4 ms·

A small child doesn't think a crayon is badly designed until he has used a pencil or a pen. Without a frame of reference, a PHP developer has little reason to

A small child doesn't think a crayon is badly designed until he has used a pencil or a pen. Without a frame of reference, a PHP developer has little reason to swear at the code.

6ren 16y ago
That's assuming that most profanity is directed at the language. It might be the case, but one may also be annoyed by a codebase, by an algorithm, by a bug, by a co-worker, by the business reason for the commit, or by something totally unrelated. There can also be humourous swearing, and swearing for emphasis (see DHH), neither of which convey annoyance at all. Hypothesis A: PHP projects tend to be smaller and simpler, with fewer interactions with other code/requirements/people, and therefore fewer opportunities for annoyance. Hypothesis B: PHP is actually a very simple and close fit to its use-case, of unambitious webapps, and so often the tool just does its job, and disappears. There's no space to swear at a tool that you don't notice.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  They could be swearing in joy. # This new PHP library is fucking awesome!
- dmoney 16y ago
  At what point does a webapp become "ambitious" and not suited for PHP? What about PHP with a framework such as, e.g., Cake? I'm curious because I'm embarking on a project and probably choosing Rails over Cake, but only because the other developer is a Rails guy.
rbanffy 16y ago
I observe lots of groups in this situation. It took me eight years from first contact to first real project in C++ because I learned Smalltalk first. Hadn't I seen Smalltalk before, I would have thought C++ was just fine, instead of the abomination, the gigantic leap backwards it really is, and would happily use it like so many people do. A lot of people love their tools just because they don't know better ones.
sgman 16y ago
Your point holds true for all languages in the graph.
knieveltech 16y ago
Am I the only one on HN that's about sick to death of the "PHP developers are children/idiots/bad programmers" meme? I can (and have) been paid to code in all of the following languages: C Perl JavaScript PHP I also occasionally code in Python and assembly for fun. When it comes to web projects PHP is my goto language because it works in all web environments without a bunch of bullshit surrounding installation, versioning or deployment. It's 2011 people, are you telling me developers are still trying to establish some sense of shiny self importance based on language choice? Sad.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > Am I the only one on HN that's about sick to death of the "PHP developers are children/idiots/bad programmers" meme? Most of the developers are bad. Assuming a normal distribution, pretty much half of them are below the average and average is not usually something to brag about. That said, languages that stand a higher chance of generating employment should attract those that don't want to learn new programming languages (something good programmers tend to do) and want to make their bets on sure technologies. I expect programmers interested in Lisp, Haskel, Erlang, Python, Ruby, Lua, Scala, Forth, Smalltalk to be, on average, better than those who choose Java, C#, PHP or Visual Basic. Of course, not all of those who choose these languages are bad programmers (and the opposite is also true), but I bet you will find more mediocre programmers on the second-group. (burn, karma, burn)
  - knieveltech 16y ago
    I'm sorry but you're full of shit. "Most of the developers are bad" is a faith-based unquantifiable statement. In all the project work I've done (open source and proprietary) over the last four years I've encountered two (2) truly miserable PHP developers. One works for a newspaper company (I guess they couldn't afford talent), the other is so new he's still learning the implications of for() vs while() and since the guy's actually really smart just a smidge of mentoring and some experience and he'll train up nicely. "languages that stand a higher chance of generating employment should attract those that don't want to learn a new programming language" I think you're confusing PHP and Visual Basic/.NET here. Based on hit counts of job posts there are way more job opportunities for MS developers than PHP developers and based on median salary data coding .NET is worth about 20k a year more, so if they're rational actors the "just in it for a paycheck" crowd should be migrating to Windows development. Your language salad comparisons are likewise faith-based. How about we trade anecdotes instead? I've met a total of six Ruby developers during my professional career. To a man they were immature, arrogant and totally in love with the hype surrounding their language of choice. Four of the six could be fingered for running multi-million dollar projects into the ground courtesy of a year and a half long series of hipster love-in's masquerading as a SCRUM meetings. Meanwhile during the same time period myself and one other developer launched 65 sites on four platforms with a combined total of around 1 million in annual ad revenue generated for the company. You just keep singing your song, man. I'll keep shipping shit. Edited to add: just keep on downvoting, truth hurts.
rickmb 16y ago
yawn Speaking of frame of reference, people belittling PHP devs are mostly showing their own ignorance.

A small child doesn't think a crayon is badly designed until he has used a pencil or a pen. Without a frame of reference, a PHP developer has little reason to swear at the code.

6ren 16y ago

That's assuming that most profanity is directed at the language. It might be the case, but one may also be annoyed by a codebase, by an algorithm, by a bug, by a co-worker, by the business reason for the commit, or by something totally unrelated. There can also be humourous swearing, and swearing for emphasis (see DHH), neither of which convey annoyance at all. Hypothesis A: PHP projects tend to be smaller and simpler, with fewer interactions with other code/requirements/people, and therefore fewer opportunities for annoyance. Hypothesis B: PHP is actually a very simple and close fit to its use-case, of unambitious webapps, and so often the tool just does its job, and disappears. There's no space to swear at a tool that you don't notice.

JonnieCache 16y ago
They could be swearing in joy. # This new PHP library is fucking awesome!
dmoney 16y ago
At what point does a webapp become "ambitious" and not suited for PHP? What about PHP with a framework such as, e.g., Cake? I'm curious because I'm embarking on a project and probably choosing Rails over Cake, but only because the other developer is a Rails guy.

rbanffy 16y ago

I observe lots of groups in this situation. It took me eight years from first contact to first real project in C++ because I learned Smalltalk first. Hadn't I seen Smalltalk before, I would have thought C++ was just fine, instead of the abomination, the gigantic leap backwards it really is, and would happily use it like so many people do. A lot of people love their tools just because they don't know better ones.

sgman 16y ago

Your point holds true for all languages in the graph.

knieveltech 16y ago

Am I the only one on HN that's about sick to death of the "PHP developers are children/idiots/bad programmers" meme? I can (and have) been paid to code in all of the following languages: C Perl JavaScript PHP I also occasionally code in Python and assembly for fun. When it comes to web projects PHP is my goto language because it works in all web environments without a bunch of bullshit surrounding installation, versioning or deployment. It's 2011 people, are you telling me developers are still trying to establish some sense of shiny self importance based on language choice? Sad.

rbanffy 16y ago
> Am I the only one on HN that's about sick to death of the "PHP developers are children/idiots/bad programmers" meme? Most of the developers are bad. Assuming a normal distribution, pretty much half of them are below the average and average is not usually something to brag about. That said, languages that stand a higher chance of generating employment should attract those that don't want to learn new programming languages (something good programmers tend to do) and want to make their bets on sure technologies. I expect programmers interested in Lisp, Haskel, Erlang, Python, Ruby, Lua, Scala, Forth, Smalltalk to be, on average, better than those who choose Java, C#, PHP or Visual Basic. Of course, not all of those who choose these languages are bad programmers (and the opposite is also true), but I bet you will find more mediocre programmers on the second-group. (burn, karma, burn)
- knieveltech 16y ago
  I'm sorry but you're full of shit. "Most of the developers are bad" is a faith-based unquantifiable statement. In all the project work I've done (open source and proprietary) over the last four years I've encountered two (2) truly miserable PHP developers. One works for a newspaper company (I guess they couldn't afford talent), the other is so new he's still learning the implications of for() vs while() and since the guy's actually really smart just a smidge of mentoring and some experience and he'll train up nicely. "languages that stand a higher chance of generating employment should attract those that don't want to learn a new programming language" I think you're confusing PHP and Visual Basic/.NET here. Based on hit counts of job posts there are way more job opportunities for MS developers than PHP developers and based on median salary data coding .NET is worth about 20k a year more, so if they're rational actors the "just in it for a paycheck" crowd should be migrating to Windows development. Your language salad comparisons are likewise faith-based. How about we trade anecdotes instead? I've met a total of six Ruby developers during my professional career. To a man they were immature, arrogant and totally in love with the hype surrounding their language of choice. Four of the six could be fingered for running multi-million dollar projects into the ground courtesy of a year and a half long series of hipster love-in's masquerading as a SCRUM meetings. Meanwhile during the same time period myself and one other developer launched 65 sites on four platforms with a combined total of around 1 million in annual ad revenue generated for the company. You just keep singing your song, man. I'll keep shipping shit. Edited to add: just keep on downvoting, truth hurts.

rickmb 16y ago

yawn Speaking of frame of reference, people belittling PHP devs are mostly showing their own ignorance.