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There's a regular stream of "defending PHP" posts but they all seem to miss the point. No one bashes PHP because it can't do these things, or that it isn't eas
by freshhawk 15y ago
There's a regular stream of "defending PHP" posts but they all seem to miss the point.
No one bashes PHP because it can't do these things, or that it isn't easy. People bash PHP because there are objectively better languages and platforms out there and objectively bad decisions made by those guiding the PHP language.
If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easily in almost every semi-modern web ecosystem, but actually compare it to the other alternatives and identify when it's the right choice. It's harder but it leads to a blog post that might actually benefit readers.
- skrebbel 15y ago> If you want to defend PHP in any meaningful way then you can't just list things that can be done easily in almost every semi-modern web ecosystem Did you ever read Python's documentation? Or Ruby's? Or Java's? Show me one popular web programming language which has a full page, up to date, with examples and user comments and version incompatibility info, per function. Of course, it's just one point and I otherwise agree with your comment, but it's one hell of an advantage.
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoPython's got excellent documentation, both official and third party.
- otterley 15y agoPython itself does, but the third party modules (which do most of the heavy lifting) generally don't. See: Twisted.
- twism 15y agoThird party documentation doesn't count in this discussion.
- ceejayoz 15y agoIt does when one of the big criticisms of PHP is that it rolls everything into core that'd normally be third-party.
- bad_user 15y agoConsidering how PHP doesn't have anything like Twisted (and this is just one example out of many) ; no, it doesn't count. Also, I never used a popular Python library for which I haven't found good resources. My favorite Python library, called NLTK, which has no equivalent in PHP or Ruby or any other platform for that matter, comes with a freaking book that's available for free.
- wulczer 15y agoTwisted has semi-decent documentation, see http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.html http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.html http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/core/howto/index.html http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/core/howto/index.... http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/Documentation http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/Documentation It's not as comprehensive and shiny as the core Python docs, but along with the tutorials and examples, it's actually pretty decent.
- jrockway 15y agoPerl is a good example where most third-party modules have good documentation. Or at least a SYNOPSIS you can poke, some DESCRIPTION of what the module does, and a few hundred lines of code in the t/ directory that test all the features of the modules. The one thing I miss in Python is the inability to click "view source" in my web browser to see how a core Python library is implemented. PHP also has this problem. (Code is the best documentation. Learn to read it.)
- shabble 15y agoIf you're talking about the search.cpan.org links to source, I'm right there with you. The only thing I wish they had was a way to pipe it through a highlighter like perltidy with html out. That'd probably just lead to holy wars on formatting/colours though.
- masklinn 15y agoThere's high variation in quality amongst third-party modules, but the "modern" python community takes documentation quite seriously, there's even a complete site dedicated to nothing but hosting compiled documentation[0]. Projects like Django, Flask, SQLAlchemy or Flask have rather good documentation sets. [0] http://rtfd.org http://rtfd.org
- skrebbel 15y agoOh! Well, I must've missed that train (haven't done py for a few years). A couple of years ago, you had to get your info from a mix of a tutorial and a library reference, and most functions were documented with 3-4 sentences max and no examples. Hmm, that said, that's still exactly what I find on the official Python site (e.g. http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods - PHP beats this by lightyears with a single page with examples and comments per function). Which 3rd party thing should I be looking for? (genuinely interested btw - the docs is one thing i dislike about python, and maybe unrightfully so, apparently)
- scott_s 15y agoMaybe you're looking more for a tutorial, and not a reference? I've always found the online Python docs excellent, and provided me with exactly the information I need.
- masklinn 15y ago> e.g. http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods - PHP beats this by lightyears with a single page with examples and comments per function 1. Please explain why you need more explanation of these very basic functions 2. PHP's doc comments are unadulterated garbage 3. When things are worth documenting, they are: http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/collections.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/collections.html 4. if you truly think string methods are insufficiently documented, it is very easy to contribute to the documentation.
- TylerE 15y agoFrankly, no. Just no. The REASON PHP needs a page per function is the sheer number of poorly handled edge cases, version incompatibilities, and gotchas.
- rbranson 15y agoAs far as I know, PHP is the only major programming language that considers itself a "web programming language."
- Ixiaus 15y agoUm, Python's documentation is separated by release versions - so you can read a doc page that specifically targets the version you are using. That is the right way to do it; with PHP you would have to read the doc page, then also go read any deprecation warnings or caveats for the possible version you are using. What a nightmare to maintain too. Plus, I have yet to come across a Python doc page that doesn't provide usage examples! I can't speak for Ruby or Java because I haven't even looked at their documentation sites. User comments? PHP user comments are crap, IMHO - so many people writing so much horrible code in those comments. I understand where a lot of PHP supporters are coming from because I was once there - I spent four years with the language and thought it was the most beautiful thing that existed. Until Python, Scheme, Erlang, and Haskell invaded my life. PHP will always be an amateur programming language - which is it's strength, kind of like BASIC, a great stepping stone but nothing more.
- keypusher 15y agoSo right! PHP is the Basic of web programming languages.
- twism 15y agoUser comments in PHP doc pages IMO is a whole lot of noise. Not that I am saying there isn't a place for something like that but the official doc is just not the place.
- grncdr 15y agoI'll bite, speaking for Python, because that's the one I'm more familiar with. 1. Python doc has full up to date documentation for everything shipped with the standard library (which dwarfs PHPs grab bag of globally scoped functions) 2. The comments in PHP documentation are frequently out of date, misleading, or flat out wrong. Among the people I work with (who are working on PHP web apps, full time) everybody routinely advises the PHP noobs to ignore the comments. 3. The standard library functions shipped with most languages don't require a full page with multiple examples to explain how they work. Don't get me wrong, the documentation for PHP is excellent, but it's a small win for a language that has so many real --language level-- issues.
- masklinn 15y ago> Did you ever read Python's documentation? Yes. it's rather fucking good. > Show me one popular web programming language which has a full page, up to date, with examples and user comments and version incompatibility info, per function. Have you ever read Python's documentation? In the last ten years? Python's docs have a complete and readable description of the language[0] including its data model and the various core protocols[1], it has a number of quality howtos and guides[2] a complete documentation of how to use C-level APIs[3][4], a pretty good and complete tutorial for beginners[5], a complete, well written and exhaustive changelog with examples[6] drilling down to C API changes[7] and most stdlib modules are extensively documented with examples and links to to the actual source code for the module[8] and versioning information[9], with the whole documentation being heavily hyperlinked and permalinked (every section, subsectio, sub-sub-section, class, method, function or constant getting its very own anchor) linking to its own source[10]. And just in case you want to contribute, or even just want the documentation offline, it's included in the source tree and trivially compiled to not only an HTML version, but a PDF (via latex), plain text or EPUB one as well[11]. Hell, the documentation is so extensive there's even documentation on documenting[12]. Oh, and the documentation is available for every single version of Python past, present or future (for which it could be found anyway, as far as older versions of the language are concerned), including bugfix releases[13]. And then it goes the extra mile by letting you run examples to ensure nobody broke them[14]. As to "full page per function", I really don't think you need that. And the PHP doc comments are closer to youtube comments than to anything worth reading, I simply can not see them as anything but liabilities. [0] http://docs.python.org/py3k/reference/index.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/reference/index.html [1] http://docs.python.org/py3k/reference/datamodel.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/reference/datamodel.html [2] http://docs.python.org/py3k/howto/index.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/howto/index.html [3] http://docs.python.org/py3k/c-api/index.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/c-api/index.html [4] http://docs.python.org/py3k/extending/index.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/extending/index.html [5] http://docs.python.org/py3k/tutorial/index.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/tutorial/index.html [6] http://docs.python.org/py3k/whatsnew/3.2.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/whatsnew/3.2.html [7] http://docs.python.org/py3k/whatsnew/3.2.html#build-and-c-api-changes http://docs.python.org/py3k/whatsnew/3.2.html#build-and-c-ap... [8] http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/collections.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/collections.html] [9] http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/collections.html#collections.Counter.subtract http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/collections.html#collect... [10] http://docs.python.org/py3k/_sources/library/heapq.txt http://docs.python.org/py3k/_sources/library/heapq.txt [11] http://hg.python.org/cpython-fullhistory/file/tip/Doc http://hg.python.org/cpython-fullhistory/file/tip/Doc [12] http://docs.python.org/documenting/index.html http://docs.python.org/documenting/index.html [13] http://www.python.org/doc/versions/ http://www.python.org/doc/versions/ [14] http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ext/doctest.html http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ext/doctest.html (the lack of markup in HN comments is getting seriously annoying)
- dchest 15y ago> user comments Ha-ha-ha. You're kidding, right? Check strlen: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strlen.php http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strlen.php Comments: 1. Comment about how PHP converts types. "Conclusion: The values are converted to string before check the lenght." 2. Comment from a novice user who posted a solution to the problem of subtracting the number of spaces in string from its length. 3. Comment about someone who thought that there was a bug in strlen, but it actually was a documented difference in behavior between two minor versions of PHP. 4. Comment about counting characters in UTF-8 encoded string by decoding it to some other one-byte encoding. 5. Comment about counting characters in UTF-8. Actually, the whole new function. 6. Reminder that \r\n are actually two bytes! "If I had thought of this starting out, I would have saved myself several hours of trouble trying to get php to cut a message to the same length that my auxiliary javascript validation imposed on it." 7. Benchmarks for different UTF-8 strlen implementations. 8. Complaint about another comment, which suggested the function to count characters in UTF-8 strings that didn't work. And the "proper" solution using regular expressions. ...
- 46Bit 15y agoIt may just be a side effect of PHP's problems, but even the wrong comments tend to be extremely useful when you run into something weird when coding. Of course it's always more fun to bash people & programming languages, so maybe I'll just join in: that bloody Ruby API reference lacks any comments from users who might have noticed something that's causing a strange bug in my script.
- kenjackson 15y agoEveryone is mentioning Python, but also check C# and .NET Fx and ASP.NET MVC. For example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w4hkze5k.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w4hkze5k.aspx or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object.memberwiseclone.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object.member... You get the syntax (including VB, C++, and F# where availalbe), remarks, examples, version information, platforms, comments, and related content.
- llimllib 15y agoWhat used to drive me especially nuts about MSDN documentation (when I used to write C#) is that they seem to change the URL scheme every year or so, just so that every reference to anything breaks every single time you try to look at it. I mean, just look at that first URL!
- j-kidd 15y agoMSDN is crap. It is just complete for completeness sake. You get the syntax, remarks, examples, version information, platforms, comments, and related content, but you still can't find what you are looking for.
- luckyland 15y agoUser comments don't belong in documentation.
- jhamburger 15y agoThe problem is that people go too far with the bashing- People tend to just sneer at anything PHP-related, and don't acknowledge that great work is being done every day in PHP. An app written in PHP by a 8/10 programmer is going to be better than an app written in (sexy other language) by a 7/10 programmer.
- daeken 15y ago> An app written in PHP by a 8/10 programmer is going to be better than an app written in (sexy other language) by a 7/10 programmer. Depends entirely on your metric. It's far too easy to introduce subtle bugs, especially security oriented ones, in PHP. If I had a dollar for every XSS, remote file inclusion, CSRF, arbitrary file read, etc vulnerability I found in a "good" PHP app, I'd be a very wealthy man. Some things are mitigated by using a good framework, but in most cases people get them horribly, horribly wrong.
- ars 15y agoNone of the things you listed have anything to do with PHP, they can happen in any language.
- daeken 15y agoOh, absolutely! Except that they're more prevalent in PHP applications than anything else. It's simply way, way too easy to do the wrong thing. If you want to introduce XSS into, say, a Rails app, it's significantly more difficult; generally, you have to explicitly throw something back as 'raw'. Sure, some PHP frameworks handle it the same way, but it's rare to see this in the real world. While testing apps, PHP immediately throws up red flags -- it's simply not likely to be done right. It can be, but it's very rare.
- kijinbear 15y agoRails is a framework. PHP is a language. If you use a framework with PHP, it's just as easy to avoid XSS. Likewise, if you use vanilla Ruby without any framework...