, it does what I need it to do". That's not interesting in any way. If the thing doesn't work, then I usually have quite a few specific annoyances I've most likely spent considerable time trying to get around or solve completely, and I have developed strong opinions based on those experiences.
- twunde 10y ago
  Many PHP developers don't want to talk about it simply because of how negative the comments are, many coming from people that used PHP back 10 years ago when PHP had a really big security problem with sql injection and xss. The arguments for PHP don't appear to convince anyone, so why bother?
hotsy_botsy 10y ago
PHP is the Toyota Corolla of programming languages. Not many are passionate about the Corolla, but it's one of the most widely driven cars in America. I challenge you to come up with a better car analogy.
- fiedzia 10y ago
  > Not many are passionate about the Corolla But there is also nothing particularly wrong with it. It may not be better, but it has no worse maintenance record, crash record, or accident survival rate then average car. (In software world, that would be perhaps java). To come with better analogy - PHP is like a 15+ yo car imported from neighbour country because that's the only thing you can afford. Its popular and you'll see it all around in you area, so you may be unaware that better cars even exist. It can be used, but something breaks every 50km, the rust has eaten so much that any minor collision will get you killed, and you'll see people frantically repairing it with duck tape on every street to ever get home. But yeah, you can drive one. And have you heard that next year the tax will be lowered, so you may be able to afford 14 yo cars, life is getting so much better here.
  - colshrapnel 10y ago
    In fact PHP7 as well as PHP fork called HackLang used in Facebook are brand new cars and the latter even produced in your own country.
    - fiedzia 10y ago
      Some of the painting is new, but the engine (stdlib) remains the same.
      - colshrapnel 10y ago
        So you are blaming PHP's excellent backward compatibility. Why I am not surprised? :)
        10y ago
nbouscal 10y ago
I would attribute this discrepancy to a natural extension of pg's thoughts about the blub paradox (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html). Most PHP developers I've talked to justify their work in PHP by saying that essentially languages are more or less the same, and that PHP is "just as good" as any other language. It's rare for me to hear someone say that PHP is substantially better than other languages. By contrast, former PHP developers who now work in other languages usually say that PHP is significantly worse than other languages. It seems natural that someone who thinks there's a significant difference would be more likely to comment about it than someone who thinks the languages are basically the same. There's more to say about the difference than there is about a lack of difference, and it's relatively hard to provide real arguments for the lack of a difference – it's usually more "there's no real evidence of a difference and this works fine for me."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pwinnski 10y ago
My theory is simple: Have you ever heard the pithy saying that there is no worse non-smoker than an ex-smoker? I think many of the loudest anti-PHP voices are ex-PHP developers. They/We naturally assume our own experience is normative, and since we didn't know X, Y, or Z back when we were coding in PHP, obviously neither does anybody else still coding in PHP. Or, more graciously, back then PHP was the best language we had learned up to that point (better than BASIC or Perl, say), but now we use Ruby or Python or something else, so now we recognize the deficiencies in PHP. Clearly those other people, just a few steps behind us on the path, need to also learn about the deficiencies in PHP and how much better X is. There are any number of nuanced ways for that to be expressed, but ultimately I think it's mostly tribalism, and obviously unhelpful. Sure, I used to write PHP. Built my first startup with it, sold it, and stuck with it for a few years more even after that. And sure, I don't write in PHP any more. These days it's Python or Java or Clojure for me. Because PHP sucks? No, because it doesn't suit what I'm doing these days as well. And not necessarily for reasons related to the quality of the language.
- segmondy 10y ago
  Give me a break. These are the orders in which I started learning my languages BASIC, C, assembly, (6502, z80, x86, MIPS 3000), Lisp, Perl, Java, Python, plenty of others then PHP. I really like Python, Ruby and Lua. I like the ecosystem for Python, yet want me to build a web application? I will pick PHP any day! It has it quirks and warts, but you can win big with it.
gkya 10y ago
Php is objectively a bad language, and as the literature on why it is is wast like oceans, I don't feel the need to add to it. That said it's quite understandable why the language is used regardless of it's inferiority, there are some practical reasons, just like JavaScript. Thus it's understandable why people follow its news and also why it's harshly criticised. HN is a technical forum of tech entrepreneurs and computer hackers, and people discuss most often the technical aspects of things, and for Php it's more than expected that the tone be downplaying. Though I believe that should be taken as is and not be extended to community itself.
- colshrapnel 10y ago
  PHP is an easy language that is usable by practically anyone. And it simply make tech snobs and self-proclaimed gurus jealous :j
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    It's harder to learn than its competitors due to the needless mental overhead from all its flaws. Consistent languages are easier to learn.
    - adambrenecki 10y ago
      Perhaps, but when it comes to PHP's niche—websites—it's easier to _get started_ than basically any other language. Got a simple Hello World PHP site? Open your SFTP client, drag and drop, done. Got a Hello World Python app? You have to know about WSGI adapters, process monitors, usually some sort of reverse proxying, how you're going to handle your static files, and so on. Oh, and let's not forget that to even get to that point, you needed to use a framework of some kind, which meant wrestling with Pip and virtualenvs; you can't just 'echo "Hello World"'. I'm picking on Python here because web dev in Python is my day job, but the story is similar for many other languages.
      - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
        Yes, this is certainly an advantage. Getting to hello world is easier. Though that might be mitigated somewhat by things like Heroku and App Engine. My first Python code was with the latter, and I didn't even realise I was using it.
mst 10y ago
I write a lot of perl. You see a similarly depressing response there as well. Mostly I file it under "hipsters gonna hipster" and then go back to doing something useful.
circlefavshape 10y ago
/me raises hand I've been writing php professionally since 2000, and I like it well enough. I know it so much better than any other language that, 20 years into my career, I can't see how I'll ever learn another one well enough to compare them.
ryanlm 10y ago
Flagged? Interesting.
- jqueryin 10y ago
  Agreed.
- sctb 10y ago
  Meta-discussions are often flagged because they're less likely to be intellectually interesting, but this one seems to be proceeding reasonably so we can try turning the flags off for now.
chrisgoman 10y ago
The PHP people are working instead of complaining about it https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329#.by4zu6s1g https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329#...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- oliwarner 10y ago
  According to that, they're replacing PHP with Hack and HHVM. HHVM is backwards compatible (so runs your PHP, lets you include it from Hack, etc) but it's hardly a vote of confidence in PHP, the language.
  - chrisgoman 10y ago
    Ok, there is the other side to this coin WITHOUT replacing PHP http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/ http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-daily...
    - oliwarner 10y ago
      Again, that doesn't say PHP is good, just that they think PHP7 is a better upgrade path than HHVM if you want to "scale without investing too much" (their words). A rewrite in something better wasn't an option. It does highlight an important issue with Hack though. Once you start to migrate to Hack, moving back to "pure PHP" is a pig.
      - colshrapnel 10y ago
        "that doesn't say PHP is good" - what are you trying to say here? That they hate PHP but keep working with it? You see, that's a hater's logic. Every PHP's advantage or eviddence you've given, you are trying to dismiss or even twist, calling it a disadvantage - usual tricks for the internet discussion when you aren't interested to find the truth but just to keep pressing with your opinion. Honestly, this kind of discussion is the only problem with PHP.
oliwarner 10y ago
Use and hatred are not mutually exclusive. I can't be the only developer in here who has to maintain legacy webapps written in awful languages. If I see a post offering a 200× speedup on my crappy old PHP scripts, it gets an upvote.
crimsonalucard 10y ago
Not everything in the world is apples and oranges..
flanger001 10y ago
I wish PHP had methods on primitive types, but I can live without them. PHP is not my first choice of language to develop in, but I don't think it's a bad language, and it paid my bills for quite a long time.
leovonl 10y ago
See, the thing is: I spend much of my time trying to show people that good tools can be used to make good software. We have MUCH misinformation, and people don't even understand that you can prove a software right using theorem provers, don't know anything about type system - "C has types but they don't work" - and etc. I've heard arguments like this all the time, and that really sucks, because then you get limited by tools "you can hire people to work with". In fact, I've been hearing for 10 years things like "what, OCaml? where do we hire someone to work on this?", "Haskell? nobody uses that", and more recently "we cannot use Rust as we don't have anyone that can possibly understand this". Saying "PHP is just another language/tool" is just throwing the towel without trying to understand anything. What would you think if someone said "coal is just another fuel, stop trying to push electric, let me use coal and go on with life"? Well, a lot of people believe this, but let's pretent there's a consensus on this, shall we? So, the question is: you CAN use PHP for doing web development. You can also use coal as a fuel. Not only that, but all libraries are written with this in mind, all code bases and fragments of code are focused on web development, etc. Coal is also combustible, a lot of manufactures dominate the technology, it's cheap, so.. hey, energy! Even if the language is pure crap - as coal is as a fuel - people will only hit the crappy parts when their system is already implemented and being used by more people. "Hey, this language has a lot of issues" - "hey, this coal thing really polutes". Too late. You already have a full system implemented, you have experience with the language - or energy production technology... so you just change your workflow to accommodate this. Or you just never realize it - "whatever, no big deal" - and keep using it, as you see the advantages as more important. There's tons of factors that contribute to the PHP popularity - the same thing with C, Perl, etc. Doesn't mean the language is good, and also doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you that "it's just another tool, let's go back to business". So yeah, no.. I won't let you go on with PHP, sorry. I want better tools, better systems, and I want to spread knowledge. I guess we are going to agree to disagree on that.

79 points by jqueryin 10y ago

1123581321 10y ago

That's a fair criticism. I do a fair amount of PHP and participate in the community, so I know what you are talking about. That said, to me, the PHP professional development community seems anemic compared to the communities of other languages. I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language.

throwaway420 10y ago
> I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language. Is this really the case? I've seen estimates of around 70-80% of websites using PHP as part of their backend. Granted, many of these would be simple Wordpress sites or other blogging/shopping/content management platforms where almost no actual coding by the user is involved.
- jqueryin 10y ago
  I think 1123581321 may be referring to those that consider themselves professionals as opposed to, say, hobbyists.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  Sorry, that was unclear. What I mean is that a lower percentage of PHP-using professionals participate in professional development than, say, the percentage of Python-using professionals who do. I agree that PHP is popular.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mtberatwork 10y ago
> I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language. Indeed, this becomes quite apparent when it comes time to hire. The vast majority of candidates that claim competency in PHP generally fall into two camps: 1) "W3C school grads" 2) Wordpress developers. Both sets drastically increase the signal/noise ratio.
- NormlOverrated 10y ago
  PHP is too easy to get started with and is too popular. You can even use WYSIWYG tools to create a website, and then proceed to insert small, poorly written PHP scripts in it. Try creating a PHP gig and start looking for developers on many freelance sites - you'll get tons of people who don't even know what the hell a function is, and yet their profile claims they're experienced in PHP. >Wordpress developers No offense to actual Wordpress developers, but many self proclaimed Wordpress "PHP devs" I've seen are only capable of installing Wordpress with a few plugins and select skins. Maybe they know how to edit a file or two in a plugin, but that's about it. And when you ask them what language do they use, they'll obviously pick PHP, even though they couldn't code their way out of a cardboard box. This drives the average wage down, but hell, even mom & pop shops need a dynamic website these days, and Wordpress giveth. In fact, the market really wants Wordpress developers these days. I checked out many freelance sites like freelancer.com and upwork, and there are tons of gigs available for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and shopping cart setups. Hell, I'm currently looking to help out a friend by finding a dev to create a small website in PHP (or any suitable language, don't care), but the local shops only offer Wordpress and Drupal! Won't touch anything else! Try finding a Python, Ruby, Node or Go shop who will only install scripts/CMSes and customize them. Nope, not yet! But given enough time and popularity, they'll have their fair share or developers who have no clue what the hell they're doing and will drive the average wage down. Just wait. C/C++ and Java was like that. Since it was a part of most people's college education, everyone and their mom claimed they knew C++ or Java. It was on their resume, even though their knowledge was superficial at best. In my experience, Indian and Pakistani applicants were the worst offenders in this.
  - 10y ago

throwaway420 10y ago

> So where does this discrepancy between vote counts and comments stem from? People are probably concerned about not being viewed as a good or knowledgeable developer if they admit to using PHP here, so it's probably not a fight that's worth having for most posters. People don't always give their genuine opinions when they think that their personal reputations or livelihoods are on the line. This isn't just the case in technical or career matters, but especially when it comes to personal reputation. Just ask people how many sex partners they've had: the results will probably be skewed up or down in fairly predictable ways if people think there's a chance that they'll be judged somehow based on the answer. Personally I think PHP is a useful (and extremely imperfect) tool that is very appropriate to solve a fairly wide range of problems. For certain problems, it's arguably the best tool. That's why it's going to be around for quite a while.

ryanlm 10y ago

People that state it's such a horrible language are "follow" types. I believe some people actually do think it's a bad language, but for the most part, I would say people are just following the status quo.

Ysx 10y ago
I have a differing opinion, and similarly have no way to back it up.
wnevets 10y ago
The hive mind is very strong on the internet, even on HN.
- ryanlm 10y ago
  It's a wasp stronghold.
nbouscal 10y ago
I worked professionally in PHP for years, and have since worked professionally in Ruby and Haskell. I'm not following a status quo by saying that working in PHP was exceptionally painful by comparison even to Ruby (despite Ruby being quite painful by comparison to Haskell), and that I'll never work in PHP again. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see any reason to think so.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
I've contributed to the PHP codebase for 3 years, and I think it's bad.
- NormlOverrated 10y ago
  Hello Andrea... May I ask a question? You're quite critical of PHP, and often claim it's bad and flawed. And yet you're a core contributor, are you not? Well... what are your suggestions? What would you do? What's the future of the language? Should people bail or not?

ryanlm 10y ago

ythl 10y ago

People are worried about how they are perceived by other developers. It's the same reason a lot of people loudly pooh-pooh GameMaker (citing Godot, UR4, Unity, etc. as superior) even though it's a super powerful tool that, in the right hands, can be used to rapidly prototype very complicated and versatile games.

mysterydip 10y ago
That stigma alone had kept me from trying GameMaker for a long time. Personally, I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger late last year, because it's been a tremendous boost to my output, especially prototypes and cross-platform release. Just released a mobile game, in fact :)
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Game Maker deserves the criticism it gets. It is easy for beginners to learn, but it traps you in its proprietary ecosystem with subpar tools. Moreover, it is designed around bad practices in the name of simplicity. Games cannot be framerate-independent, for example. It may be a useful prototyping tool, but I feel sorry for the people stuck using it when those prototypes turn into full-size games and they can't easily port to something better. It's better to teach people something more flexible and similar to what's used in the real world. PHP doesn't have these problems, it's just painful.
- krapp 10y ago
  >It may be a useful prototyping tool, but I feel sorry for the people stuck using it when those prototypes turn into full-size games and they can't easily port to something better. On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, I doubt the people who made Undertale are complaining.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    Tobyfox has said he can't port Undertale to Nintendo consoles because he used Game Maker, despite wanting to.

z0r 10y ago

I've never worked on PHP code in a truly professional context, but I've had one-off (very) small jobs where I've had to perform maintenance on some PHP. I have no doubt that the language and tooling has improved over the years, but I have no desire to ever work on any of it ever again. This is my honest opinion, and I'm not writing it to signal anything. There are dozens of viable production languages and life is short, so why work with one that you find very painful? If PHP works for you, that's fine, but people who don't like PHP are going to be vocal about it because they don't want to find themselves in a situation where they have to write it. You might not end up being forced to write PHP for pay these days, but it's not unrealistic to imagine that you might end up writing (for example) Java because you need a job even if you really don't like it. So you end up with language advocacy and trash talking and there's nothing wrong with any of that, it's just a way to let off steam and preserve your sanity.

tbirrell 10y ago

Because arguing on the internet tends to be an exercise in frustration. If I like PHP and you don't it is unlikely that either of us will change the other's mind. So it's not really worth my time or effort to defend the language to virtual strangers. I can respect your dislike while going off to code in PHP anyway, and the world won't end. If you ask me my opinion, I'll be happy to share it, but I don't feel the urge to offer it unsolicited.

s0l1dsnak3123 10y ago

In British politics we have this concept of "The silent majority" which inevitably gets mentioned at referenda and elections. The effect was probably most prevalent in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 where a no vote of 55% bet a yes vote of 45%. Many many yes voters (including myself) were very surprised by this result - the internet was on fire with grass roots activism of all kinds. Glasgow had weekly rallies with thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) attending. And yet we lost. I can't help but wonder if we're witnessing the same phenomena - a silent majority of people who feel no need to contribute to the discourse but have different opinions and values on the subjects us in the comments section are discussing. Interesting stuff.

angry-hacker 10y ago
It is same in Spain with Partido Popular (PP). Everyone seems to hate them and talk how corrupt conservative fascists they are. And yet after every election the map of the country is blue - - color that represents PP :))
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  Map for illustration purposes: http://www.levante-emv.com/elementosWeb/gestionCajas/MMP/Image/2016/mapa-provincias3_1.jpg http://www.levante-emv.com/elementosWeb/gestionCajas/MMP/Ima...
gorbachev 10y ago
People generally are much more vocal about negative experiences than positive ones. If the thing "just works", what am I going to say? "PHP is nice, it does what I need it to do". That's not interesting in any way. If the thing doesn't work, then I usually have quite a few specific annoyances I've most likely spent considerable time trying to get around or solve completely, and I have developed strong opinions based on those experiences.
twunde 10y ago
Many PHP developers don't want to talk about it simply because of how negative the comments are, many coming from people that used PHP back 10 years ago when PHP had a really big security problem with sql injection and xss. The arguments for PHP don't appear to convince anyone, so why bother?

hotsy_botsy 10y ago

PHP is the Toyota Corolla of programming languages. Not many are passionate about the Corolla, but it's one of the most widely driven cars in America. I challenge you to come up with a better car analogy.

fiedzia 10y ago
> Not many are passionate about the Corolla But there is also nothing particularly wrong with it. It may not be better, but it has no worse maintenance record, crash record, or accident survival rate then average car. (In software world, that would be perhaps java). To come with better analogy - PHP is like a 15+ yo car imported from neighbour country because that's the only thing you can afford. Its popular and you'll see it all around in you area, so you may be unaware that better cars even exist. It can be used, but something breaks every 50km, the rust has eaten so much that any minor collision will get you killed, and you'll see people frantically repairing it with duck tape on every street to ever get home. But yeah, you can drive one. And have you heard that next year the tax will be lowered, so you may be able to afford 14 yo cars, life is getting so much better here.
- colshrapnel 10y ago
  In fact PHP7 as well as PHP fork called HackLang used in Facebook are brand new cars and the latter even produced in your own country.
  - fiedzia 10y ago
    Some of the painting is new, but the engine (stdlib) remains the same.
    - colshrapnel 10y ago
      So you are blaming PHP's excellent backward compatibility. Why I am not surprised? :)
      - 10y ago

nbouscal 10y ago

I would attribute this discrepancy to a natural extension of pg's thoughts about the blub paradox (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html). Most PHP developers I've talked to justify their work in PHP by saying that essentially languages are more or less the same, and that PHP is "just as good" as any other language. It's rare for me to hear someone say that PHP is substantially better than other languages. By contrast, former PHP developers who now work in other languages usually say that PHP is significantly worse than other languages. It seems natural that someone who thinks there's a significant difference would be more likely to comment about it than someone who thinks the languages are basically the same. There's more to say about the difference than there is about a lack of difference, and it's relatively hard to provide real arguments for the lack of a difference – it's usually more "there's no real evidence of a difference and this works fine for me."

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pwinnski 10y ago

My theory is simple: Have you ever heard the pithy saying that there is no worse non-smoker than an ex-smoker? I think many of the loudest anti-PHP voices are ex-PHP developers. They/We naturally assume our own experience is normative, and since we didn't know X, Y, or Z back when we were coding in PHP, obviously neither does anybody else still coding in PHP. Or, more graciously, back then PHP was the best language we had learned up to that point (better than BASIC or Perl, say), but now we use Ruby or Python or something else, so now we recognize the deficiencies in PHP. Clearly those other people, just a few steps behind us on the path, need to also learn about the deficiencies in PHP and how much better X is. There are any number of nuanced ways for that to be expressed, but ultimately I think it's mostly tribalism, and obviously unhelpful. Sure, I used to write PHP. Built my first startup with it, sold it, and stuck with it for a few years more even after that. And sure, I don't write in PHP any more. These days it's Python or Java or Clojure for me. Because PHP sucks? No, because it doesn't suit what I'm doing these days as well. And not necessarily for reasons related to the quality of the language.

segmondy 10y ago
Give me a break. These are the orders in which I started learning my languages BASIC, C, assembly, (6502, z80, x86, MIPS 3000), Lisp, Perl, Java, Python, plenty of others then PHP. I really like Python, Ruby and Lua. I like the ecosystem for Python, yet want me to build a web application? I will pick PHP any day! It has it quirks and warts, but you can win big with it.

gkya 10y ago

Php is objectively a bad language, and as the literature on why it is is wast like oceans, I don't feel the need to add to it. That said it's quite understandable why the language is used regardless of it's inferiority, there are some practical reasons, just like JavaScript. Thus it's understandable why people follow its news and also why it's harshly criticised. HN is a technical forum of tech entrepreneurs and computer hackers, and people discuss most often the technical aspects of things, and for Php it's more than expected that the tone be downplaying. Though I believe that should be taken as is and not be extended to community itself.

colshrapnel 10y ago
PHP is an easy language that is usable by practically anyone. And it simply make tech snobs and self-proclaimed gurus jealous :j
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  It's harder to learn than its competitors due to the needless mental overhead from all its flaws. Consistent languages are easier to learn.
  - adambrenecki 10y ago
    Perhaps, but when it comes to PHP's niche—websites—it's easier to _get started_ than basically any other language. Got a simple Hello World PHP site? Open your SFTP client, drag and drop, done. Got a Hello World Python app? You have to know about WSGI adapters, process monitors, usually some sort of reverse proxying, how you're going to handle your static files, and so on. Oh, and let's not forget that to even get to that point, you needed to use a framework of some kind, which meant wrestling with Pip and virtualenvs; you can't just 'echo "Hello World"'. I'm picking on Python here because web dev in Python is my day job, but the story is similar for many other languages.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
      Yes, this is certainly an advantage. Getting to hello world is easier. Though that might be mitigated somewhat by things like Heroku and App Engine. My first Python code was with the latter, and I didn't even realise I was using it.

mst 10y ago

I write a lot of perl. You see a similarly depressing response there as well. Mostly I file it under "hipsters gonna hipster" and then go back to doing something useful.

circlefavshape 10y ago

/me raises hand I've been writing php professionally since 2000, and I like it well enough. I know it so much better than any other language that, 20 years into my career, I can't see how I'll ever learn another one well enough to compare them.

ryanlm 10y ago

Flagged? Interesting.

jqueryin 10y ago
Agreed.
sctb 10y ago
Meta-discussions are often flagged because they're less likely to be intellectually interesting, but this one seems to be proceeding reasonably so we can try turning the flags off for now.

chrisgoman 10y ago

The PHP people are working instead of complaining about it https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329#.by4zu6s1g https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329#...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
oliwarner 10y ago
According to that, they're replacing PHP with Hack and HHVM. HHVM is backwards compatible (so runs your PHP, lets you include it from Hack, etc) but it's hardly a vote of confidence in PHP, the language.
- chrisgoman 10y ago
  Ok, there is the other side to this coin WITHOUT replacing PHP http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/ http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-daily...
  - oliwarner 10y ago
    Again, that doesn't say PHP is good, just that they think PHP7 is a better upgrade path than HHVM if you want to "scale without investing too much" (their words). A rewrite in something better wasn't an option. It does highlight an important issue with Hack though. Once you start to migrate to Hack, moving back to "pure PHP" is a pig.
    - colshrapnel 10y ago
      "that doesn't say PHP is good" - what are you trying to say here? That they hate PHP but keep working with it? You see, that's a hater's logic. Every PHP's advantage or eviddence you've given, you are trying to dismiss or even twist, calling it a disadvantage - usual tricks for the internet discussion when you aren't interested to find the truth but just to keep pressing with your opinion. Honestly, this kind of discussion is the only problem with PHP.

oliwarner 10y ago

Use and hatred are not mutually exclusive. I can't be the only developer in here who has to maintain legacy webapps written in awful languages. If I see a post offering a 200× speedup on my crappy old PHP scripts, it gets an upvote.

crimsonalucard 10y ago

Not everything in the world is apples and oranges..

flanger001 10y ago

I wish PHP had methods on primitive types, but I can live without them. PHP is not my first choice of language to develop in, but I don't think it's a bad language, and it paid my bills for quite a long time.

leovonl 10y ago

See, the thing is: I spend much of my time trying to show people that good tools can be used to make good software. We have MUCH misinformation, and people don't even understand that you can prove a software right using theorem provers, don't know anything about type system - "C has types but they don't work" - and etc. I've heard arguments like this all the time, and that really sucks, because then you get limited by tools "you can hire people to work with". In fact, I've been hearing for 10 years things like "what, OCaml? where do we hire someone to work on this?", "Haskell? nobody uses that", and more recently "we cannot use Rust as we don't have anyone that can possibly understand this". Saying "PHP is just another language/tool" is just throwing the towel without trying to understand anything. What would you think if someone said "coal is just another fuel, stop trying to push electric, let me use coal and go on with life"? Well, a lot of people believe this, but let's pretent there's a consensus on this, shall we? So, the question is: you CAN use PHP for doing web development. You can also use coal as a fuel. Not only that, but all libraries are written with this in mind, all code bases and fragments of code are focused on web development, etc. Coal is also combustible, a lot of manufactures dominate the technology, it's cheap, so.. hey, energy! Even if the language is pure crap - as coal is as a fuel - people will only hit the crappy parts when their system is already implemented and being used by more people. "Hey, this language has a lot of issues" - "hey, this coal thing really polutes". Too late. You already have a full system implemented, you have experience with the language - or energy production technology... so you just change your workflow to accommodate this. Or you just never realize it - "whatever, no big deal" - and keep using it, as you see the advantages as more important. There's tons of factors that contribute to the PHP popularity - the same thing with C, Perl, etc. Doesn't mean the language is good, and also doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you that "it's just another tool, let's go back to business". So yeah, no.. I won't let you go on with PHP, sorry. I want better tools, better systems, and I want to spread knowledge. I guess we are going to agree to disagree on that.