5 ms·

In many areas of the US (the entire west coast for example), PHP is dead - plain and simple. Independent of whether it is good or not, selecting dead or obscur

In many areas of the US (the entire west coast for example), PHP is dead - plain and simple. Independent of whether it is good or not, selecting dead or obscure technologies for your clients is completely irresponsible and leaves them with a maintenance catastrophe just because you like php. Yes there is a lot of hipster-ism out there in platform choice but there are plenty of mature, fast, and popular options out there. PHP is not one of them.

crag 8y ago
This is just bs. PHP is thriving everywhere expect Silicon Valley.
- oblio 8y ago
  Even there, aren’t Facebook and Etsy using it, at least?
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    And WordPress, Yahoo, Salesforce, Adobe, eBay and on and on. You'll have a hard time finding any tech company that doesn't use it to some extent.
    - hn613331 8y ago
      And slack
    - hn613331 8y ago
      And Wikipedia
lignux 8y ago
PHP is not mature or fast or popular? And PHP is very far from dead no matter where you are. In fact is getting a lot more interest now since PHP 7. If you don't like PHP that's one thing but what you said is just wrong.
- kbenson 8y ago
  PHP isn't dead, and it will never be dead, but as a long time and continuing professional Perl developer myself, let me tell you that you're better off just accepting that your language of choice isn't in vogue anymore. It's not all bad once you're on the ass-end of history. I'm sure you can easily identify a few negatives being the language de jour bring (such as lots of shitty programmers joining the community all the time). Welcome to middle-age. ;)
  - gkya 8y ago
    Perl 5 is pulling me like a superstrong magnet. I haven't had time to read the basics and things like choosing the correct sigil + accessor trim me up, but still, it has many niceties. To begin with, you can have a statement "use v5.x;" and be done with which interpreter problem: it can tell you it needs sth. different, and does not fail because you have python3 to be 3.x, but the script needs 3.x+y, or you have the shebang as python3.x but the system has 3.x+y which is compatible, but you can only have one full path in the shebang... Then the context variable $_ is just lovely. The availability of mature libraries for everything is a trait Perl shares with a small number of languages. Its integration to Unix and its expressivity are second to none. The documentation, while not as accessible as Emacs', is available on you computer offline in man pages, and perldoc can give you proper docs on functions (unlike crappy help() in Python which never shows you anything useful and you have to go to the docs, usually online), add to that POD being a very nice way to add documentation to your scripts and also view them (if its in the path you can "perldoc <script>" and get help. And once you know your way around perl* man pages, you can just program independently, with little or no need to go online for Perl stuff. All niceties other languages/communities could've had, but just don't, because, well IDK why. I'm a 25yo, so when I started programming Perl hatred was the hot thing already. Well, luckily as a curious person I discovered its just baseless cargo cult. Perl is one of the best tools to have in your toolbox.
    - vgy7ujm 8y ago
      Well said!
JonoBB 8y ago
PHP is not dead - plain and simple. Independent of whether it is good or not, selecting technologies based on your biases for your client is completely irresponsible. There are plenty of mature, fast and popular options out there. PHP is one of them.
- buvanshak 8y ago
  denial!
kyriakos 8y ago
There are many successful companies and start ups that use PHP. The same way they exist for other languages and platforms. No start up became a unicorn because of the programming language they used.
- cutler 8y ago
  With the possible exception of Clojure :). See Paul Graham on Lisp as the secret weapon.
  - KingMob 8y ago
    What's the biggest Clojure start-up at the moment? Is it CircleCI? Wal-Mart is pretty big into Clojure these days, but they were already huge.
    - cutler 8y ago
      Here in London there's Funding Circle and uSwitch. The Daily Mail (MailOnline) also uses quite a lot of Clojure.
- alfredallan1 8y ago
  Whatsapp.
  - kyriakos 8y ago
    whats whatsapp built on?
    - scns 8y ago
      Erlang and FreeBSD
cutler 8y ago
I don't know which planet you're living on but all you need to do is search Indeed.com for title:php and you'll find PHP is up there with Java, C# and Javascript in terms of the number of jobs. In some countries Java, JS and PHP are the only languages used in any significant numbers. Likewise in more technologically advanced countries once you get away from the tech hubs. I'm not a fan of PHP and I wish it was true but dead it certainly ain't.

crag 8y ago

This is just bs. PHP is thriving everywhere expect Silicon Valley.

oblio 8y ago
Even there, aren’t Facebook and Etsy using it, at least?
- jjeaff 8y ago
  And WordPress, Yahoo, Salesforce, Adobe, eBay and on and on. You'll have a hard time finding any tech company that doesn't use it to some extent.
  - hn613331 8y ago
    And slack
  - hn613331 8y ago
    And Wikipedia

lignux 8y ago

PHP is not mature or fast or popular? And PHP is very far from dead no matter where you are. In fact is getting a lot more interest now since PHP 7. If you don't like PHP that's one thing but what you said is just wrong.

kbenson 8y ago
PHP isn't dead, and it will never be dead, but as a long time and continuing professional Perl developer myself, let me tell you that you're better off just accepting that your language of choice isn't in vogue anymore. It's not all bad once you're on the ass-end of history. I'm sure you can easily identify a few negatives being the language de jour bring (such as lots of shitty programmers joining the community all the time). Welcome to middle-age. ;)
- gkya 8y ago
  Perl 5 is pulling me like a superstrong magnet. I haven't had time to read the basics and things like choosing the correct sigil + accessor trim me up, but still, it has many niceties. To begin with, you can have a statement "use v5.x;" and be done with which interpreter problem: it can tell you it needs sth. different, and does not fail because you have python3 to be 3.x, but the script needs 3.x+y, or you have the shebang as python3.x but the system has 3.x+y which is compatible, but you can only have one full path in the shebang... Then the context variable $_ is just lovely. The availability of mature libraries for everything is a trait Perl shares with a small number of languages. Its integration to Unix and its expressivity are second to none. The documentation, while not as accessible as Emacs', is available on you computer offline in man pages, and perldoc can give you proper docs on functions (unlike crappy help() in Python which never shows you anything useful and you have to go to the docs, usually online), add to that POD being a very nice way to add documentation to your scripts and also view them (if its in the path you can "perldoc <script>" and get help. And once you know your way around perl* man pages, you can just program independently, with little or no need to go online for Perl stuff. All niceties other languages/communities could've had, but just don't, because, well IDK why. I'm a 25yo, so when I started programming Perl hatred was the hot thing already. Well, luckily as a curious person I discovered its just baseless cargo cult. Perl is one of the best tools to have in your toolbox.
  - vgy7ujm 8y ago
    Well said!

JonoBB 8y ago

PHP is not dead - plain and simple. Independent of whether it is good or not, selecting technologies based on your biases for your client is completely irresponsible. There are plenty of mature, fast and popular options out there. PHP is one of them.

buvanshak 8y ago
denial!

kyriakos 8y ago

There are many successful companies and start ups that use PHP. The same way they exist for other languages and platforms. No start up became a unicorn because of the programming language they used.

cutler 8y ago
With the possible exception of Clojure :). See Paul Graham on Lisp as the secret weapon.
- KingMob 8y ago
  What's the biggest Clojure start-up at the moment? Is it CircleCI? Wal-Mart is pretty big into Clojure these days, but they were already huge.
  - cutler 8y ago
    Here in London there's Funding Circle and uSwitch. The Daily Mail (MailOnline) also uses quite a lot of Clojure.
alfredallan1 8y ago
Whatsapp.
- kyriakos 8y ago
  whats whatsapp built on?
  - scns 8y ago
    Erlang and FreeBSD

cutler 8y ago

I don't know which planet you're living on but all you need to do is search Indeed.com for title:php and you'll find PHP is up there with Java, C# and Javascript in terms of the number of jobs. In some countries Java, JS and PHP are the only languages used in any significant numbers. Likewise in more technologically advanced countries once you get away from the tech hubs. I'm not a fan of PHP and I wish it was true but dead it certainly ain't.