16 ms·

Why PHP Was a Ghetto

157 points by vlucas 16y ago

briancray 16y ago
Bad title, good points.
Egregore 16y ago
PHP is popular because of low barrier to deploy. All hosting providers offer PHP, while with other technologies you'll have to shop a little.
- kertap 16y ago
  This is very true. Also it's worth noting that if you do want to do PHP "right" and use a framework like Zend or Cake you will probably still be shopping around a bit because you're not going to get the ability to use those frameworks out of the box on most hosting providers.
  - trustfundbaby 16y ago
    I've not really found this to be the case with Cake (which I like and use a fair bit) ... even if .htaccess is disabled for some reason, there is an alternate way to get it to run just fine ... generally though ... I can just put my cake file folder on the server and its good to go. Thats huge.
- chc 16y ago
  Besides its ubiquity, it is also the only real contender that is specifically designed for the Web. You can just stick a PHP file containing `echo "1 + 1 is " . (1 + 1);` anywhere on your site and it will tell you 1 + 1 is 2. Ruby scripts (for example) can run that way, in practice a server will be set up to use a Rack interface instead of just echoing the output of a Ruby or ERb file. This simplicity is attractive to many who are just starting out.
  - vog 16y ago
    Note that this kind of programming is deprecated even in PHP. In any reasonably well structured project, you'll find that kind of code only in templates, if at all. From the article: | Rasmus represents what most non-PHP developers hate about PHP. | Rasmus generally promotes abstention from using frameworks, and the use of PHP as more of a templating language. To him, this translates to raw speed and scalability (load-wise). To everyone else, this translates to piles of procedural spaghetti code, and unmaintainable projects. For roughly 10 years following the birth of PHP in 1995, this was how PHP projects were written.
- kprobst 16y ago
  PHP + MySQL ended up being the VB+Access of the FOSS ecosystem.
  - kouiskas 16y ago
    Following that questionable logic, now that node.js is the latest hot fad, doesn't that make RoR the new PHP?
    - fmw 16y ago
      I don't think he is just talking about popularity, but about being popular, accessible to non-technical people and frowned upon by more competent techies. I think the comparison is quite apt, really.
- rawsyntax 16y ago
  There's plenty of hosting providers that provide ruby and python and all the rest. PHP because of ubiquity, I could see holding water 7 years ago, but not now.
- willifred 16y ago
  Ease of deployment might be why this very blog post is published on Wordpress.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  But why do they offer it? Hardly anybody offers Java servlet hosting (for instance) and servlets are the superior technology for just about everything you would do with php. The thing is that it isn't like say 30% of hosting providers offered it and it slowly got more and more, it was more like massive overnight 100% market penetration. I've never met a hosting provider that didn't provide it, despite the fact that it is an absolute security nightmare.
  - Egregore 16y ago
    I can tell you why Java is worse from hosting providers point of view: php is stateless by default, you can easily monitor resources used by php, while java servlets are stateful, they can use up a lot of resources and there are no easy to use available tools for hosting providers to monitor those resources Java can use. Java is designed to create applications to be deployed on multiple servers, not on a single server shared between a lot of users.
    - Stormbringer 16y ago
      Interesting. Thanks for that. I'm still puzzled about the nearly instantaneous and complete market penetration of php.
      - Egregore 16y ago
        Back then there were almost no competition.
there 16y ago
Rasmus generally promotes abstention from using frameworks, and the use of PHP as more of a templating language. from watching a recent talk (http://ontwik.com/php/php-performance-by-rasmus-lerdorf/ http://ontwik.com/php/php-performance-by-rasmus-lerdorf/) he gave, i didn't get the impression that he hated frameworks, but more that he hated most php frameworks because they were slow. in the video he says a big problem with current frameworks is that they deploy to production the same code used in development, which still includes all of the knobs and extra includes that have to be pulled in on every request to support things that aren't used. he would rather see frameworks turn code into a streamlined bundle of code that gets pushed to production.
- bkudria 16y ago
  That's be much easier if there were some decent reflection and metaprogramming support in the language.
  - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
    PHP has had reflection support for years: http://php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php http://php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php And define metaprogramming; PHP has supported all of what I would consider metaprogramming as part of their core API since PHP 4. It may not be as pretty as what you can do in Ruby or Python, but you can do it just the same.
    - andrewvc 16y ago
      Umm, did you read what you linked to? PHP reflection is a verbose, ugly mess. Example PHP vs. Ruby PHP: $a = new A(); $reflector = new ReflectionClass('A'); $properties = $reflector->getMethods(); Ruby: a = A.new a.methods
      - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
        I never said it was pretty, in fact I said quite explicitly that it wasn't as pretty as Ruby or Python, but it doesn't take good looks to work well. Java and C# are even more verbose than PHP but they can also do reflection just as well as Ruby and PHP can.
runevault 16y ago
I find it amusing how hyper-specific he gets in the comments defending PHPs speed, saying comparing it to even Python is unfair because it bytecode compiles to save time. To me, that sounds more like a flaw in PHP that it doesn't save bytecode and reuse that if the underlying source has not changed, not a defensible reason to claim it is faster than other "similar" languages.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
  If you want PHP to save the compiled code between sessions, the APC extension does that perfectly well, and has a dramatic impact on server performance. Yes, it's weird that something that useful isn't part of the core language though.
  - eropple 16y ago
    It will be in PHP6.
- pbiggar 16y ago
  Parsing time is irrelevant. When you bytecode-cache PHP, it is still about 3x slower than Python. And Python is slow compared to Lua, and dog-slow compared to any JITted implementations of scripting language (LuaJIT2, Spidermonkey, V8, etc).
hapless 16y ago
"5. Arguably the best documentation for any language" I should very much like to see that argument. My impression of PHP documentation (after using it for three of the last five years) is that it's a endless pile of bullshit whose primary content is in user comments on the doc pages. That's the core library. Third party libraries are typically wholly uncommented and undocumented.
- georgieporgie 16y ago
  While I think you're being a bit harsh, I think you raise a good point. Admittedly, I haven't done significant PHP development since PHP4, but my recollection of the documentation was that it was mediocre, and that all of the really good information was in the community comments.
  - jamesgeck0 16y ago
    Along with a some _really bad_ information in the community comments. The most blatantly horrific advice gets rejected or removed, but it's still best to search around to verify that the methods advocated are the best ways to do things.
- andjones 16y ago
  The accessibility of PHP is its strength and downfall. There exist so many third party libraries because of the low barrier to entry. But as more people join the party, the party moves toward the average. The average third party library is an untested and undocumented mess. I do not think this is specific to PHP.
  - warfangle 16y ago
    Especially when it comes to wordpress plugin land. I've done a few freelance projects in wordpress-land, and for what would seemingly be normal additions in functionality there certainly existed "five-star" plugins that almost got you to where you needed to be. Except they did everything in a non-ACID database table (or wholly non-wordpress-oriented). Or they weren't extensible at all. Or they were unmaintained piles of crap. Usually I ended up throwing my hands up in desperation and writing my own, customer-specific plugin that would get the job done. If the average PHP library is untested and undocumented, they're a couple steps ahead of the average Wordpress library. (also, I might say, the Wordpress documentation is horrific. Hell, the entire structure of that project is horrific to work within. It's built to be easy for noobs ["the loop"], but makes it difficult to keep anything organized or nicely packaged)
Staydecent 16y ago
I agree with the post, and have come to hate PHP less. But the main reason I choose python or ruby (when I have the choice) is because of the syntax. I'm not sure the proper term, but I find you have to write more characters, as apposed to ruby or python, to say the same thing.
edw 16y ago
A lot of my designer friends love Drupal, and they wonder why the veins in my neck and forehead start to bulge when they mention it. They love it because it allows them do things that they never could have imagined, whereas I despise it because it does badly what any competent Django or ROR developer could do in more quickly and maintainably. (Yes, I know, there's a Drupal module that solves that problem…) I mention Drupal because I find its "the node is our hammer and all solutions are nails, er content management systems" approach to doing things is a perfect example of the PHP google-then-copy-and-paste programming caricature that is all too often true. But the author's correct: to the extent that PHP sucks, it sucks not because of PHP itself but the culture that surrounds it. In my experience, everyone's a noob, an advanced noob that is eager to share their bad habits, or callused actual experts who assume that you are one of the aforementioned noobs and assume you have the cognitive capacity of an overripe banana. I know several PHP developers who I respect—Hi, Sunny and Tom!—but they seem to exist outside the PHP space-time continuum.
- dasil003 16y ago
  I actually think the Drupal architecture and codebase is amazing for what it is. There is a huge class of middle-tier clients that want a ton of functionality which can only be provided by a prepackaged modular system like Drupal, and the amount of extensibility Drupal affords you is impressive. I don't ever want to touch Drupal again, but not because the code sucks. I just think it's working at the wrong level of abstraction. I understand the need for that level of abstraction, but personally as a UX designer and developer I feel the compromises Drupal forces cheapen my work.
  - edw 16y ago
    I don't disagree with you: the building blocks of Drupal are fine for what they are until you want to think in richer abstractions. When I talk to people who want to create a content-driven site, I walk them through the three types of web sites I see: those simple enough to be comfortably implemented using WordPress, those that are more complicated by still simple enough to play to Drupal's strengths, and those that are more complicated or are expected to be more complicated over in the near to mid term and thus call for a Django (my choice) or Rails or whatever application.
MatthewPhillips 16y ago
The author points to the recently good support for frameworks (specifically MVC), but hasn't there been a bit of a backlash against overly opinionated frameworks and a move to more lightweight frameworks like Sinatra? Isn't PHP going to just be behind on this trend as well?
- hieronymusN 16y ago
  There are already very lightweight frameworks like Sinatra in PHP - such as Slim : https://github.com/codeguy/Slim https://github.com/codeguy/Slim
- praxxis 16y ago
  Not necessarily. Check out frameworks like Silex (https://github.com/fabpot/Silex https://github.com/fabpot/Silex) - it's very lightweight.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
  CodeIgniter, which is what the author recommends and I have used extensively, is already a very lightweight framework, or at least compared to some of the very opinionated ones like Zend. CI goes out of its way to make sure you can use or ignore as much of the framework as you want, with the exception of its core controller and routes system. Components like templating, views, active record, form validation, etc, are completely optional, and it's trivial to replace or extend components without having to mess around with any of the core code. Just don't load that component, and use something else instead.
  - te_chris 16y ago
    Wait, isn't Zend the opposite of a rails-style opinionated framework and basically just a collection of classes that you can assemble however you want for your project? I've only done a little bit with it, but that's always been the impression I've got from the literature I've read.
    - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
rickmb 16y ago
PHP has now split into different factions. Those like the WordPress community, who still party like it's 1999, and those around the major frameworks, libraries and testing and QA tools, who've taken their cues from Django, Rails and such. The two have so very little in common they might as well be using different languages. I'm oversimplifying of course. There are a number of large an quite successful communities that fall somewhere in between, like Drupal. The point is, neither the communities nor the code they write have much in common other than having PHP somewhere deep at the core. There is no "this is what PHP is like" anymore, and that hasn't been the case for over half a decade.
- te_chris 16y ago
  You're completely right. I'm an OO php developer (among other things) and when I go back and work on something like WP or Drupal it's just so foreign, despite being the same language. I can see how and why people like those systems, but as a developer they're just so difficult. When I do client cms work I use SilverStripe and it's great because they've built on top of a rails-esque php5 MVC framework so it just feels like programming any other php5 mvc app but with CMS stuff. A couple of asides as well, sapphire, SilverStripes framework has now been spun off as it's own, independent php5 framework https://github.com/silverstripe/sapphire https://github.com/silverstripe/sapphire. Secondly, his mention of CodeIgniter got me curious again, great to see they've finally dropped php4 support. I'm going to have to check it out again I think.
- alexfarran 16y ago
  At least one old style PHP project is crossing over into the MVC camp. phpBB4 will be built on top of Symfony 2 http://blog.phpbb.com/2010/02/18/moving-on-the-future-of-phpbb-development/ http://blog.phpbb.com/2010/02/18/moving-on-the-future-of-php...
  - damncabbage 16y ago
    I can only hope that Mods / Plugins aren't going to continue to be a euphemism for "scripts that modify the forum core libraries". (I gave up on the last two major versions because of conflicting hack-scripts and botched upgrades.)
dasil003 16y ago
I left PHP in 2005 because it felt like I wasn't learning anything anymore. At the time I thought it was the warts, but in retrospect it's definitely the community. The problem is that every good piece of open source PHP is drowned out by a hundred shitty spaghetti projects. When I picked up Rails, everything clicked right away because it directly addressed so many of the shortcomings of how things were done in PHP. Digging deeper in the Ruby community I found a genuine passion for pulling in great ideas and advancing the state of the art. Ruby has shitty projects too, but the good stuff is more prominent and easier to find. After 5 years with Ruby I'm not particularly eager to leave, but I do feel the urge to pick up another language to expand my horizons once more. Preferably something with a high density of good ideas, like Haskell. I know PHP has evolved and is quite capable as a language, but the only way I would touch it again is if I was working on a project that was interesting for bigger reasons (eg. Facebook).
- andjones 16y ago
  It sounds like you're more interested in programming languages in general. You might find these books interesting: Essentials of Programming Languages http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Programming-Languages-Daniel-Friedman/dp/0262062178 http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Programming-Languages-Danie... The Little Schemer http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/0262560992 http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02...
andjones 16y ago
The fact that many PHP projects end up in unmaintainable spaghetti code is a mark against the programmer and not the language. Take your average PHP programmer and force him/her to code in Ruby and the same mess will result. The fact that PHP has so many "noob" programmer is indicative of its success in creating so many great projects and websites. We have made PHP so easy that even your grandmother can do it. From the article: If you are capable of making wise software design decisions, PHP is a great choice to build your web application with.
- damncabbage 16y ago
  > We have made PHP so easy that even your grandmother can do it. I'd wager it's so easy that even your grandmother can do it /badly/, while putting her business or data at risk. More seriously: Frameworks or languages that make it easy to be secure by default are a lot better, both for newbies who don't know better, or for old hands who slip up once or twice. The simplest example I can think of to illustrate the difference: <h1>Hi, <?php echo $name; ?></h1> vs <h1><%= name %></h1> (Say "name" is "<script src=xss.js></script>". The former is vulnerable, the latter is not. Both are just as easy to write.)
  - pilif 16y ago
    In all fairness, the XSS protection in ERB expressions is a new feature of rails 3.0 which isn't out for that long. Before that you had to use the h helper (which of course is much easier to type than htmlentities)
    - bad_user 16y ago
      Also in all fairness, large parts of code written for Rails 2.x can be ported to Rails 3.0 painlessly, enjoying the new security benefits without breaking a sweat. You simply won't be able to upgrade PHP to make <? echo $something ?> behave properly. That's the problem with languages that were designed to be frameworks in themselves -- languages have to maintain backwards compatibility.
EGreg 16y ago
There is a reason why facebook used PHP, wordpress is in PHP, and a lot of other tools are also. PHP is popular, it's easy to find developers who will write it in it, and it's also easy to find PHP hosting for noobs. When there is a popular platform, you will get lots of apps written on it. That said, the high art of PHP was always to make really performant apps while having your code as organized as possible. These days, this is being done very well with files, autoloading, and opcode caching. If you do things this way, Rasmus would be happy, and things would be fast. I am a PHP developer. A lot of what I saw in the past few years was frameworks like Cake and symfony that basically copied Rails or brought some heavy techniques with a lot of overhead. This is not the PHP way. If you want to see a framework that does things in a more PHP way, I would humbly submit my own: http://phponpie.com http://phponpie.com It's open source. It's called PHP On Pie for a reason: because it's easy and it uses real PHP techniques, not tries to emulate Ruby or Python. PHP has its own beauty, such as arrays which can support numeric and string indexes at the same time. All this said, these days PHP is outdated for large sites. Not because there is a lot of crap written in it -- which I agree with. But because it still works only synchronously, and the culture is too server-heavy. Large sites should be written like this: Clients (browser, etc.) do most of the interface logic. Components should render themselves using javascript, and only use the server for data Server does web services (REST, socket push, etc.) Server should not have to do things synchronously. Node.js rocks in this respect. Unlike PHP, I can literally issue 10 independent queries to 10 different databases and combine the results as they come in. In PHP, I would have to issue this stuff sequentially. That's slow. The second thing in PHP is fixable. People should move most of the logic (that doesn't need authentication) to the client side, and then write all their web services in a very simple way. Stop generating all your HTML on the server. Check out http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/4/18/why-http-streaming http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/4/18/why-http-streaming and http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-pipelining-web-pages-for-high-performance/389414033919 http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-p...
- aphyr 16y ago
  PHP has its own beauty, such as arrays which can support numeric and string indexes at the same time. Rarely do I actually spit on my keyboard. Not only do most other languages do associative arrays properly, so, you know, numeric and string indices don't clobber each other, but they also don't explode when indexed with, say, anything but decimal literals. You seriously think this is beautiful behavior? http://aphyr.com/journals/show/fun-with-php-arrays http://aphyr.com/journals/show/fun-with-php-arrays
hackernewz 16y ago
ZF and CI are horrible examples of coding practices. They are extreme examples of "make a class for everything because you can". ZF file and directory structure is at odds with PHP 6's namespaces, in fact it will probably have to be completely thrown away to make way for a ZF 2. CI doesn't even have the base class of any "controller" defined anywhere for you to read. It is created on the fly every request. This guy is a noob and doesn't understand what good programming is.
- eropple 16y ago
  I rarely respond to people who use "noob" in a non-ironic way, but whatever: ZF's file and directory structure is not appreciably at odds with namespaces; it is different but (as it works pre-5.3) complementary. If you look at Symfony2, it can handle both namespaces and Zend-named objects without significant trouble. ZF 2 will change it because namespaces are now available, but the old style of library importing will certainly persist because it has to.
- edtechre 16y ago
  I actually agree here. CI is barely a framework. When I used it, I found myself writing a bunch of custom code to handle encapsulating view logic like widgets, decorators, etc. Plus, plenty of other code to handle form validation etc. Other frameworks provide all of this out of the box. I dislike ZF because it tries too hard to be like Java/Struts2, and borrows a lot of Java's verbosity and bloat. I use Yii a lot nowadays, and use phing for deployments. And for Python folks, I'd recommend web2py since it has a lot of similarities to Yii from what I've seen.
xstring 16y ago
and who are you. writing perlcode all in one file not even using 'use warnings' nor using getoptlong and so on. poor skills but lots of noise here.
myearwood 16y ago
PHP works .On everything. Ruby on Rails is clunky and complicated, and Python is not supported a lot of web hosting plans.If you have millions of dollars in VC funding and your own dedicated servers, Than feel free to use the latest and greatest web languages. Meanwhile, let the rest of us mere mortals use PHP without making us feel inadequate or unintelligent.
- TillE 16y ago
  If you can spare a measly $20/month, you can get a really decent VPS more than capable of running a lowish-traffic Django or Rails site. If you shop around, you can get one for about $15/month. If you don't want to admin Linux, for five lousy bucks a month asmallorange.com will set you up for Django (if it isn't already setup on the shared host) if you just ask nicely. They advertise Rails 2.3 support by default.
- pharrington 16y ago
  If you want to learn a new technology, a micro EC2 instance is free for a year. You have an entire year to learn basic admin, mess around with Ruby or Python or Scala or literally -any- language that exists. Maybe you'll even make something cool and monetize it, or get noticed and land a job at an awesome company. The ubiquity of certain technologies is a non-issue when it is -trivial - to host yourself.
  - mgkimsal 16y ago
    "a micro EC2 instance is free for a year" unless you had the nerve to already be an Amazon customer earlier.
    - justincormack 16y ago
      Set up another account. Amazon specifically told us to do this at an AWS meetup, they really dont mind.
- edtechre 16y ago
  If you don't want to admin a Linux box (which really doesn't take much), you can use Python or even Java on App Engine for free, if just to test them out.
dengzhi 16y ago
PHP also goes together w/ MySQL like peanut butter and jelly.
nickik 16y ago
the bad: >Ugly syntax The syntax is not that importent (the semantics are the BIG problem) but you are right. What to expect from somebody that didn't even want to read a hole parser book (not blaming him i think there boring too but if you don't want to read a parser book implment a lisp) >Lack of some necessary features that other languages have (prior to 5.3, namespacing, closures) Having a feature in the language is good but not worth a lot if there not idiomatic to use. >Inconsistent function naming, usage, and other quirks Inconsistency is te big word. Everywhere. Nobody thought about what is done how, where or why. >The fact that 80-90% of PHP projects are probably gigantic piles of shit yeah. The "good": > Standards (not universal, but generally a flavor of MVC for most projects, and little procedural crap) 1. Application Design is more then just MVC. 2. Most PHP Code produced still suckes. Sure there are frameworks and standards know but how many % of the people writing php know this? I know lots of people how get tough php just like 10 years ago and if they are not really into programming (like people here) the will never learn the good stuff. Having "Standards" and people using them is a diffrence. >A very low barrier to entry True. Php was just at the right place at the right time. > Speed & Scalability (maybe the best among script-based languages) From most benchmarks I have seen php was really slow. Isnt it compiling to bytecode witch then gets inerpreted? There are projects like HipHop and phc but I havn't seen really good numbers for them. Are there good up-to-date benchmarks to support this? > A great unit testing framework What language that could has somewhat the same scope as php does not have really good testing frameworks? > Arguably the best documentation for any language Read some compents in this thread to see peoples opinions on that.
- Mikushi 16y ago
  He is right in saying that PHP is fast. In recent benchmark that we did at my company, mostly between PHP and .NET, i was able to make PHP match .NET speed with little effort, using my own framework. I have quite a lot of experience using PHP under heavy load, and i know for a fact that Ruby or Python are no match to it, and .net is barely better if not equal. As a PHP developer, mainly (i also enjoy Python and C), i am aware of a lot of the problems that PHP has, but in the hand of a developer that really understand the language (attend a couple of conference from Rasmus and you'll get an idea on how to develop PHP properly, and that doesn't mean not using frameworks), PHP is really powerful and unmatchable in terms of easiness to use, scalability and speed.
thespace 16y ago
Php is still a ghetto. The author brings up some interesting points but the other web languages have jumped pretty far ahead of php. Python is laughable compared to php anymore.
jallmann 16y ago
CodeIgniter is really not that nice. Maybe it seems cool for the uninitiated, but it is just a PHP clone of Rails. CI and kin can't hold a candle because the expressive power of Rails doesn't come from the framework itself, but from Ruby. There are a few times when the choice between one language over another is more of a pragmatic issue rather than one of taste, and Ruby's ease in creating DSLs (and hence, Rails) is a perfect example. As TFA mentioned, Ramsus Lerdorf has the right idea. PHP is a templating language. Contorting it into a general purpose language and squeezing a Web framework out of that is unpleasant when there are so many nicer alternatives available. I almost feel bad for Rasmus; people are using his language, taking it beyond its intended scope, and giving it a bad name for that.
- shadowsun7 16y ago
  CodeIgniter is nothing like Rails - there's little magic involved; the framework is very 'humble' (that is - it almost never forces you to do things its way) plus its entire philosophy consists of giving you classes to work with (and an MVC pattern) ... and then getting out of your way. I'd argue that CI is to PHP what web.py is to Python, or Merb (pre-merge? - correct me if I'm wrong, maybe there's a better example) to Ruby.
  - jallmann 16y ago
    CI is not a carbon copy of Rails, which would be quite difficult anyway given the base language, but the inspiration is undeniable. All the pieces are there -- the MVC pattern and associated features like routes, helpers, etc. CakePHP-Rails would have been a better analogy, but my point still stands. The language plays a large role in making a framework nice to use, as much as the intrinsic design of the framework itself.
    - wdewind 16y ago
      Don't confused "Rails" with "Every web MVC framework out there."
    - roel_v 16y ago
compay 16y ago
I posted some generally supportive comments on his post, but dared to point out that PHP's interpreter is in fact rather slow compared to pretty much everything else, so he shouldn't claim that PHP has "maybe the best speed and scalability among script-based languages." I ended up getting attacked as some kind of PHP hater. If PHP has a reputation as a ghetto, it's in part because of cocksure noobs like this who think they know everything and are impossible to have a rational conversation with.
- katzgrau 16y ago
  I am said "cocksure noob." If you disagree with @compay, you will assuredly earn the same title.
  - jbm 16y ago
    Who are you? I don't mean that in an insulting fashion, I simply don't know. (Compay has a karma of 1426 for comparison, and I owe him for introducing me to the PIE library for IE CSS)
  - jessedhillon 16y ago
    Welcome to Hacker News! Based on your comment and that you have a tenth the karma of the person you're accusing of being reactionary, I would recommend that you make an actual argument or mount a defense, and stay away from these kinds of insults.
    - katzgrau 16y ago
      meh, read the comments on my blog and think for yourself instead taking some collectively-generated number as an indicator of whether you should scowl at me or not.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
- roel_v 16y ago
sigzero 16y ago
He uses "was" like it still isn't.
alecco 16y ago
Documented madness http://www.reddit.com/r/lolphp/top/?t=all http://www.reddit.com/r/lolphp/top/?t=all
kouiskas 16y ago
Average developers blame the language for their inability to make the best use of it. Good developers are too busy writing great code with the tools they have at hand to care. Some languages have strengths for particular applications, but spaghetti can be written in anything. And why should you care if 99% of the rest of the world writes shit code with the language you use, as long as your own house is clean?
denysonique 16y ago
['Ruby', 'Python'].each { |lang| 3.times {print "#{lang} is more fun. "} }
krobertson 16y ago
"In it’s pizza-faced adolescent years (pre-5.0)" Really? It took 5 major releases and 9 years? Ruby and Python have been around as long or longer, but seemed to get the language basics/semantics down earlier. They also grew a lot slower compared to PHP.
pronik 16y ago
Essentially it's "an open-source project is just as good as its BDFL is". Which is, judging by different projects, true.

157 points by vlucas 16y ago

Bad title, good points.

PHP is popular because of low barrier to deploy. All hosting providers offer PHP, while with other technologies you'll have to shop a little.

kertap 16y ago
This is very true. Also it's worth noting that if you do want to do PHP "right" and use a framework like Zend or Cake you will probably still be shopping around a bit because you're not going to get the ability to use those frameworks out of the box on most hosting providers.
- trustfundbaby 16y ago
  I've not really found this to be the case with Cake (which I like and use a fair bit) ... even if .htaccess is disabled for some reason, there is an alternate way to get it to run just fine ... generally though ... I can just put my cake file folder on the server and its good to go. Thats huge.
chc 16y ago
Besides its ubiquity, it is also the only real contender that is specifically designed for the Web. You can just stick a PHP file containing `echo "1 + 1 is " . (1 + 1);` anywhere on your site and it will tell you 1 + 1 is 2. Ruby scripts (for example) can run that way, in practice a server will be set up to use a Rack interface instead of just echoing the output of a Ruby or ERb file. This simplicity is attractive to many who are just starting out.
- vog 16y ago
  Note that this kind of programming is deprecated even in PHP. In any reasonably well structured project, you'll find that kind of code only in templates, if at all. From the article: | Rasmus represents what most non-PHP developers hate about PHP. | Rasmus generally promotes abstention from using frameworks, and the use of PHP as more of a templating language. To him, this translates to raw speed and scalability (load-wise). To everyone else, this translates to piles of procedural spaghetti code, and unmaintainable projects. For roughly 10 years following the birth of PHP in 1995, this was how PHP projects were written.
kprobst 16y ago
PHP + MySQL ended up being the VB+Access of the FOSS ecosystem.
- kouiskas 16y ago
  Following that questionable logic, now that node.js is the latest hot fad, doesn't that make RoR the new PHP?
  - fmw 16y ago
    I don't think he is just talking about popularity, but about being popular, accessible to non-technical people and frowned upon by more competent techies. I think the comparison is quite apt, really.
rawsyntax 16y ago
There's plenty of hosting providers that provide ruby and python and all the rest. PHP because of ubiquity, I could see holding water 7 years ago, but not now.
willifred 16y ago
Ease of deployment might be why this very blog post is published on Wordpress.
Stormbringer 16y ago
But why do they offer it? Hardly anybody offers Java servlet hosting (for instance) and servlets are the superior technology for just about everything you would do with php. The thing is that it isn't like say 30% of hosting providers offered it and it slowly got more and more, it was more like massive overnight 100% market penetration. I've never met a hosting provider that didn't provide it, despite the fact that it is an absolute security nightmare.
- Egregore 16y ago
  I can tell you why Java is worse from hosting providers point of view: php is stateless by default, you can easily monitor resources used by php, while java servlets are stateful, they can use up a lot of resources and there are no easy to use available tools for hosting providers to monitor those resources Java can use. Java is designed to create applications to be deployed on multiple servers, not on a single server shared between a lot of users.
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for that. I'm still puzzled about the nearly instantaneous and complete market penetration of php.
    - Egregore 16y ago
      Back then there were almost no competition.

there 16y ago

Rasmus generally promotes abstention from using frameworks, and the use of PHP as more of a templating language. from watching a recent talk (http://ontwik.com/php/php-performance-by-rasmus-lerdorf/ http://ontwik.com/php/php-performance-by-rasmus-lerdorf/) he gave, i didn't get the impression that he hated frameworks, but more that he hated most php frameworks because they were slow. in the video he says a big problem with current frameworks is that they deploy to production the same code used in development, which still includes all of the knobs and extra includes that have to be pulled in on every request to support things that aren't used. he would rather see frameworks turn code into a streamlined bundle of code that gets pushed to production.

bkudria 16y ago
That's be much easier if there were some decent reflection and metaprogramming support in the language.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
  PHP has had reflection support for years: http://php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php http://php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php And define metaprogramming; PHP has supported all of what I would consider metaprogramming as part of their core API since PHP 4. It may not be as pretty as what you can do in Ruby or Python, but you can do it just the same.
  - andrewvc 16y ago
    Umm, did you read what you linked to? PHP reflection is a verbose, ugly mess. Example PHP vs. Ruby PHP: $a = new A(); $reflector = new ReflectionClass('A'); $properties = $reflector->getMethods(); Ruby: a = A.new a.methods
    - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
      I never said it was pretty, in fact I said quite explicitly that it wasn't as pretty as Ruby or Python, but it doesn't take good looks to work well. Java and C# are even more verbose than PHP but they can also do reflection just as well as Ruby and PHP can.

runevault 16y ago

I find it amusing how hyper-specific he gets in the comments defending PHPs speed, saying comparing it to even Python is unfair because it bytecode compiles to save time. To me, that sounds more like a flaw in PHP that it doesn't save bytecode and reuse that if the underlying source has not changed, not a defensible reason to claim it is faster than other "similar" languages.

nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
If you want PHP to save the compiled code between sessions, the APC extension does that perfectly well, and has a dramatic impact on server performance. Yes, it's weird that something that useful isn't part of the core language though.
- eropple 16y ago
  It will be in PHP6.
pbiggar 16y ago
Parsing time is irrelevant. When you bytecode-cache PHP, it is still about 3x slower than Python. And Python is slow compared to Lua, and dog-slow compared to any JITted implementations of scripting language (LuaJIT2, Spidermonkey, V8, etc).

hapless 16y ago

"5. Arguably the best documentation for any language" I should very much like to see that argument. My impression of PHP documentation (after using it for three of the last five years) is that it's a endless pile of bullshit whose primary content is in user comments on the doc pages. That's the core library. Third party libraries are typically wholly uncommented and undocumented.

georgieporgie 16y ago
While I think you're being a bit harsh, I think you raise a good point. Admittedly, I haven't done significant PHP development since PHP4, but my recollection of the documentation was that it was mediocre, and that all of the really good information was in the community comments.
- jamesgeck0 16y ago
  Along with a some _really bad_ information in the community comments. The most blatantly horrific advice gets rejected or removed, but it's still best to search around to verify that the methods advocated are the best ways to do things.
andjones 16y ago
The accessibility of PHP is its strength and downfall. There exist so many third party libraries because of the low barrier to entry. But as more people join the party, the party moves toward the average. The average third party library is an untested and undocumented mess. I do not think this is specific to PHP.
- warfangle 16y ago
  Especially when it comes to wordpress plugin land. I've done a few freelance projects in wordpress-land, and for what would seemingly be normal additions in functionality there certainly existed "five-star" plugins that almost got you to where you needed to be. Except they did everything in a non-ACID database table (or wholly non-wordpress-oriented). Or they weren't extensible at all. Or they were unmaintained piles of crap. Usually I ended up throwing my hands up in desperation and writing my own, customer-specific plugin that would get the job done. If the average PHP library is untested and undocumented, they're a couple steps ahead of the average Wordpress library. (also, I might say, the Wordpress documentation is horrific. Hell, the entire structure of that project is horrific to work within. It's built to be easy for noobs ["the loop"], but makes it difficult to keep anything organized or nicely packaged)

Staydecent 16y ago

I agree with the post, and have come to hate PHP less. But the main reason I choose python or ruby (when I have the choice) is because of the syntax. I'm not sure the proper term, but I find you have to write more characters, as apposed to ruby or python, to say the same thing.

edw 16y ago

A lot of my designer friends love Drupal, and they wonder why the veins in my neck and forehead start to bulge when they mention it. They love it because it allows them do things that they never could have imagined, whereas I despise it because it does badly what any competent Django or ROR developer could do in more quickly and maintainably. (Yes, I know, there's a Drupal module that solves that problem…) I mention Drupal because I find its "the node is our hammer and all solutions are nails, er content management systems" approach to doing things is a perfect example of the PHP google-then-copy-and-paste programming caricature that is all too often true. But the author's correct: to the extent that PHP sucks, it sucks not because of PHP itself but the culture that surrounds it. In my experience, everyone's a noob, an advanced noob that is eager to share their bad habits, or callused actual experts who assume that you are one of the aforementioned noobs and assume you have the cognitive capacity of an overripe banana. I know several PHP developers who I respect—Hi, Sunny and Tom!—but they seem to exist outside the PHP space-time continuum.

dasil003 16y ago
I actually think the Drupal architecture and codebase is amazing for what it is. There is a huge class of middle-tier clients that want a ton of functionality which can only be provided by a prepackaged modular system like Drupal, and the amount of extensibility Drupal affords you is impressive. I don't ever want to touch Drupal again, but not because the code sucks. I just think it's working at the wrong level of abstraction. I understand the need for that level of abstraction, but personally as a UX designer and developer I feel the compromises Drupal forces cheapen my work.
- edw 16y ago
  I don't disagree with you: the building blocks of Drupal are fine for what they are until you want to think in richer abstractions. When I talk to people who want to create a content-driven site, I walk them through the three types of web sites I see: those simple enough to be comfortably implemented using WordPress, those that are more complicated by still simple enough to play to Drupal's strengths, and those that are more complicated or are expected to be more complicated over in the near to mid term and thus call for a Django (my choice) or Rails or whatever application.

MatthewPhillips 16y ago

The author points to the recently good support for frameworks (specifically MVC), but hasn't there been a bit of a backlash against overly opinionated frameworks and a move to more lightweight frameworks like Sinatra? Isn't PHP going to just be behind on this trend as well?

hieronymusN 16y ago
There are already very lightweight frameworks like Sinatra in PHP - such as Slim : https://github.com/codeguy/Slim https://github.com/codeguy/Slim
praxxis 16y ago
Not necessarily. Check out frameworks like Silex (https://github.com/fabpot/Silex https://github.com/fabpot/Silex) - it's very lightweight.
nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
CodeIgniter, which is what the author recommends and I have used extensively, is already a very lightweight framework, or at least compared to some of the very opinionated ones like Zend. CI goes out of its way to make sure you can use or ignore as much of the framework as you want, with the exception of its core controller and routes system. Components like templating, views, active record, form validation, etc, are completely optional, and it's trivial to replace or extend components without having to mess around with any of the core code. Just don't load that component, and use something else instead.
- te_chris 16y ago
  Wait, isn't Zend the opposite of a rails-style opinionated framework and basically just a collection of classes that you can assemble however you want for your project? I've only done a little bit with it, but that's always been the impression I've got from the literature I've read.
  - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago

rickmb 16y ago

PHP has now split into different factions. Those like the WordPress community, who still party like it's 1999, and those around the major frameworks, libraries and testing and QA tools, who've taken their cues from Django, Rails and such. The two have so very little in common they might as well be using different languages. I'm oversimplifying of course. There are a number of large an quite successful communities that fall somewhere in between, like Drupal. The point is, neither the communities nor the code they write have much in common other than having PHP somewhere deep at the core. There is no "this is what PHP is like" anymore, and that hasn't been the case for over half a decade.

te_chris 16y ago
You're completely right. I'm an OO php developer (among other things) and when I go back and work on something like WP or Drupal it's just so foreign, despite being the same language. I can see how and why people like those systems, but as a developer they're just so difficult. When I do client cms work I use SilverStripe and it's great because they've built on top of a rails-esque php5 MVC framework so it just feels like programming any other php5 mvc app but with CMS stuff. A couple of asides as well, sapphire, SilverStripes framework has now been spun off as it's own, independent php5 framework https://github.com/silverstripe/sapphire https://github.com/silverstripe/sapphire. Secondly, his mention of CodeIgniter got me curious again, great to see they've finally dropped php4 support. I'm going to have to check it out again I think.
alexfarran 16y ago
At least one old style PHP project is crossing over into the MVC camp. phpBB4 will be built on top of Symfony 2 http://blog.phpbb.com/2010/02/18/moving-on-the-future-of-phpbb-development/ http://blog.phpbb.com/2010/02/18/moving-on-the-future-of-php...
- damncabbage 16y ago
  I can only hope that Mods / Plugins aren't going to continue to be a euphemism for "scripts that modify the forum core libraries". (I gave up on the last two major versions because of conflicting hack-scripts and botched upgrades.)

dasil003 16y ago

I left PHP in 2005 because it felt like I wasn't learning anything anymore. At the time I thought it was the warts, but in retrospect it's definitely the community. The problem is that every good piece of open source PHP is drowned out by a hundred shitty spaghetti projects. When I picked up Rails, everything clicked right away because it directly addressed so many of the shortcomings of how things were done in PHP. Digging deeper in the Ruby community I found a genuine passion for pulling in great ideas and advancing the state of the art. Ruby has shitty projects too, but the good stuff is more prominent and easier to find. After 5 years with Ruby I'm not particularly eager to leave, but I do feel the urge to pick up another language to expand my horizons once more. Preferably something with a high density of good ideas, like Haskell. I know PHP has evolved and is quite capable as a language, but the only way I would touch it again is if I was working on a project that was interesting for bigger reasons (eg. Facebook).

andjones 16y ago
It sounds like you're more interested in programming languages in general. You might find these books interesting: Essentials of Programming Languages http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Programming-Languages-Daniel-Friedman/dp/0262062178 http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Programming-Languages-Danie... The Little Schemer http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/0262560992 http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02...

andjones 16y ago

The fact that many PHP projects end up in unmaintainable spaghetti code is a mark against the programmer and not the language. Take your average PHP programmer and force him/her to code in Ruby and the same mess will result. The fact that PHP has so many "noob" programmer is indicative of its success in creating so many great projects and websites. We have made PHP so easy that even your grandmother can do it. From the article: If you are capable of making wise software design decisions, PHP is a great choice to build your web application with.

damncabbage 16y ago
> We have made PHP so easy that even your grandmother can do it. I'd wager it's so easy that even your grandmother can do it /badly/, while putting her business or data at risk. More seriously: Frameworks or languages that make it easy to be secure by default are a lot better, both for newbies who don't know better, or for old hands who slip up once or twice. The simplest example I can think of to illustrate the difference: <h1>Hi, <?php echo $name; ?></h1> vs <h1><%= name %></h1> (Say "name" is "<script src=xss.js></script>". The former is vulnerable, the latter is not. Both are just as easy to write.)
- pilif 16y ago
  In all fairness, the XSS protection in ERB expressions is a new feature of rails 3.0 which isn't out for that long. Before that you had to use the h helper (which of course is much easier to type than htmlentities)
  - bad_user 16y ago
    Also in all fairness, large parts of code written for Rails 2.x can be ported to Rails 3.0 painlessly, enjoying the new security benefits without breaking a sweat. You simply won't be able to upgrade PHP to make <? echo $something ?> behave properly. That's the problem with languages that were designed to be frameworks in themselves -- languages have to maintain backwards compatibility.

EGreg 16y ago

There is a reason why facebook used PHP, wordpress is in PHP, and a lot of other tools are also. PHP is popular, it's easy to find developers who will write it in it, and it's also easy to find PHP hosting for noobs. When there is a popular platform, you will get lots of apps written on it. That said, the high art of PHP was always to make really performant apps while having your code as organized as possible. These days, this is being done very well with files, autoloading, and opcode caching. If you do things this way, Rasmus would be happy, and things would be fast. I am a PHP developer. A lot of what I saw in the past few years was frameworks like Cake and symfony that basically copied Rails or brought some heavy techniques with a lot of overhead. This is not the PHP way. If you want to see a framework that does things in a more PHP way, I would humbly submit my own: http://phponpie.com http://phponpie.com It's open source. It's called PHP On Pie for a reason: because it's easy and it uses real PHP techniques, not tries to emulate Ruby or Python. PHP has its own beauty, such as arrays which can support numeric and string indexes at the same time. All this said, these days PHP is outdated for large sites. Not because there is a lot of crap written in it -- which I agree with. But because it still works only synchronously, and the culture is too server-heavy. Large sites should be written like this: Clients (browser, etc.) do most of the interface logic. Components should render themselves using javascript, and only use the server for data Server does web services (REST, socket push, etc.) Server should not have to do things synchronously. Node.js rocks in this respect. Unlike PHP, I can literally issue 10 independent queries to 10 different databases and combine the results as they come in. In PHP, I would have to issue this stuff sequentially. That's slow. The second thing in PHP is fixable. People should move most of the logic (that doesn't need authentication) to the client side, and then write all their web services in a very simple way. Stop generating all your HTML on the server. Check out http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/4/18/why-http-streaming http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/4/18/why-http-streaming and http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-pipelining-web-pages-for-high-performance/389414033919 http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-p...

aphyr 16y ago
PHP has its own beauty, such as arrays which can support numeric and string indexes at the same time. Rarely do I actually spit on my keyboard. Not only do most other languages do associative arrays properly, so, you know, numeric and string indices don't clobber each other, but they also don't explode when indexed with, say, anything but decimal literals. You seriously think this is beautiful behavior? http://aphyr.com/journals/show/fun-with-php-arrays http://aphyr.com/journals/show/fun-with-php-arrays

hackernewz 16y ago

ZF and CI are horrible examples of coding practices. They are extreme examples of "make a class for everything because you can". ZF file and directory structure is at odds with PHP 6's namespaces, in fact it will probably have to be completely thrown away to make way for a ZF 2. CI doesn't even have the base class of any "controller" defined anywhere for you to read. It is created on the fly every request. This guy is a noob and doesn't understand what good programming is.

eropple 16y ago
I rarely respond to people who use "noob" in a non-ironic way, but whatever: ZF's file and directory structure is not appreciably at odds with namespaces; it is different but (as it works pre-5.3) complementary. If you look at Symfony2, it can handle both namespaces and Zend-named objects without significant trouble. ZF 2 will change it because namespaces are now available, but the old style of library importing will certainly persist because it has to.
edtechre 16y ago
I actually agree here. CI is barely a framework. When I used it, I found myself writing a bunch of custom code to handle encapsulating view logic like widgets, decorators, etc. Plus, plenty of other code to handle form validation etc. Other frameworks provide all of this out of the box. I dislike ZF because it tries too hard to be like Java/Struts2, and borrows a lot of Java's verbosity and bloat. I use Yii a lot nowadays, and use phing for deployments. And for Python folks, I'd recommend web2py since it has a lot of similarities to Yii from what I've seen.

xstring 16y ago

and who are you. writing perlcode all in one file not even using 'use warnings' nor using getoptlong and so on. poor skills but lots of noise here.

myearwood 16y ago

PHP works .On everything. Ruby on Rails is clunky and complicated, and Python is not supported a lot of web hosting plans.If you have millions of dollars in VC funding and your own dedicated servers, Than feel free to use the latest and greatest web languages. Meanwhile, let the rest of us mere mortals use PHP without making us feel inadequate or unintelligent.

TillE 16y ago
If you can spare a measly $20/month, you can get a really decent VPS more than capable of running a lowish-traffic Django or Rails site. If you shop around, you can get one for about $15/month. If you don't want to admin Linux, for five lousy bucks a month asmallorange.com will set you up for Django (if it isn't already setup on the shared host) if you just ask nicely. They advertise Rails 2.3 support by default.
pharrington 16y ago
If you want to learn a new technology, a micro EC2 instance is free for a year. You have an entire year to learn basic admin, mess around with Ruby or Python or Scala or literally -any- language that exists. Maybe you'll even make something cool and monetize it, or get noticed and land a job at an awesome company. The ubiquity of certain technologies is a non-issue when it is -trivial - to host yourself.
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  "a micro EC2 instance is free for a year" unless you had the nerve to already be an Amazon customer earlier.
  - justincormack 16y ago
    Set up another account. Amazon specifically told us to do this at an AWS meetup, they really dont mind.
edtechre 16y ago
If you don't want to admin a Linux box (which really doesn't take much), you can use Python or even Java on App Engine for free, if just to test them out.

dengzhi 16y ago

PHP also goes together w/ MySQL like peanut butter and jelly.

nickik 16y ago

the bad: >Ugly syntax The syntax is not that importent (the semantics are the BIG problem) but you are right. What to expect from somebody that didn't even want to read a hole parser book (not blaming him i think there boring too but if you don't want to read a parser book implment a lisp) >Lack of some necessary features that other languages have (prior to 5.3, namespacing, closures) Having a feature in the language is good but not worth a lot if there not idiomatic to use. >Inconsistent function naming, usage, and other quirks Inconsistency is te big word. Everywhere. Nobody thought about what is done how, where or why. >The fact that 80-90% of PHP projects are probably gigantic piles of shit yeah. The "good": > Standards (not universal, but generally a flavor of MVC for most projects, and little procedural crap) 1. Application Design is more then just MVC. 2. Most PHP Code produced still suckes. Sure there are frameworks and standards know but how many % of the people writing php know this? I know lots of people how get tough php just like 10 years ago and if they are not really into programming (like people here) the will never learn the good stuff. Having "Standards" and people using them is a diffrence. >A very low barrier to entry True. Php was just at the right place at the right time. > Speed & Scalability (maybe the best among script-based languages) From most benchmarks I have seen php was really slow. Isnt it compiling to bytecode witch then gets inerpreted? There are projects like HipHop and phc but I havn't seen really good numbers for them. Are there good up-to-date benchmarks to support this? > A great unit testing framework What language that could has somewhat the same scope as php does not have really good testing frameworks? > Arguably the best documentation for any language Read some compents in this thread to see peoples opinions on that.

Mikushi 16y ago
He is right in saying that PHP is fast. In recent benchmark that we did at my company, mostly between PHP and .NET, i was able to make PHP match .NET speed with little effort, using my own framework. I have quite a lot of experience using PHP under heavy load, and i know for a fact that Ruby or Python are no match to it, and .net is barely better if not equal. As a PHP developer, mainly (i also enjoy Python and C), i am aware of a lot of the problems that PHP has, but in the hand of a developer that really understand the language (attend a couple of conference from Rasmus and you'll get an idea on how to develop PHP properly, and that doesn't mean not using frameworks), PHP is really powerful and unmatchable in terms of easiness to use, scalability and speed.

thespace 16y ago

Php is still a ghetto. The author brings up some interesting points but the other web languages have jumped pretty far ahead of php. Python is laughable compared to php anymore.

jallmann 16y ago

CodeIgniter is really not that nice. Maybe it seems cool for the uninitiated, but it is just a PHP clone of Rails. CI and kin can't hold a candle because the expressive power of Rails doesn't come from the framework itself, but from Ruby. There are a few times when the choice between one language over another is more of a pragmatic issue rather than one of taste, and Ruby's ease in creating DSLs (and hence, Rails) is a perfect example. As TFA mentioned, Ramsus Lerdorf has the right idea. PHP is a templating language. Contorting it into a general purpose language and squeezing a Web framework out of that is unpleasant when there are so many nicer alternatives available. I almost feel bad for Rasmus; people are using his language, taking it beyond its intended scope, and giving it a bad name for that.

shadowsun7 16y ago
CodeIgniter is nothing like Rails - there's little magic involved; the framework is very 'humble' (that is - it almost never forces you to do things its way) plus its entire philosophy consists of giving you classes to work with (and an MVC pattern) ... and then getting out of your way. I'd argue that CI is to PHP what web.py is to Python, or Merb (pre-merge? - correct me if I'm wrong, maybe there's a better example) to Ruby.
- jallmann 16y ago
  CI is not a carbon copy of Rails, which would be quite difficult anyway given the base language, but the inspiration is undeniable. All the pieces are there -- the MVC pattern and associated features like routes, helpers, etc. CakePHP-Rails would have been a better analogy, but my point still stands. The language plays a large role in making a framework nice to use, as much as the intrinsic design of the framework itself.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    Don't confused "Rails" with "Every web MVC framework out there."
  - roel_v 16y ago

compay 16y ago

I posted some generally supportive comments on his post, but dared to point out that PHP's interpreter is in fact rather slow compared to pretty much everything else, so he shouldn't claim that PHP has "maybe the best speed and scalability among script-based languages." I ended up getting attacked as some kind of PHP hater. If PHP has a reputation as a ghetto, it's in part because of cocksure noobs like this who think they know everything and are impossible to have a rational conversation with.

katzgrau 16y ago
I am said "cocksure noob." If you disagree with @compay, you will assuredly earn the same title.
- jbm 16y ago
  Who are you? I don't mean that in an insulting fashion, I simply don't know. (Compay has a karma of 1426 for comparison, and I owe him for introducing me to the PIE library for IE CSS)
- jessedhillon 16y ago
  Welcome to Hacker News! Based on your comment and that you have a tenth the karma of the person you're accusing of being reactionary, I would recommend that you make an actual argument or mount a defense, and stay away from these kinds of insults.
  - katzgrau 16y ago
    meh, read the comments on my blog and think for yourself instead taking some collectively-generated number as an indicator of whether you should scowl at me or not.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
roel_v 16y ago

sigzero 16y ago

He uses "was" like it still isn't.

alecco 16y ago

Documented madness http://www.reddit.com/r/lolphp/top/?t=all http://www.reddit.com/r/lolphp/top/?t=all

kouiskas 16y ago

Average developers blame the language for their inability to make the best use of it. Good developers are too busy writing great code with the tools they have at hand to care. Some languages have strengths for particular applications, but spaghetti can be written in anything. And why should you care if 99% of the rest of the world writes shit code with the language you use, as long as your own house is clean?

denysonique 16y ago

['Ruby', 'Python'].each { |lang| 3.times {print "#{lang} is more fun. "} }

krobertson 16y ago

"In it’s pizza-faced adolescent years (pre-5.0)" Really? It took 5 major releases and 9 years? Ruby and Python have been around as long or longer, but seemed to get the language basics/semantics down earlier. They also grew a lot slower compared to PHP.

pronik 16y ago

Essentially it's "an open-source project is just as good as its BDFL is". Which is, judging by different projects, true.