6 ms·

Just like I tell people that buy cordless drills at Harbor Freight, "sometimes it IS the tool". Does that mean you can't build fast, meaningful, cool things wit

Just like I tell people that buy cordless drills at Harbor Freight, "sometimes it IS the tool". Does that mean you can't build fast, meaningful, cool things with it? Of course you can. But, the deeper you get, the more problems you'll have to solve with weird esoteric knowledge. I'll agree with all of your points on horribly inconsistent and broken language features. I get that people that have grown up with the language, or folks who have used it full time for years, don't see these blemishes as that big of a deal. But to newcomers, or folks from other languages, it's an affront. I hate to pile on an old, worn out issue but, as a language designer/implementer, the moment you start working on `mysql_real_escape_string()`, a huge warning bell should have gone off! I'm fine if people want to question my competence in writing code. It happens all the time on HN. I've been at it for 20 years... so some rando telling me that I don't know what I'm doing is pretty common. What we find in PHP though is quite a bit of tribal/tacit knowledge. And it's wrong to blame the user.

ragnese 6y ago
And I think you've hit the nail on the head here. People who defend PHP as "not that bad" are probably people who have used it for so long that they just work around its insanity by muscle memory. It is NOT okay that `foreach` leaves an allocated reference to the loop-local value.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  And probably people who haven't used anything else, so they have no frame of reference to compare it to, which they would need to realize how terribly and unnecessarily bad it actually is.
  - ragnese 6y ago
    I didn't want to say it for fear of coming across as condescending... but, yes.
spacedcowboy 6y ago
I mean, who uses mysql_real_escape_string when you have PDO and bindings ? PHP isn’t perfect. As OP said, no language is, and any competent software engineer uses the parts of the language that work well for them, and just ignores the things that don’t work for them. I don’t believe for a second that the abuse the language has suffered over the years has anything to do with mysql_real_escape_string, it’s more to do with crappy code. You can write crappy code in any language, and it’s more a reflection of the programmer than the programming language IMHO. Part of PHP’s problem is that it’s so easy to use. Any C programmer can pick up the basics pretty easily, hack together something that scratches an itch, and move on. Later someone will criticize the quick hack and say “you didn’t use mysql_real_escape_string so that code has a SQL vulnerability. Don’t use PHP”. In reality, there are mechanisms for preventing SQL injection and they just weren’t used. Is that a failing of the language ? Partly, perhaps, for providing the unsafe way of doing things, but a lot of blame also lies with the coder. I’ll admit to a soft spot for PHP - I was putting database-driven websites on the web when that wasn’t much of a thing (back in 1981, if foggy memory recalls true). I wrote the asset management system that was used by Lucasfilm on Star Wars, by Manix on the Matrix, by various post-production houses in Soho, etc. etc. - all in PHP. We had video-streaming from remote locations before RealNetworks were mainstream. All because of PHP. I also used PHP to write a content management system for the RiskWaters Group - around 100 magazines in the CMS, with forums, mailmerge, access-rights per page or per view-count or per time-period, with back-end admin pages, with macros the editors could use, etc. etc. Used properly and judiciously, PHP is a powerful tool. It comes with a few areas that ought to be marked ‘here be dragons’, but frankly so do most languages. These days, I mostly use PHP for shell-scripting (it comes installed as standard on my Mac), nothing so grandiose as the halcyon days of yore, but I still have PHP to thank for getting the job I’ve had for the last 15 years, in R&D at Apple (“these are the guys that Lucas was talking about”, said the VP who bought my small company). I’ll finish with a line from a song “Baby, life’s what you make it, celebrate it”. That applies to PHP as well.
- ragnese 6y ago
  You're using the two super-fallacious arguments I refer to in my original reply: 1. You can write bad code in any language. 2. All languages have warts. My response to #1: Here is a rock. Please use it, with some nails, to hang a bunch of pictures on your walls. Don't complain about your tool because it's entirely possible to use it successfully at this task. Or, less sarcastically, why use a tool that encourages bad results when you can use a tool that nudges you toward better results? My response to #2: Would you rather have one wart, or 100 warts?

ragnese 6y ago

And I think you've hit the nail on the head here. People who defend PHP as "not that bad" are probably people who have used it for so long that they just work around its insanity by muscle memory. It is NOT okay that `foreach` leaves an allocated reference to the loop-local value.

DonHopkins 6y ago
And probably people who haven't used anything else, so they have no frame of reference to compare it to, which they would need to realize how terribly and unnecessarily bad it actually is.
- ragnese 6y ago
  I didn't want to say it for fear of coming across as condescending... but, yes.

spacedcowboy 6y ago

I mean, who uses mysql_real_escape_string when you have PDO and bindings ? PHP isn’t perfect. As OP said, no language is, and any competent software engineer uses the parts of the language that work well for them, and just ignores the things that don’t work for them. I don’t believe for a second that the abuse the language has suffered over the years has anything to do with mysql_real_escape_string, it’s more to do with crappy code. You can write crappy code in any language, and it’s more a reflection of the programmer than the programming language IMHO. Part of PHP’s problem is that it’s so easy to use. Any C programmer can pick up the basics pretty easily, hack together something that scratches an itch, and move on. Later someone will criticize the quick hack and say “you didn’t use mysql_real_escape_string so that code has a SQL vulnerability. Don’t use PHP”. In reality, there are mechanisms for preventing SQL injection and they just weren’t used. Is that a failing of the language ? Partly, perhaps, for providing the unsafe way of doing things, but a lot of blame also lies with the coder. I’ll admit to a soft spot for PHP - I was putting database-driven websites on the web when that wasn’t much of a thing (back in 1981, if foggy memory recalls true). I wrote the asset management system that was used by Lucasfilm on Star Wars, by Manix on the Matrix, by various post-production houses in Soho, etc. etc. - all in PHP. We had video-streaming from remote locations before RealNetworks were mainstream. All because of PHP. I also used PHP to write a content management system for the RiskWaters Group - around 100 magazines in the CMS, with forums, mailmerge, access-rights per page or per view-count or per time-period, with back-end admin pages, with macros the editors could use, etc. etc. Used properly and judiciously, PHP is a powerful tool. It comes with a few areas that ought to be marked ‘here be dragons’, but frankly so do most languages. These days, I mostly use PHP for shell-scripting (it comes installed as standard on my Mac), nothing so grandiose as the halcyon days of yore, but I still have PHP to thank for getting the job I’ve had for the last 15 years, in R&D at Apple (“these are the guys that Lucas was talking about”, said the VP who bought my small company). I’ll finish with a line from a song “Baby, life’s what you make it, celebrate it”. That applies to PHP as well.

ragnese 6y ago
You're using the two super-fallacious arguments I refer to in my original reply: 1. You can write bad code in any language. 2. All languages have warts. My response to #1: Here is a rock. Please use it, with some nails, to hang a bunch of pictures on your walls. Don't complain about your tool because it's entirely possible to use it successfully at this task. Or, less sarcastically, why use a tool that encourages bad results when you can use a tool that nudges you toward better results? My response to #2: Would you rather have one wart, or 100 warts?