5 ms·

Eh, that's not a great example. It can be hard to appreciate the simplicity of PHP when one's fully bought into the stockholm syndrome of another language/frame

by lhorie 7y ago

Eh, that's not a great example. It can be hard to appreciate the simplicity of PHP when one's fully bought into the stockholm syndrome of another language/framework :) Consider this: a hello world in PHP requires no knowledge of programming whatsoever: a file saying "hello world" is enough to get the text to show on a browser. Having two different pages requires no knowledge of if statements, nor of 404 handling. On top of that, PHP silently manages a lot of plumbing for you: it will also do caching and streaming out of the box and it won't crash the server due to OS ulimit errors when you have a high number of concurrent requests hitting the same file. Heck, you could stream result sets from a database to a streaming HTML document in like a dozen lines of PHP with no libraries 10 years ago. The equivalent machinery to achieve something similar in e.g. the latest Next.js today is beyond abysmal in comparison.

egeozcan 7y ago
Depending on what's serving PHP it can also get complicated. Everybody can't stop talking how easy it was to cobble up something in shared hosting days, but don't forget that back then only option was pretty much Apache and even that was enough to give you headaches because of different modules being activated, your htaccess file being incompatible and so on. Also: You are a kid, wanting to program something on your new (typically) windows pc you got for your birthday, is it easier to get started with PHP than other alternatives? What about html and js?
- lhorie 7y ago
  Sure, PHP deployment could run into some issues back in the day - remember magic quote configuration issues in rando hosts? But even that was something you could get around relatively easily (mostly thanks to the stupidly beginner friendly docs). These days, hosts can easily drop in a PHP hosting pre-packaged solution, so you'd be hard-pressed to find a PHP host without a reasonable configuration. As for pure beginners, if your goal is to get pretty things on screen, HTML + CSS is fine. But if you asked me to pick between PHP and Node.js (or any other language, for that matter) for teaching a kid about server-side web programming, I'd pick PHP in a heartbeat. You can't even get past posting a form in Node.js without having to reach for NPM :) In fact, PHP is how my brother (who went to business school) converted to a programming career.
numlock86 7y ago
> a file saying "hello world" is enough to get the text to show on a browser Wrong. A file saying "hello world" does not even serve its contents through HTTP on port 80, contrary to the node.js-example you are arguing against. Good luck setting up that Apache monstrosity (as it was common back then) without any "programming knowledge whatsoever". But yeah, I guess your mentioned stockholm syndrome is a thing for PHP people, too.
- lhorie 7y ago
  It sounds like you've never actually used PHP. Even way back when, you could pick from multiple pre-packaged solutions (XAMPP, WAMP, etc). In windows, the installer was a no-brainer click-through wizard, much like any other random software you'd find on sourceforge or whatever. And not only it would setup apache, but also mysql. Then you could click a button to turn on PHP (so no need to type anything in terminal either). You could also get hosting and upload your PHP files via a browser interface to put your hello world live on the web without ever typing any "code" other than the text "hello world" on a index.php file in notepad. Not even knowledge of version control was required for this form of deployment (though, of course, you can also follow standard industry best practices like with any other mainstream language).
  - numlock86 7y ago
    > you could pick from multiple pre-packaged solutions > like any other random software you'd find on sourceforge or whatever > could click a button to turn on PHP > etc. tl;dr you don't need to know anything. Good summary of why PHP in production "back the days" was usually of very poor quality.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - lhorie 7y ago
      "Poor quality" comes with the territory of popularity. Everyone talks about Java over-engineering horror stories and the Javascript community even coined the "Javascript fatigue" term to summarize the pervasive quality issues in its ecosystem. But naturally it's perfectly possible to write good quality codebases in those languages.
snak 7y ago
I despise PHP, but those are words of truth. The first time developer experience in vanilla PHP is the most friendly and easy as you can get, cannot be compared against Next.js, AspNetCore, Flask, Express.js, or any other framework in any other language I could imagine.
seangrogg 7y ago
> It can be hard to appreciate the simplicity of PHP when one's fully bought into the stockholm syndrome of another language/framework :) I used to use PHP and I haven't touched Node.js in quite some time as I've been playing with Rust/(Rocket, Actix Web) and Go's standard lib. So... :) > Consider this: a hello world in PHP requires no knowledge of programming whatsoever: a file saying "hello world" is enough to get the text to show on a browser This does not happen with "no knowledge" unless you suppose that copying and pasting arbitrary lines into a command prompt is "no knowledge" (that Apache server isn't going to install and start itself). And if that's allowed then suddenly there's lots of things you can do that require "no knowledge" as even a few lines of JS spewed into an index.js file via cat can get you easy file content streaming and 404 handling without need for a reverse proxy. > the latest Next.js today is beyond abysmal in comparison I don't know about Next.js; I've never used it nor does it look like something I'd want to use. I also don't understand why we're comparing Next.js to PHP when the equivalent would be some Drupal-as-a-Service or similar.
- parliament32 7y ago
  Nitpick but: >that Apache server isn't going to install and start itself Yeah it is, you just check the "web server" box during the Debian installation.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  No command-line copypasting was required to install a fully functional LAMP (or WAMP!) package.
parliament32 7y ago
The LAMP stack was effectively fucking magic and basically the whole reason many of us are in this field right now. Specifically, PHP/MySQL mostly "just worked" and dealt with most of the stupid stuff for you. Yes, the performance was kinda meh sometimes (but back then a normal page load had a dozen assets, not hundreds) and not-strict typing, behind-the-scenes shenanigans, and other magic made for some interesting bugs... but overall, it worked, and it was easy enough for a middle schooler to pick up. I switched tracks from webdev to systems pretty quick but sometimes I look at what's going on in webdev today and frankly it's pretty disturbing. The sheer amount of complexity to render some HTML and JS is mind-boggling. And the worst part is it's not even that much better than it was back in the LAMP days. Pages still take forever to load, browser compat is still crap, and heavy sites are still gross. The only difference is the amount of complexity, gatekeeping, and sheer busywork that these new frameworks/languages/systems bring in. Or maybe I'm just the old man yelling at the clouds.

by lhorie 7y ago

egeozcan 7y ago

Depending on what's serving PHP it can also get complicated. Everybody can't stop talking how easy it was to cobble up something in shared hosting days, but don't forget that back then only option was pretty much Apache and even that was enough to give you headaches because of different modules being activated, your htaccess file being incompatible and so on. Also: You are a kid, wanting to program something on your new (typically) windows pc you got for your birthday, is it easier to get started with PHP than other alternatives? What about html and js?

lhorie 7y ago
Sure, PHP deployment could run into some issues back in the day - remember magic quote configuration issues in rando hosts? But even that was something you could get around relatively easily (mostly thanks to the stupidly beginner friendly docs). These days, hosts can easily drop in a PHP hosting pre-packaged solution, so you'd be hard-pressed to find a PHP host without a reasonable configuration. As for pure beginners, if your goal is to get pretty things on screen, HTML + CSS is fine. But if you asked me to pick between PHP and Node.js (or any other language, for that matter) for teaching a kid about server-side web programming, I'd pick PHP in a heartbeat. You can't even get past posting a form in Node.js without having to reach for NPM :) In fact, PHP is how my brother (who went to business school) converted to a programming career.

numlock86 7y ago

> a file saying "hello world" is enough to get the text to show on a browser Wrong. A file saying "hello world" does not even serve its contents through HTTP on port 80, contrary to the node.js-example you are arguing against. Good luck setting up that Apache monstrosity (as it was common back then) without any "programming knowledge whatsoever". But yeah, I guess your mentioned stockholm syndrome is a thing for PHP people, too.

lhorie 7y ago
It sounds like you've never actually used PHP. Even way back when, you could pick from multiple pre-packaged solutions (XAMPP, WAMP, etc). In windows, the installer was a no-brainer click-through wizard, much like any other random software you'd find on sourceforge or whatever. And not only it would setup apache, but also mysql. Then you could click a button to turn on PHP (so no need to type anything in terminal either). You could also get hosting and upload your PHP files via a browser interface to put your hello world live on the web without ever typing any "code" other than the text "hello world" on a index.php file in notepad. Not even knowledge of version control was required for this form of deployment (though, of course, you can also follow standard industry best practices like with any other mainstream language).
- numlock86 7y ago
  > you could pick from multiple pre-packaged solutions > like any other random software you'd find on sourceforge or whatever > could click a button to turn on PHP > etc. tl;dr you don't need to know anything. Good summary of why PHP in production "back the days" was usually of very poor quality.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lhorie 7y ago
    "Poor quality" comes with the territory of popularity. Everyone talks about Java over-engineering horror stories and the Javascript community even coined the "Javascript fatigue" term to summarize the pervasive quality issues in its ecosystem. But naturally it's perfectly possible to write good quality codebases in those languages.

snak 7y ago

I despise PHP, but those are words of truth. The first time developer experience in vanilla PHP is the most friendly and easy as you can get, cannot be compared against Next.js, AspNetCore, Flask, Express.js, or any other framework in any other language I could imagine.

seangrogg 7y ago

> It can be hard to appreciate the simplicity of PHP when one's fully bought into the stockholm syndrome of another language/framework :) I used to use PHP and I haven't touched Node.js in quite some time as I've been playing with Rust/(Rocket, Actix Web) and Go's standard lib. So... :) > Consider this: a hello world in PHP requires no knowledge of programming whatsoever: a file saying "hello world" is enough to get the text to show on a browser This does not happen with "no knowledge" unless you suppose that copying and pasting arbitrary lines into a command prompt is "no knowledge" (that Apache server isn't going to install and start itself). And if that's allowed then suddenly there's lots of things you can do that require "no knowledge" as even a few lines of JS spewed into an index.js file via cat can get you easy file content streaming and 404 handling without need for a reverse proxy. > the latest Next.js today is beyond abysmal in comparison I don't know about Next.js; I've never used it nor does it look like something I'd want to use. I also don't understand why we're comparing Next.js to PHP when the equivalent would be some Drupal-as-a-Service or similar.

parliament32 7y ago
Nitpick but: >that Apache server isn't going to install and start itself Yeah it is, you just check the "web server" box during the Debian installation.
Sharlin 7y ago
No command-line copypasting was required to install a fully functional LAMP (or WAMP!) package.

parliament32 7y ago

The LAMP stack was effectively fucking magic and basically the whole reason many of us are in this field right now. Specifically, PHP/MySQL mostly "just worked" and dealt with most of the stupid stuff for you. Yes, the performance was kinda meh sometimes (but back then a normal page load had a dozen assets, not hundreds) and not-strict typing, behind-the-scenes shenanigans, and other magic made for some interesting bugs... but overall, it worked, and it was easy enough for a middle schooler to pick up. I switched tracks from webdev to systems pretty quick but sometimes I look at what's going on in webdev today and frankly it's pretty disturbing. The sheer amount of complexity to render some HTML and JS is mind-boggling. And the worst part is it's not even that much better than it was back in the LAMP days. Pages still take forever to load, browser compat is still crap, and heavy sites are still gross. The only difference is the amount of complexity, gatekeeping, and sheer busywork that these new frameworks/languages/systems bring in. Or maybe I'm just the old man yelling at the clouds.