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Absolutely none of that takes away from the original comment though. PHP as a language is pretty garbage. PHP’s deployment story and as a concept is pretty in

by girvo 7y ago

Absolutely none of that takes away from the original comment though. PHP as a language is pretty garbage. PHP’s deployment story and as a concept is pretty interesting, and we’ve dropped it entirely as a community. The reasons why are interesting to explore, I think. The closest to it is something like Node, I guess: install the language, you can wire up an HTTP server with a couple functions, but it’s still lacking the simplicity of PHP there. Python gets kind of close too, using something like Flask, but now we’ve got libraries we’re talking about. I’d love to see a web-first language with PHP-styled ease, but with a much better language, and the ability to go down the road of Python/Flask etc. with function-based routes if one pleases. Of course, frankly, a lot of your comments on PHP are out of date, but that’s neither here nor there: the language barely matters for what is under discussion.

15155 7y ago
> The closest to it is something like Node, I guess: install the language, you can wire up an HTTP server with a couple functions, but it’s still lacking the simplicity of PHP there. How is configuring Apache/mod_php/whatever is used these days easier than require('http')...? How about the htaccess shenanigans that had to be used to achieve vanity/custom routing? There's no way the Node stdlib with a hand-rolled path-based router (so as to not require a dependency manager, mimicing PHP - even though npm is packaged) isn't an overall-better story from a simplicity (and performance, and maintainability, and security) standpoint than the Apache/PHP stack. "Drop a bunch of files into a directory and have a dynamic website" was a romantic idea. Most people probably just use(d) cPanel remotely and WAMP/MAMP.app locally and never needed to configure Apache, but that complexity was definitely still there. Analogously: Next.js might be the "WAMP/MAMP.app of today."
- girvo 7y ago
  Of course the complexity is still there, but using WAMP/MAMP.app is exactly the context I'm thinking about this through :) I agree that Next.js is making big strides in this direction. I think other scripting languages could do similar, too. I imagine Lua would already have something like this floating around, ready to be packaged up in this way?

by girvo 7y ago

15155 7y ago

> The closest to it is something like Node, I guess: install the language, you can wire up an HTTP server with a couple functions, but it’s still lacking the simplicity of PHP there. How is configuring Apache/mod_php/whatever is used these days easier than require('http')...? How about the htaccess shenanigans that had to be used to achieve vanity/custom routing? There's no way the Node stdlib with a hand-rolled path-based router (so as to not require a dependency manager, mimicing PHP - even though npm is packaged) isn't an overall-better story from a simplicity (and performance, and maintainability, and security) standpoint than the Apache/PHP stack. "Drop a bunch of files into a directory and have a dynamic website" was a romantic idea. Most people probably just use(d) cPanel remotely and WAMP/MAMP.app locally and never needed to configure Apache, but that complexity was definitely still there. Analogously: Next.js might be the "WAMP/MAMP.app of today."

girvo 7y ago
Of course the complexity is still there, but using WAMP/MAMP.app is exactly the context I'm thinking about this through :) I agree that Next.js is making big strides in this direction. I think other scripting languages could do similar, too. I imagine Lua would already have something like this floating around, ready to be packaged up in this way?