4 ms·

It’s so easy to teach. Learninh html css and php is such a win. Quick to bash out a simple site.

echelon 7y ago
> Quick to bash out a simple site. This is precisely why I don't think it's the appropriate tool for any substantial, serious, or long-lived projects. The language feels kludgey, and it attracts an ecosystem of beginners that don't necessarily have to learn much in the way of CS fundamentals or engineering to succeed. (Indeed, I've run into more than a few that don't know the difference between lists and dictionaries or the runtimes of the operations performed on them.) It's not that I think that a language should be a barrier, but I've wasted so much time reading confusing and poorly-written PHP code, and it feels like the language actively empowers code to be written this way. A tool should also teach. There are other languages that have this problem as well (C++ comes to mind), but I think they tend to be hard enough to use that practitioners already understand the do's and don't's. I know it's irrational of me to be so irate that this language is still active, but it bothers me that real engineering work and human productivity is spent on supporting one of so many scripting languages that are marginally different. I suppose I should be even more angry at all the cognitive effort being put into marketing and adtech, but PHP makes me sigh.
- muglug 7y ago
  >> Quick to bash out a simple site. > This is precisely why I don't think it's the appropriate tool for any substantial, serious, or long-lived projects This is precisely why it is an appropriate tool - those simple sites become more complicated, and eventually they're Tumblr or Etsy or Wikipedia or what-have-you. > it feels like the language actively empowers code to be written this way. I've felt the same thing, especially early on. I think there are two reasons: - a lack of a compile step means you're never forced to conform to someone else's idea of how your code should work (though running a static analysis tool fixes this). - additionally, PHP's interpreter is designed to soldier on in situations where other runtimes would exit (e.g. when it encounters an undefined variable or array offset). While I can imagine justifications for this behaviour, it allows for a lot of bad code.
- tylerchilds 7y ago
  > The language feels kludgey, and it attracts an ecosystem of beginners that don't necessarily have to learn much in the way of CS fundamentals or engineering to succeed. Reminds me of people complaining about JavaScript over the years, yet we pulled through, the language is better and most importantly, we're making money writing it.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    >> we’re making money writing it So did they in PHP.

> Quick to bash out a simple site. This is precisely why I don't think it's the appropriate tool for any substantial, serious, or long-lived projects. The language feels kludgey, and it attracts an ecosystem of beginners that don't necessarily have to learn much in the way of CS fundamentals or engineering to succeed. (Indeed, I've run into more than a few that don't know the difference between lists and dictionaries or the runtimes of the operations performed on them.) It's not that I think that a language should be a barrier, but I've wasted so much time reading confusing and poorly-written PHP code, and it feels like the language actively empowers code to be written this way. A tool should also teach. There are other languages that have this problem as well (C++ comes to mind), but I think they tend to be hard enough to use that practitioners already understand the do's and don't's. I know it's irrational of me to be so irate that this language is still active, but it bothers me that real engineering work and human productivity is spent on supporting one of so many scripting languages that are marginally different. I suppose I should be even more angry at all the cognitive effort being put into marketing and adtech, but PHP makes me sigh.

muglug 7y ago
>> Quick to bash out a simple site. > This is precisely why I don't think it's the appropriate tool for any substantial, serious, or long-lived projects This is precisely why it is an appropriate tool - those simple sites become more complicated, and eventually they're Tumblr or Etsy or Wikipedia or what-have-you. > it feels like the language actively empowers code to be written this way. I've felt the same thing, especially early on. I think there are two reasons: - a lack of a compile step means you're never forced to conform to someone else's idea of how your code should work (though running a static analysis tool fixes this). - additionally, PHP's interpreter is designed to soldier on in situations where other runtimes would exit (e.g. when it encounters an undefined variable or array offset). While I can imagine justifications for this behaviour, it allows for a lot of bad code.
tylerchilds 7y ago
> The language feels kludgey, and it attracts an ecosystem of beginners that don't necessarily have to learn much in the way of CS fundamentals or engineering to succeed. Reminds me of people complaining about JavaScript over the years, yet we pulled through, the language is better and most importantly, we're making money writing it.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  >> we’re making money writing it So did they in PHP.