6 ms·

PHP: A fractal of bad design (2012)

8 points by aberoham 5y ago

AmazingTurtle 5y ago
I used to laugh at this when I was in high school. This is so old and most of it is outdated. Please... Don't post those dead old links.
unixhero 5y ago
"Programming is a young profession." I beg to differ.
gregjor 5y ago
Some valid criticisms, but 9 years old and out of date. I think the mistake is thinking of PHP as “designed” as a language, rather than built to solve some real problems. More important is how well PHP works rather than how far away it falls from an imagined better-designed language. As Stroustrup quipped, there are two kinds of languages: Those everyone hates, and those no one uses.
- k__ 5y ago
  He wasn't even right with that. Most people like the language they're using.
boksiora 5y ago
If you think PHP is broken, have you tried JavaScript ?
- tlackemann 5y ago
  Willing to bet that the people who banter on about PHP are the same folks who install 'create-react-app' without question.
- kyriakos 5y ago
  maybe we should just conclude that quick to learn languages will always get popular even if they are nowhere perfect. JS is not perfect but its easy and available, same for PHP, basics can be learned in a day and you can have a working webapp in a week (especially with a framework like Laravel), on the other hand I wouldn't program a missile guidance system in it.
zarzavat 5y ago
The PHP of today is now a fine house built on a terrible foundation. The warts from the original language are still there, but inexplicably they have decided to just soldier on and build a good language on top of them. For instance they've built a perfectly good object system with many advanced features; yet arrays, strings, etc aren't objects so you can't even call methods on them, they can only be manipulated by a dated, procedural API.
- NotSwift 5y ago
  Adding feature upon feature to a language that does not have a good foundation generally leads to disappointing results. My favorite examples are Javascript, Perl and C++.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    It's especially a problem with dynamic languages, the lack of safe refactoring makes changing the language very difficult. Everybody learned the wrong lesson from the Python 3 debacle. The lesson everybody learned was "Big language changes are bad, don't do them". Whereas the lesson everybody should have learned was "Writing code in a dynamically typed language is like writing it in stone, it's really expensive to upgrade it later".
- kyriakos 5y ago
  I see no reason why arrays should be objects. PHP is not Java even if a lot has been borrowed from it over the years. Array manipulation and associative arrays in PHP are some of its strong points. Yes they are easy to abuse but they are also extremely flexible and make development fast.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    There's no reason for arrays to be objects if PHP wants to be a procedural language like C. In the days of PHP4 it was a procedural language and that design made total sense. However nowadays nobody uses PHP as a procedural language, they use it as an object-oriented language. In that context it is extremely strange to have this procedural API still hanging around for "old" types.
wolfium3 5y ago
https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture ^^ Someone recently shared this article with me. Really made me think about my interaction with programmers using other languages.
pachico 5y ago
Again? Please stop posting on this and, since you're at it, get over it!
kyriakos 5y ago
2012... 9 years passed a lot has changed. PHP still quite popular. Either this site needs to be updated or not posted.

8 points by aberoham 5y ago

I used to laugh at this when I was in high school. This is so old and most of it is outdated. Please... Don't post those dead old links.

unixhero 5y ago

"Programming is a young profession." I beg to differ.

gregjor 5y ago

Some valid criticisms, but 9 years old and out of date. I think the mistake is thinking of PHP as “designed” as a language, rather than built to solve some real problems. More important is how well PHP works rather than how far away it falls from an imagined better-designed language. As Stroustrup quipped, there are two kinds of languages: Those everyone hates, and those no one uses.

k__ 5y ago
He wasn't even right with that. Most people like the language they're using.

boksiora 5y ago

If you think PHP is broken, have you tried JavaScript ?

tlackemann 5y ago
Willing to bet that the people who banter on about PHP are the same folks who install 'create-react-app' without question.
kyriakos 5y ago
maybe we should just conclude that quick to learn languages will always get popular even if they are nowhere perfect. JS is not perfect but its easy and available, same for PHP, basics can be learned in a day and you can have a working webapp in a week (especially with a framework like Laravel), on the other hand I wouldn't program a missile guidance system in it.

zarzavat 5y ago

The PHP of today is now a fine house built on a terrible foundation. The warts from the original language are still there, but inexplicably they have decided to just soldier on and build a good language on top of them. For instance they've built a perfectly good object system with many advanced features; yet arrays, strings, etc aren't objects so you can't even call methods on them, they can only be manipulated by a dated, procedural API.

NotSwift 5y ago
Adding feature upon feature to a language that does not have a good foundation generally leads to disappointing results. My favorite examples are Javascript, Perl and C++.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  It's especially a problem with dynamic languages, the lack of safe refactoring makes changing the language very difficult. Everybody learned the wrong lesson from the Python 3 debacle. The lesson everybody learned was "Big language changes are bad, don't do them". Whereas the lesson everybody should have learned was "Writing code in a dynamically typed language is like writing it in stone, it's really expensive to upgrade it later".
kyriakos 5y ago
I see no reason why arrays should be objects. PHP is not Java even if a lot has been borrowed from it over the years. Array manipulation and associative arrays in PHP are some of its strong points. Yes they are easy to abuse but they are also extremely flexible and make development fast.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  There's no reason for arrays to be objects if PHP wants to be a procedural language like C. In the days of PHP4 it was a procedural language and that design made total sense. However nowadays nobody uses PHP as a procedural language, they use it as an object-oriented language. In that context it is extremely strange to have this procedural API still hanging around for "old" types.

wolfium3 5y ago

https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture ^^ Someone recently shared this article with me. Really made me think about my interaction with programmers using other languages.

pachico 5y ago

Again? Please stop posting on this and, since you're at it, get over it!

kyriakos 5y ago

2012... 9 years passed a lot has changed. PHP still quite popular. Either this site needs to be updated or not posted.