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Yes...it sucks so much, that Facebook used it to scale a network worth $50 billion dollars today. From a coding perspective, it is a very "loose" language (not

Yes...it sucks so much, that Facebook used it to scale a network worth $50 billion dollars today. From a coding perspective, it is a very "loose" language (not that kind of loose). This has advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you are doing. It is very easy to learn, and therefore there is a large degree of stratification with PHP devs. Professional coders turn their nose up at PHP, because it is kind of like telling Tiger Woods that you play golf. Maybe you do...but you don't play his game of golf. It's more impressive to say you code in a language that is difficult to do well, and that will punish you badly if you don't code in it well. PHP is pretty forgiving, even for pretty crappy code (I've seen some pretty awful stuff). The truth is that PHP is a great web language. Rails and other frameworks provide tighter integration with the db and view layers, but this isn't necessarily a good thing. PHP allows for that level of integration if you want it (as mentioned, there are many PHP based frameworks). It also happens to have a large, open source code base that is reviewed by many, many eyes, so bugs get fixed quickly and the language evolves quickly. The help manual is superb, and it performs well across hardware platforms. You will hear many baseball fans saying the other team's players suck. Most of the time it isn't true.... it's just a pride thing.

code 16y ago
It's funny but people always reference Facebook whenever PHP is called to discussion. Former CTO and now cofounder of Quora, Adam D'Angelo, has said so himself the main reason for Facebook staying on PHP was mostly for legacy reasons. There was simply no good reason to continue using PHP but it had already become a core part of Facebook so they optimize as best as they can. In building Quora, he decided in hindsight to use Python and had Facebook not been so entrench in it, they probably would have switched. That isn't to say Facebook doesn't already use other languages as part of their infrastructure. And it was in part why hiphop was developed. That said, I have nothing personal against PHP and have been a PHP developer for years. It does get the job done and is forgiving as you have said but make no mistake, there are better alternatives. There are things that, for example, Python and Ruby is able to do that PHP can't since PHP is purely a web base language and Python and Ruby are not. At the end of the day, it's really what the developer is most comfortable with.
- rosenjon 16y ago
  "At the end of the day, it's really what the developer is most comfortable with." Totally agree. I would maybe extend to say its what the team of developers is most comfortable collaborating around (assuming you are more than 1 person). Basically, it should be about building a good product. The end user generally couldn't care less what programming language your project was built in. If you can deliver the best experience in the fastest amount of time with programming language X, then that's the one you should use.

code 16y ago

It's funny but people always reference Facebook whenever PHP is called to discussion. Former CTO and now cofounder of Quora, Adam D'Angelo, has said so himself the main reason for Facebook staying on PHP was mostly for legacy reasons. There was simply no good reason to continue using PHP but it had already become a core part of Facebook so they optimize as best as they can. In building Quora, he decided in hindsight to use Python and had Facebook not been so entrench in it, they probably would have switched. That isn't to say Facebook doesn't already use other languages as part of their infrastructure. And it was in part why hiphop was developed. That said, I have nothing personal against PHP and have been a PHP developer for years. It does get the job done and is forgiving as you have said but make no mistake, there are better alternatives. There are things that, for example, Python and Ruby is able to do that PHP can't since PHP is purely a web base language and Python and Ruby are not. At the end of the day, it's really what the developer is most comfortable with.

rosenjon 16y ago
"At the end of the day, it's really what the developer is most comfortable with." Totally agree. I would maybe extend to say its what the team of developers is most comfortable collaborating around (assuming you are more than 1 person). Basically, it should be about building a good product. The end user generally couldn't care less what programming language your project was built in. If you can deliver the best experience in the fastest amount of time with programming language X, then that's the one you should use.