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There are many who would argue that removing those features from PHP would be a massive improvement.

gchamonlive 8y ago
Replacing php entirely would be a massive improvement. I only had sorrows with it, the kind of language that is painful to write all the way through.
- DCoder 8y ago
  Replacing a language does not make all the code written in it go away, though. PHP has its tentacles all over the web with WordPress, Drupal, Magento, etc. and those will not be replaced any time soon.
  - gchamonlive 8y ago
    very true, and the main reason why it is still used. Still, does not disprove what I said, that replacing PHP would be an improvement. A really tough one in many cases, but still an improvement.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      FB is replacing PHP with hack. Nobody outside of FB seems terribly interested now that it won't run existing PHP.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  For every word a hipster programmer spends on how terrible PHP is, another 10,000 lines of PHP are released into the wild.
  - gchamonlive 8y ago
    That comment is useless in a really broad spectrum 1. We have to criticise the tools we use. That is the only way we improve. If people had that mentality of not criticising a tool because of how popular it is, we would be stuck with cobol for life 2. Amount of code release has extremely little to do with a language being good or bad, just with its popularity. And it is hard to move away from a language once you have a solid base. Still the language flaws are right there and if for any reason you have to touch the code base, being for security upgrade, refactor or feature implementation, there is a potential for a lot of grief just because of the tool someone decided to use for the job. 3. What was really that about hipster programmer? It has been a while since PHP stopped being the mainstream language for backend web development so that really makes little sense.
    - thaumaturgy 8y ago
      > 1. We have to criticise the tools we use. That is the only way we improve. If people had that mentality of not criticising a tool because of how popular it is, we would be stuck with cobol for life Your comment wasn't constructive criticism, it was kvetching. And we are stuck with COBOL for life. I guarantee you that every financial transaction you make gets touched by some COBOL somewhere. One takeaway from this might be, "the horrors! Organizations should be spending more money rewriting things in the latest technologies!" Another takeaway from this might be, "COBOL was so revolutionary for its time that it enjoyed massive adoption three decades ago, and it's still good enough that it isn't worth the cost to replace it in many cases." You may not enjoy working with it. I've worked with it, I didn't love it either. But it is really, really good at what it does and it doesn't suffer any of the issues plaguing software development in more modern technologies. > Amount of code release has extremely little to do with a language being good or bad, just with its popularity. The empirical view would be that truly crappy things don't tend to get both the adoption and staying power of something like PHP. > if for any reason you have to touch the code base, being for security upgrade, refactor or feature implementation, there is a potential for a lot of grief just because of the tool someone decided to use for the job. And this is unique to PHP? I've worked in so many different languages and architectures I actually can't ever remember all of them off the top of my head. They all have warts. It's possible to build fragile, incomprehensible code in all of them. PHP's greatest issue is its accessibility. It is so easy to get started with PHP that for over a decade it was the first language for most web developers. That has led to a lot of really awful code being published, coupled with a lot of really awful, stale documentation scattered around the web. > 3. What was really that about hipster programmer? It has been a while since PHP stopped being the mainstream language for backend web development so that really makes little sense. If you measure by "technologies mentioned in HN headlines", maybe. Other sources find that PHP is still used by around 79% of the web (https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all). The yearly usage statistics graph is hilarious: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin... There are intelligent, reasoned criticisms of PHP from smart people and I enjoy reading those. Same as similar criticisms of Python, or Node.js, or Elegant Pootwaddle. But most of the time, "PHP is bad" is just a low-effort comment people make hoping to get a few nods from the internet. Conjecture: the average Wordpress site is longer-lived than 50% of the startups launched through YC.
- dpacmittal 8y ago
  PHP 7 is so much better and PHP 8 is on track to become even better.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    True. what They are doing with PHP 7 and 8 is pretty impressive.
  - gchamonlive 8y ago
    Can't really agree. 7.3 differs so much from 7.0 that migrating is just not possible without careful code rewrite. How is a version good when it is incompatible inside minor version releases? I know little about version 8 though, but as long as they are not abandoning backwards compatibility it won't make up for the language flaws

Replacing php entirely would be a massive improvement. I only had sorrows with it, the kind of language that is painful to write all the way through.

DCoder 8y ago
Replacing a language does not make all the code written in it go away, though. PHP has its tentacles all over the web with WordPress, Drupal, Magento, etc. and those will not be replaced any time soon.
- gchamonlive 8y ago
  very true, and the main reason why it is still used. Still, does not disprove what I said, that replacing PHP would be an improvement. A really tough one in many cases, but still an improvement.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    FB is replacing PHP with hack. Nobody outside of FB seems terribly interested now that it won't run existing PHP.
thaumaturgy 8y ago
For every word a hipster programmer spends on how terrible PHP is, another 10,000 lines of PHP are released into the wild.
- gchamonlive 8y ago
  That comment is useless in a really broad spectrum 1. We have to criticise the tools we use. That is the only way we improve. If people had that mentality of not criticising a tool because of how popular it is, we would be stuck with cobol for life 2. Amount of code release has extremely little to do with a language being good or bad, just with its popularity. And it is hard to move away from a language once you have a solid base. Still the language flaws are right there and if for any reason you have to touch the code base, being for security upgrade, refactor or feature implementation, there is a potential for a lot of grief just because of the tool someone decided to use for the job. 3. What was really that about hipster programmer? It has been a while since PHP stopped being the mainstream language for backend web development so that really makes little sense.
  - thaumaturgy 8y ago
    > 1. We have to criticise the tools we use. That is the only way we improve. If people had that mentality of not criticising a tool because of how popular it is, we would be stuck with cobol for life Your comment wasn't constructive criticism, it was kvetching. And we are stuck with COBOL for life. I guarantee you that every financial transaction you make gets touched by some COBOL somewhere. One takeaway from this might be, "the horrors! Organizations should be spending more money rewriting things in the latest technologies!" Another takeaway from this might be, "COBOL was so revolutionary for its time that it enjoyed massive adoption three decades ago, and it's still good enough that it isn't worth the cost to replace it in many cases." You may not enjoy working with it. I've worked with it, I didn't love it either. But it is really, really good at what it does and it doesn't suffer any of the issues plaguing software development in more modern technologies. > Amount of code release has extremely little to do with a language being good or bad, just with its popularity. The empirical view would be that truly crappy things don't tend to get both the adoption and staying power of something like PHP. > if for any reason you have to touch the code base, being for security upgrade, refactor or feature implementation, there is a potential for a lot of grief just because of the tool someone decided to use for the job. And this is unique to PHP? I've worked in so many different languages and architectures I actually can't ever remember all of them off the top of my head. They all have warts. It's possible to build fragile, incomprehensible code in all of them. PHP's greatest issue is its accessibility. It is so easy to get started with PHP that for over a decade it was the first language for most web developers. That has led to a lot of really awful code being published, coupled with a lot of really awful, stale documentation scattered around the web. > 3. What was really that about hipster programmer? It has been a while since PHP stopped being the mainstream language for backend web development so that really makes little sense. If you measure by "technologies mentioned in HN headlines", maybe. Other sources find that PHP is still used by around 79% of the web (https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all). The yearly usage statistics graph is hilarious: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin... There are intelligent, reasoned criticisms of PHP from smart people and I enjoy reading those. Same as similar criticisms of Python, or Node.js, or Elegant Pootwaddle. But most of the time, "PHP is bad" is just a low-effort comment people make hoping to get a few nods from the internet. Conjecture: the average Wordpress site is longer-lived than 50% of the startups launched through YC.
dpacmittal 8y ago
PHP 7 is so much better and PHP 8 is on track to become even better.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  True. what They are doing with PHP 7 and 8 is pretty impressive.
- gchamonlive 8y ago
  Can't really agree. 7.3 differs so much from 7.0 that migrating is just not possible without careful code rewrite. How is a version good when it is incompatible inside minor version releases? I know little about version 8 though, but as long as they are not abandoning backwards compatibility it won't make up for the language flaws