4 ms·

Awesome. We can never have enough of high quality self hosted software.

by lykr0n 7y ago

ultrarunner 7y ago
As someone who has been out of the PHP game for a long time, is it still a viable choice for new software? I don't have fond memories of the language at that time, so seeing PHP in the demo video poster frame was an immediate mark against pitching this at my company. That made me wonder whether it's a reasonable reaction to have. Edit for the downvoters— this is an honest question and I very much agree that we can never have too much high-quality self-hosted software. If that can be done with PHP I'm open-minded.
- robjan 7y ago
  PHP is getting a lot better these days. There is still a lot of clunky legacy syntax but the performance and features are pretty much on par with other scripting languages now.
  - lykr0n 7y ago
    Even better in some cases. PHP is slamming raw c function calls for some stuff, which makes some operations as fast as compiled binaries.
- penagwin 7y ago
  The latest versions of PHP aren't too bad. That said Node.js has IMO an interesting architecture because it's event driven, combine that with Typescript and it's solid. Python type support, and event driven frameworks (e.g. async/await) were only (fairly) recently made accessible, there's a few frameworks that can utilize it well like FastAPI, but many of the popular ones like Django are still behind on async/await support for the a lot of features like the ORM and still is lacking typing support. IMO the python web development system is going to be really awesome once Django gets robust types and async support. Disclaimer: Current job uses python/Django and js. I have little experience with other languages/frameworks.
- Isinlor 7y ago
  PHP is a very good choice. If you want to refresh your knowledge of PHP take a look here: https://phptherightway.com/ https://phptherightway.com/ It's fast. PHP has great documentation. PHP ecosystem is now based around Composer, in comparison to mess of package management in JavaScript and Python, Composer is just wonderful to use. Packagist has ton of libraries. Share nothing architecture is very easy to maintain and scale. You can do strict typing. There are static code analysis libraries like Psalm and PHPStan if you want features normally offered by compilers. It's easy to hire devs. There are two wonderful frameworks that moder PHP is centered around: Laravel and Symfony. There is also community body issuing standards to ease framework interoperability: https://www.php-fig.org/psr/ https://www.php-fig.org/psr/ The app seems to be written in Laravel, so you can take a look here if it's your coup of tea: https://laravel.com/ https://laravel.com/ Having said that, Wordpress and other old code bases are still a mess. But stable mess, and business like stable :) .
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    The hazard is that it was such a big mess in the past that if you want to hire someone to work on your self-hosted app, there are going to be a lot of applicants who want to use PHP the wrong way.
    - smacktoward 7y ago
      So use PHPTheRightWay to come up with some interview questions to filter those folks out. Problem solved!
  - theamk 7y ago
    I did a quick look through PhpTheRightWay website, and I saw no mention of the advice that php user should have no permissions to change app code -- or in other words, that "deploy" and "run" users should be different. Is this the recommended practice now? Because that was the main reason to avoid PHP codebases for me. Having an app where any code execution bug instantly leads to permanent compromise scares me deeply.
    - 7y ago
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  For me, the main reason I like it is that I love my cheap shared webhost. I've been with them for 13 years and they're rock solid, the price stays the same and the amount of space, traffic and DB and general admin options just keep getting increased. Should they ever go away, all I need is PHP and MySQL, no special modules or fancy .htaccess required. Every single file is code or data, I like that. At least the way I use it, which is very modest in scope, it's like making portable apps... whereas all the modern stuff with installation and deployment processes are more like things you need to install and which write settings to some registry, to the point they run in virtual machines. That's just overkill for me and what I do. I'd rather "everybody" was able to develop simple sites like I am able to, than me being able to make some super fancy shit. I generally don't pour time and energy into tech and companies that don't benefit "the little man" should the little man show interest, and if in doubt, I prefer things that have been around for decades, for making things that I might want to keep using and expanding for decades, too.
- mikece 7y ago
  I understand not wanting to write PHP for an app I have to maintain as part of my daily work, but for something like this where you want to sell it to anyone and have it run anywhere, it's hard to be more universal than "PHP and MySQL" (though it does make me smile when SQLite is an option as well).
- mekster 7y ago
  When you can't exactly tell what was bad about PHP, then it may just be an impression given to you from a lousy programmer who would just blame the tools instead or from some messy code which apparently isn't the fault of the language. What's wrong about it really? If you're an author of an opensource web app, it's a smart choice to pick PHP to have as much audience as you could get. PHP is the primary candidate for any VPS.

Awesome. We can never have enough of high quality self hosted software.

by lykr0n 7y ago

Awesome. We can never have enough of high quality self hosted software.

As someone who has been out of the PHP game for a long time, is it still a viable choice for new software? I don't have fond memories of the language at that time, so seeing PHP in the demo video poster frame was an immediate mark against pitching this at my company. That made me wonder whether it's a reasonable reaction to have. Edit for the downvoters— this is an honest question and I very much agree that we can never have too much high-quality self-hosted software. If that can be done with PHP I'm open-minded.

robjan 7y ago
PHP is getting a lot better these days. There is still a lot of clunky legacy syntax but the performance and features are pretty much on par with other scripting languages now.
- lykr0n 7y ago
  Even better in some cases. PHP is slamming raw c function calls for some stuff, which makes some operations as fast as compiled binaries.
penagwin 7y ago
The latest versions of PHP aren't too bad. That said Node.js has IMO an interesting architecture because it's event driven, combine that with Typescript and it's solid. Python type support, and event driven frameworks (e.g. async/await) were only (fairly) recently made accessible, there's a few frameworks that can utilize it well like FastAPI, but many of the popular ones like Django are still behind on async/await support for the a lot of features like the ORM and still is lacking typing support. IMO the python web development system is going to be really awesome once Django gets robust types and async support. Disclaimer: Current job uses python/Django and js. I have little experience with other languages/frameworks.
Isinlor 7y ago
PHP is a very good choice. If you want to refresh your knowledge of PHP take a look here: https://phptherightway.com/ https://phptherightway.com/ It's fast. PHP has great documentation. PHP ecosystem is now based around Composer, in comparison to mess of package management in JavaScript and Python, Composer is just wonderful to use. Packagist has ton of libraries. Share nothing architecture is very easy to maintain and scale. You can do strict typing. There are static code analysis libraries like Psalm and PHPStan if you want features normally offered by compilers. It's easy to hire devs. There are two wonderful frameworks that moder PHP is centered around: Laravel and Symfony. There is also community body issuing standards to ease framework interoperability: https://www.php-fig.org/psr/ https://www.php-fig.org/psr/ The app seems to be written in Laravel, so you can take a look here if it's your coup of tea: https://laravel.com/ https://laravel.com/ Having said that, Wordpress and other old code bases are still a mess. But stable mess, and business like stable :) .
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  The hazard is that it was such a big mess in the past that if you want to hire someone to work on your self-hosted app, there are going to be a lot of applicants who want to use PHP the wrong way.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    So use PHPTheRightWay to come up with some interview questions to filter those folks out. Problem solved!
- theamk 7y ago
  I did a quick look through PhpTheRightWay website, and I saw no mention of the advice that php user should have no permissions to change app code -- or in other words, that "deploy" and "run" users should be different. Is this the recommended practice now? Because that was the main reason to avoid PHP codebases for me. Having an app where any code execution bug instantly leads to permanent compromise scares me deeply.
  - 7y ago
PavlovsCat 7y ago
For me, the main reason I like it is that I love my cheap shared webhost. I've been with them for 13 years and they're rock solid, the price stays the same and the amount of space, traffic and DB and general admin options just keep getting increased. Should they ever go away, all I need is PHP and MySQL, no special modules or fancy .htaccess required. Every single file is code or data, I like that. At least the way I use it, which is very modest in scope, it's like making portable apps... whereas all the modern stuff with installation and deployment processes are more like things you need to install and which write settings to some registry, to the point they run in virtual machines. That's just overkill for me and what I do. I'd rather "everybody" was able to develop simple sites like I am able to, than me being able to make some super fancy shit. I generally don't pour time and energy into tech and companies that don't benefit "the little man" should the little man show interest, and if in doubt, I prefer things that have been around for decades, for making things that I might want to keep using and expanding for decades, too.
mikece 7y ago
I understand not wanting to write PHP for an app I have to maintain as part of my daily work, but for something like this where you want to sell it to anyone and have it run anywhere, it's hard to be more universal than "PHP and MySQL" (though it does make me smile when SQLite is an option as well).
mekster 7y ago
When you can't exactly tell what was bad about PHP, then it may just be an impression given to you from a lousy programmer who would just blame the tools instead or from some messy code which apparently isn't the fault of the language. What's wrong about it really? If you're an author of an opensource web app, it's a smart choice to pick PHP to have as much audience as you could get. PHP is the primary candidate for any VPS.