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I think a better analogy would be that the PHP carpenters have standard old tools that people have used forever, and they work just fine. Normal hammer with wo
by wccrawford 6y ago
I think a better analogy would be that the PHP carpenters have standard old tools that people have used forever, and they work just fine. Normal hammer with wooden handles, normal planes, etc etc.
But there are modern carpenters that have hammers that are 100% metal and never break and actually improve your hammering power. The new electric hand planes work a lot faster, though you do have to be more careful because they can get out of hand quicker. etc etc.
In the end, they both build houses. The old-school carpenters might take longer, and they might have to know more techniques, but they get there in the end.
On the other hand, the modern carpenters sometimes go a littler overboard with their tools and have problems that old-school carpenters don't have, especially with their tools randomly stopping working in the middle of a job. It might not be often, but it happens.
To add to that, the old-school carpenters can actually use a lot of the new tools, too. They fit into the workflow and can be adapted to their old tools. It's just that they primarily stick with their old tools because they're used to them.
It's kind of interesting how much the world of woodworking and software development overlaps in that way.
- codeulike 6y agoThe difference comes in how often modifications need to be made
- ptx 6y agoYour analogy makes is sound as if the problem with PHP is that it's old or lacking features, whereas the point of the original analogy is that it's poorly designed. (Python is older than PHP, so it's not a question of being modern or not.)
- wccrawford 6y agoBy today's standards, old tools are poorly designed. At least, most of them. The one's that have stood the test of time aren't the bad ones. Those old tools still worked, just not as well as modern versions.
- ptx 6y agoMany good and well-designed languages are older than PHP (Scheme is from 1975!), so that cannot be the cause of PHP's poor design. Rasmus Lerdoff actually gave a great talk on why he created PHP and how it sort of accidentally turned into a programming language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmD1Q4FsXCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmD1Q4FsXCc
- mgkimsal 6y ago> On the other hand, the modern carpenters sometimes go a littler overboard with their tools and have problems that old-school carpenters don't have, especially with their tools randomly stopping working in the middle of a job. It might not be often, but it happens. Great extra point. I'm often surprised at how much random breakage other people just accept as normal in "modern" webdev (meaning, for better or worse, you're involving javascript somewhere in the process). Put another way, I'm frustrated by how much I'm expected to just 'deal with' because a seeming large number of other people don't see a problem with it (or don't see enough of a problem with it).