7 ms·

This. My first thought when I saw the title: PHP is still maintained?

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Yup. So is C++, as is FORTRAN, and even COBOL (although I don’t think they are actually adding to COBOL anymore). All of these languages are favorite targets of mockery by the “buzzword du jour” crowd, but they persist. I like modern stuff, and don’t miss some of the old crud, but there’s something to be said for a language that is over a quarter-century old, and runs a considerable portion of the world’s infrastructure. I think C++ was introduced 35 years ago, and FORTRAN is about 30 years older than that. And, of course, you have C, which is the engine behind Linux and Git.
- codeflo 6y ago
  It’s not a question of age, and I think you’re comparing apples to oranges a bit. Cobol is simply kept running. Everything it does, newer languages do better. Nobody writes new systems in it. C++ on the other hand allows you to do things that other languages simply don’t, so of course it’s still alive. New C++ projects are started every day. A lot of actively developed languages have their niche. Python looks very elegant to mathematicians and engineers, and has fast math libraries. Java has an unmatched ecosystem. And so on. I think PHP's niche is low barrier to entry. Maybe I'm wrong, what do you think PHP does better than other languages? (Edit: Sorry for editing the post while you replied. I tried to word the question in a more friendly way.)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    It's a C++ and a COBOL. The language has a lot of stuff that drives me nuts (in reality, it's not much of a drive –more of a short putt [Ed]). But it is quite performant, stable and capable. I have done a lot of PHP programming, and would be very happy to never work in it again. I have a tremendous respect for the language. It also has –literally– tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of expert developers, worldwide. Many of these developers used to stink, but are now much better, as a result of their work with PHP. It also has a massive support infrastructure. HN doesn't really appeal to the types of developers that make the lions' share of PHP (and C++) implementation base, so you won't always hear about it, hereabouts. I remember reading an article, some time ago, called "IT Runs on Java 8"[0]. It talked about how much of the IT landscape is composed of folks working in tech and patterns that are not considered "shiny/sexy." [UPDATE]: Not a problem. I do the same thing ;). The main thing that PHP has, that very few other languages have, is a gigantic implementation surface. In one of my more successful open-source projects, I deliberately wrote it in PHP (4, then, reluctantly, 5.6), because I knew that would give it a far better chance of being implemented. I was right. It is now fast becoming the de facto world standard for its demographic. [0] http://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/ http://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/
  - spdionis 6y ago
    PHP mostly competes with Ruby, Python and Node in the web space. It is generally faster than Ruby and Python. It's not the mess that javascript is. Has a sane community with a wide range of well-maintained packages. Symfony is easily a rival to Django and RoR. At that point it's a matter of preference, but Symfony is top-notch quality. I wouldn't care for the ActiveRecord usage in RoR for example. I'm not sure that people saying low barrier to entry know what they're talking about. It's the same barrier to entry as for any other scripting language. If you're telling me about FTPing files: this is not how the PHP community has been working for the last ~10 years. All those people commenting "I have no idea who would start a PHP project today" live in a bubble, probably based in SV.
    - tux 6y ago
      @spdionis, All those people commenting "I have no idea who would start a PHP project today" live in a bubble, probably based in SV. Indeed. And I would start a project in PHP anyday!
  - simion314 6y ago
    >what do you think PHP does better than other languages? Most of the time is not language A vs language B in abstract, it really depends on the project and what experience you or your developers have. Let me give an example that is not web development. We had a desktop app and we had a feature where the user can submit feedback or bug reports. This feedback was stored and managed in a third party product that had an API, we could not call this API directly from the application because we did not want to put our keys in the app. So we had to put 1 php file on our server that contain the secret key, we done a POST from the app to the server and the script would validate and then connect to the API. I am imagining that some people today would solve this with some super engineered containers or micro services but the solution I used with just 1 file with a few lines of code could be implemented in a few minutes by a developer and maybe 1 or 2 hours by some competent non-developer.
    - williamdclt 6y ago
      Good use of PHP I'd say, but as usual its strength really is that it's so easy to execute on any server. If you already had, let's say a Node backend, it would have been easier to just add an endpoint for this. The language itself, while I had no hate for it, doesn't have much advantages over Python/Ruby/JS/TS/other.
      - simion314 6y ago
        Sure, and for different jobs I used other languages. For one task there was a great python library so we use python and sent to it requests from PHP , some other task there was a java executable that worked the best so I called it from PHP, some other tasks there were Linux CLI tools that worked best so I called those, and some other task needed to use node and puppeter(a Chrome) wrapper - it was crashing a lot so we put it on a different server and called it from the main server PHP project. So in real world projects you don't chose the tool based on coolness factor, if you want to solve a problem in the best way possible you need to use the best tool for the job.
- anticristi 6y ago
  I was specifically refering to PHP. C++ has picked up a lot of speed since 2010, and kept up with modern needs, such as concurrency. C fills the need of being no BS, no runtime, close to hardware. COBOL and FORTRAN are too big to fail. Why would anyone pick PHP for a new project over, say, Python or NodeJS?
  - tored 6y ago
    For one PHP works how the web was intended.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I can tell you why I picked it: Because I wanted as many non-technical people as possible, running on wing-and-a-prayer, bottom-tier, shared hosting plans, to be able to run the platform I developed. I made the right choice.
  - tux 6y ago
    Why are we even talking about C/C++. This languages are not intended for web. This is software languages. I would never use C/C++ to code a website project. Just like I would never use PHP to code a software. Better comparison would be PHP vs Python or Ruby for example.
- skissane 6y ago
  > (although I don’t think they are actually adding to COBOL anymore). They are working on a new COBOL standard, COBOL 202X. The last COBOL standard was 2014 which was only 6 years ago. So COBOL is still evolving https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=19468956 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=194689...
fraktl 6y ago
When I read comments coming from people who don't use PHP which are always negative or condescending, I wonder - how do you imagine programmers who use PHP are like? Do you immediately draw parallels in your mind that makes us PHP-ers incompetent and basically dumb, while having a language that lets you mash the keyboard and it works? Honestly, after having used most of the languages at my disposal for past 22 years I've been doing this job - they were nothing special compared to PHP (or PHP compared to others). You still have to figure the problem out before solving it with algorithms. No language or framework will help you do that. I'm keen to hear why there are comments that demean one tool and elevate the other, when in reality - they're all just programming languages.
- codeflo 6y ago
  No, I don’t imagine that. But the fact is, PHP is very verbose and missing a lot of tools for building good abstractions compared to richer languages. If you’ve used “most of the languages” (whatever that is supposed to mean) and not realized this, I recommend you read up and reflect on the Blub Paradox: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
  - fraktl 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but it seems like you haven't used PHP and are actually in the dark about what language features there are. I wrote "most languages at my disposal", I didn't want to go down the path where I basically throw buzzwords and brag in front of someone I don't even know. Don't get me wrong, but you don't seem interested in discussing, you rather appear to want to show how right you are without iota of PHP knowledge. Since there's no dialogue here and you appear to be yet another code plumber, I'll bid you farewell and I wish you all the best in your career.
  - tored 6y ago
    What abstractions is PHP missing exactly?
  - kingdomcome50 6y ago
    Did you read that? > If you're writing a program that only has to do something very simple, like number crunching or bit manipulation, you may as well use a less abstract language, especially since it may be slightly faster. In your opinion, what percentage of web applications do you think are non-trivial? And for what it’s worth, nobody chooses PHP because of the language. That’s not the selling point. The selling point is the development paradigm/runtime. It’s dead simple. I recently started a small web project using the SAFE stack: https://safe-stack.github.io/docs/quickstart/ https://safe-stack.github.io/docs/quickstart/ I urge you to follow that QuickStart yourself (it only takes a minute or two). Assuming you were actually able to build the project, now, look at your project structure. How many directories do you have (11)? How many files (15510)? Think about how much knowledge is required to understand what’s going on (if you’ve never touched F# you are probably lost). What does this QuickStart app do? It is, I kid you not, a “Todo list”! I could write an almost exact clone of this app using PHP in exactly 1 file. No configuration scripts. No build suite. No 3rd-party packages. No CLI commands. Just 1 PHP file. Thats why people choose PHP.

Yup. So is C++, as is FORTRAN, and even COBOL (although I don’t think they are actually adding to COBOL anymore). All of these languages are favorite targets of mockery by the “buzzword du jour” crowd, but they persist. I like modern stuff, and don’t miss some of the old crud, but there’s something to be said for a language that is over a quarter-century old, and runs a considerable portion of the world’s infrastructure. I think C++ was introduced 35 years ago, and FORTRAN is about 30 years older than that. And, of course, you have C, which is the engine behind Linux and Git.

codeflo 6y ago
It’s not a question of age, and I think you’re comparing apples to oranges a bit. Cobol is simply kept running. Everything it does, newer languages do better. Nobody writes new systems in it. C++ on the other hand allows you to do things that other languages simply don’t, so of course it’s still alive. New C++ projects are started every day. A lot of actively developed languages have their niche. Python looks very elegant to mathematicians and engineers, and has fast math libraries. Java has an unmatched ecosystem. And so on. I think PHP's niche is low barrier to entry. Maybe I'm wrong, what do you think PHP does better than other languages? (Edit: Sorry for editing the post while you replied. I tried to word the question in a more friendly way.)
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  It's a C++ and a COBOL. The language has a lot of stuff that drives me nuts (in reality, it's not much of a drive –more of a short putt [Ed]). But it is quite performant, stable and capable. I have done a lot of PHP programming, and would be very happy to never work in it again. I have a tremendous respect for the language. It also has –literally– tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of expert developers, worldwide. Many of these developers used to stink, but are now much better, as a result of their work with PHP. It also has a massive support infrastructure. HN doesn't really appeal to the types of developers that make the lions' share of PHP (and C++) implementation base, so you won't always hear about it, hereabouts. I remember reading an article, some time ago, called "IT Runs on Java 8"[0]. It talked about how much of the IT landscape is composed of folks working in tech and patterns that are not considered "shiny/sexy." [UPDATE]: Not a problem. I do the same thing ;). The main thing that PHP has, that very few other languages have, is a gigantic implementation surface. In one of my more successful open-source projects, I deliberately wrote it in PHP (4, then, reluctantly, 5.6), because I knew that would give it a far better chance of being implemented. I was right. It is now fast becoming the de facto world standard for its demographic. [0] http://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/ http://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/
- spdionis 6y ago
  PHP mostly competes with Ruby, Python and Node in the web space. It is generally faster than Ruby and Python. It's not the mess that javascript is. Has a sane community with a wide range of well-maintained packages. Symfony is easily a rival to Django and RoR. At that point it's a matter of preference, but Symfony is top-notch quality. I wouldn't care for the ActiveRecord usage in RoR for example. I'm not sure that people saying low barrier to entry know what they're talking about. It's the same barrier to entry as for any other scripting language. If you're telling me about FTPing files: this is not how the PHP community has been working for the last ~10 years. All those people commenting "I have no idea who would start a PHP project today" live in a bubble, probably based in SV.
  - tux 6y ago
    @spdionis, All those people commenting "I have no idea who would start a PHP project today" live in a bubble, probably based in SV. Indeed. And I would start a project in PHP anyday!
- simion314 6y ago
  >what do you think PHP does better than other languages? Most of the time is not language A vs language B in abstract, it really depends on the project and what experience you or your developers have. Let me give an example that is not web development. We had a desktop app and we had a feature where the user can submit feedback or bug reports. This feedback was stored and managed in a third party product that had an API, we could not call this API directly from the application because we did not want to put our keys in the app. So we had to put 1 php file on our server that contain the secret key, we done a POST from the app to the server and the script would validate and then connect to the API. I am imagining that some people today would solve this with some super engineered containers or micro services but the solution I used with just 1 file with a few lines of code could be implemented in a few minutes by a developer and maybe 1 or 2 hours by some competent non-developer.
  - williamdclt 6y ago
    Good use of PHP I'd say, but as usual its strength really is that it's so easy to execute on any server. If you already had, let's say a Node backend, it would have been easier to just add an endpoint for this. The language itself, while I had no hate for it, doesn't have much advantages over Python/Ruby/JS/TS/other.
    - simion314 6y ago
      Sure, and for different jobs I used other languages. For one task there was a great python library so we use python and sent to it requests from PHP , some other task there was a java executable that worked the best so I called it from PHP, some other tasks there were Linux CLI tools that worked best so I called those, and some other task needed to use node and puppeter(a Chrome) wrapper - it was crashing a lot so we put it on a different server and called it from the main server PHP project. So in real world projects you don't chose the tool based on coolness factor, if you want to solve a problem in the best way possible you need to use the best tool for the job.
anticristi 6y ago
I was specifically refering to PHP. C++ has picked up a lot of speed since 2010, and kept up with modern needs, such as concurrency. C fills the need of being no BS, no runtime, close to hardware. COBOL and FORTRAN are too big to fail. Why would anyone pick PHP for a new project over, say, Python or NodeJS?
- tored 6y ago
  For one PHP works how the web was intended.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I can tell you why I picked it: Because I wanted as many non-technical people as possible, running on wing-and-a-prayer, bottom-tier, shared hosting plans, to be able to run the platform I developed. I made the right choice.
- tux 6y ago
  Why are we even talking about C/C++. This languages are not intended for web. This is software languages. I would never use C/C++ to code a website project. Just like I would never use PHP to code a software. Better comparison would be PHP vs Python or Ruby for example.
skissane 6y ago
> (although I don’t think they are actually adding to COBOL anymore). They are working on a new COBOL standard, COBOL 202X. The last COBOL standard was 2014 which was only 6 years ago. So COBOL is still evolving https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=19468956 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=194689...

fraktl 6y ago

When I read comments coming from people who don't use PHP which are always negative or condescending, I wonder - how do you imagine programmers who use PHP are like? Do you immediately draw parallels in your mind that makes us PHP-ers incompetent and basically dumb, while having a language that lets you mash the keyboard and it works? Honestly, after having used most of the languages at my disposal for past 22 years I've been doing this job - they were nothing special compared to PHP (or PHP compared to others). You still have to figure the problem out before solving it with algorithms. No language or framework will help you do that. I'm keen to hear why there are comments that demean one tool and elevate the other, when in reality - they're all just programming languages.

codeflo 6y ago
No, I don’t imagine that. But the fact is, PHP is very verbose and missing a lot of tools for building good abstractions compared to richer languages. If you’ve used “most of the languages” (whatever that is supposed to mean) and not realized this, I recommend you read up and reflect on the Blub Paradox: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
- fraktl 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but it seems like you haven't used PHP and are actually in the dark about what language features there are. I wrote "most languages at my disposal", I didn't want to go down the path where I basically throw buzzwords and brag in front of someone I don't even know. Don't get me wrong, but you don't seem interested in discussing, you rather appear to want to show how right you are without iota of PHP knowledge. Since there's no dialogue here and you appear to be yet another code plumber, I'll bid you farewell and I wish you all the best in your career.
- tored 6y ago
  What abstractions is PHP missing exactly?
- kingdomcome50 6y ago
  Did you read that? > If you're writing a program that only has to do something very simple, like number crunching or bit manipulation, you may as well use a less abstract language, especially since it may be slightly faster. In your opinion, what percentage of web applications do you think are non-trivial? And for what it’s worth, nobody chooses PHP because of the language. That’s not the selling point. The selling point is the development paradigm/runtime. It’s dead simple. I recently started a small web project using the SAFE stack: https://safe-stack.github.io/docs/quickstart/ https://safe-stack.github.io/docs/quickstart/ I urge you to follow that QuickStart yourself (it only takes a minute or two). Assuming you were actually able to build the project, now, look at your project structure. How many directories do you have (11)? How many files (15510)? Think about how much knowledge is required to understand what’s going on (if you’ve never touched F# you are probably lost). What does this QuickStart app do? It is, I kid you not, a “Todo list”! I could write an almost exact clone of this app using PHP in exactly 1 file. No configuration scripts. No build suite. No 3rd-party packages. No CLI commands. Just 1 PHP file. Thats why people choose PHP.