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I can't really understand the hate towards php in general, never was able to understand it. I started programming in PHP and then moved to c# and now mostly JS,

I can't really understand the hate towards php in general, never was able to understand it. I started programming in PHP and then moved to c# and now mostly JS, but never really understood the motivations behind people bashing on PHP. Like, some of my friends that today mostly program in React/Nextjs praise the framework as something amazing and the SSR as something really innovative, and - honestly - it resembles PHP more than ever, but if you ask them about PHP they will immediately say it is a "bad language" and "a joke". Laravel, as you stated, is a really amazing framework, but some people are carrying baggage from the time of PHP4 or something even older and never really tried to see current/modern PHP and some other people just built their idea of the language around it because it was the cool thing to do.

kangoo1707 6y ago
no PHP framework is similar to the thing that NextJS/Reactis doing. The output is the same (well, isn’t the point of web framework is to spit out HTML?) but the methodology is totally different.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  And about 100x more complex and fragile.
  - kangoo1707 6y ago
    Not at all. I have worked with both for a long time and I can clearly see the differences. They are used for different purposes. The people comparing any PHP frameworks to NextJS have not been very experienced with frontend development, IMO.
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    Not necessarily. I recently rewrote an old web application written in php and jquery with django, react and typescript. The new application has roughly the same LoC count while having more features and better interactivity.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Comparing strictly SSR yes. Though if one needs a lot of dynamic client side behavior a JS framework can be easier to reason about. Lately modern PHP frameworks have so a lot of dependencies too. So both stacks are getting fatter as their capabilities grow.
aganame 6y ago
Because it's fairly popular (#6ish or something) as a language, it is more probable that people are forced to use it at the threat of unemployment. Nobody is forced to write Haskell or Rust, you have to actively look for such positions. Then again, this doesn't explain why the number #1 language (Python) is so liked...
joelbluminator 6y ago
as a Ruby/Rails guy, I feel the same way. Seems like Rails became the top stack to shit on to feel better about your stack these days. People are just tribal. We need to feel superior to the "other" to feel better about ourselves.
- mtnGoat 6y ago
  Funny, I remember everyone hating on PHP when they moved to RoR, and now they hate that are and moving on. Its almost as if they just need things to hate so they can rewrite code. its very cyclical IMO. The elitism of learning a new language and then mocking those that haven't put in the same time and effort to row in the exact same direction, has always amused me. Ive never judged anyone for what tools they use to get their job done, but apparently i am a rare breed in that i am more concerned with the output then the language choice.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    RoR was guilty of that as well, so we kinda deserve it. The community was more of an antithesis to java actually, not php.
  - goatlover 6y ago
    This and the parent comments are assuming that all language criticism boils down to tribalism/elitism and not problems with the language itself, as if all PLs are the same, and the choice to use them is arbitrary.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I mean the choice isn't literally arbitrary but it matters a lot less than the ecosystem and you can't really make a wrong choice as .NET, JS, PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, Go, $ReasonablyPopularLang are all plenty productive.
      - goatlover 6y ago
        Sure, but there are legitimate criticisms around types, complexity, security, maintainability, scalability and performance where the language choice can matter. Certainly when the project gets large.

kangoo1707 6y ago

no PHP framework is similar to the thing that NextJS/Reactis doing. The output is the same (well, isn’t the point of web framework is to spit out HTML?) but the methodology is totally different.

timw4mail 6y ago
And about 100x more complex and fragile.
- kangoo1707 6y ago
  Not at all. I have worked with both for a long time and I can clearly see the differences. They are used for different purposes. The people comparing any PHP frameworks to NextJS have not been very experienced with frontend development, IMO.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Not necessarily. I recently rewrote an old web application written in php and jquery with django, react and typescript. The new application has roughly the same LoC count while having more features and better interactivity.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Comparing strictly SSR yes. Though if one needs a lot of dynamic client side behavior a JS framework can be easier to reason about. Lately modern PHP frameworks have so a lot of dependencies too. So both stacks are getting fatter as their capabilities grow.

aganame 6y ago

Because it's fairly popular (#6ish or something) as a language, it is more probable that people are forced to use it at the threat of unemployment. Nobody is forced to write Haskell or Rust, you have to actively look for such positions. Then again, this doesn't explain why the number #1 language (Python) is so liked...

joelbluminator 6y ago

as a Ruby/Rails guy, I feel the same way. Seems like Rails became the top stack to shit on to feel better about your stack these days. People are just tribal. We need to feel superior to the "other" to feel better about ourselves.

mtnGoat 6y ago
Funny, I remember everyone hating on PHP when they moved to RoR, and now they hate that are and moving on. Its almost as if they just need things to hate so they can rewrite code. its very cyclical IMO. The elitism of learning a new language and then mocking those that haven't put in the same time and effort to row in the exact same direction, has always amused me. Ive never judged anyone for what tools they use to get their job done, but apparently i am a rare breed in that i am more concerned with the output then the language choice.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  RoR was guilty of that as well, so we kinda deserve it. The community was more of an antithesis to java actually, not php.
- goatlover 6y ago
  This and the parent comments are assuming that all language criticism boils down to tribalism/elitism and not problems with the language itself, as if all PLs are the same, and the choice to use them is arbitrary.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean the choice isn't literally arbitrary but it matters a lot less than the ecosystem and you can't really make a wrong choice as .NET, JS, PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, Go, $ReasonablyPopularLang are all plenty productive.
    - goatlover 6y ago
      Sure, but there are legitimate criticisms around types, complexity, security, maintainability, scalability and performance where the language choice can matter. Certainly when the project gets large.