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I started a startup in 2013, and I picked PHP for a core language since I had a decade~ experience with it by then and it was a good enough reason to use it. PH

by godot 9y ago

I started a startup in 2013, and I picked PHP for a core language since I had a decade~ experience with it by then and it was a good enough reason to use it. PHP 7 wasn't available yet and nodejs was only starting to take off and didn't seem like the future yet. Taking learning from previous companies, I've found the main thing PHP was lacking at the time was a good routing mechanism. We obviously don't want to rely on Apache hitting .php files to handle requests. So we used ToroPHP (https://github.com/anandkunal/ToroPHP https://github.com/anandkunal/ToroPHP) for routing, which is a seriously lightweight routing lib. Indeed we used composer and a lot of dependencies, but for our own codebase we used manual includes instead of the autoloader. With the usual PHP production setup like APC with opcode caching enabled and file stat'ing off (later on opcache + APCu), we handled scale extremely well. (mentioning this because a counter-point for manual includes is that many requests would unnecessarily load way too many code files) As far as codebase maintenance and growth go, that PHP codebase was actually very easily manageable even with manual includes. Having routing solved frees you up to organize your code files in any ways you want. Even today, I have a mini-framework structured this way for myself to start side projects and test ideas with. (Yes, using PHP5 for side projects in 2018 ;) My point in bringing all this up is that the architecture this article is trying to take you in, seems unnecessarily complicated for PHP. This past year I've been working in a full nodejs shop and this entire architecture (from this article) reminds me heavily of how a node/express app is structured. Someone else on this thread mentioned modern languages have their architectures converging. This is exactly what's happening. Even as a PHP fan, it makes me feel a bit of "Why use PHP at this point, instead of nodejs/go/python?" while reading this. It feels like if you wanted to go this route, nodejs is a better option on almost all fronts -- language syntax brevity, availability of packages, community, developer-availability. The only reason to use PHP at this point is nostalgia/sticking to PHP syntax.

treve 9y ago
As someone who's been doing PHP for nearly 15 years, but 2 years ago switched to Node.js for a job, I agree. This is even more true when switching to Typescript. We introduced typing later in the project and wow what a step up in safety and productivity.
- exclusiv 9y ago
  Yes. Same with PHP7.
nikita2206 9y ago
The reason to use PHP over JS/Python or Ruby is that PHP supports strict typing and that makes code both more maintainable, understandable (Find Usage feature only works reliably when types are inferrable which is not always the case in those other theee langs) and refactorable. Now the reason to use PHP over Java or Go is that PHP at this point has a type system that’s on par with Go’s but at the same time it gives you an advantage of fast development process thanks to the lack of need for compilation and/or restarting the container after each change in the code. I’m currently working with Java and before that I had a long experience of PHP, while I personally would choose Java over PHP almost in any case because I value type system features perhaps a bit too much, but I do suffer from those slow turnaround times (compile/restart TomCat) and I can see how it could potentially be bad for the business at early stages especially. So the bottom line is PHP at this point has a nice balance which is hard to find atm in any other popular languages with evolved ecosystem
- linoge 9y ago
  Isn't proper type system and Java things that shouldn't ever be on the same phrase?
  - eitland 9y ago
    That sounds really weird. Are you sure you are talking about the same Java? Because Java, for all its warts, is maybe the language that has done most to pave the way for mainstream typed languages.
- snomad 9y ago
  > PHP supports strict typing Still missing types for object properties :(
  - tylerjwilk00 9y ago
    As a work around you can use a private member variable with type hinted setter and getter.

by godot 9y ago

treve 9y ago

As someone who's been doing PHP for nearly 15 years, but 2 years ago switched to Node.js for a job, I agree. This is even more true when switching to Typescript. We introduced typing later in the project and wow what a step up in safety and productivity.

exclusiv 9y ago
Yes. Same with PHP7.

nikita2206 9y ago

The reason to use PHP over JS/Python or Ruby is that PHP supports strict typing and that makes code both more maintainable, understandable (Find Usage feature only works reliably when types are inferrable which is not always the case in those other theee langs) and refactorable. Now the reason to use PHP over Java or Go is that PHP at this point has a type system that’s on par with Go’s but at the same time it gives you an advantage of fast development process thanks to the lack of need for compilation and/or restarting the container after each change in the code. I’m currently working with Java and before that I had a long experience of PHP, while I personally would choose Java over PHP almost in any case because I value type system features perhaps a bit too much, but I do suffer from those slow turnaround times (compile/restart TomCat) and I can see how it could potentially be bad for the business at early stages especially. So the bottom line is PHP at this point has a nice balance which is hard to find atm in any other popular languages with evolved ecosystem

linoge 9y ago
Isn't proper type system and Java things that shouldn't ever be on the same phrase?
- eitland 9y ago
  That sounds really weird. Are you sure you are talking about the same Java? Because Java, for all its warts, is maybe the language that has done most to pave the way for mainstream typed languages.
snomad 9y ago
> PHP supports strict typing Still missing types for object properties :(
- tylerjwilk00 9y ago
  As a work around you can use a private member variable with type hinted setter and getter.