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This seems like a desperate attempt to justify not moving on from a language whose death knell rang a long time ago. You might as well try to convince me I sho

by dolni 5y ago

This seems like a desperate attempt to justify not moving on from a language whose death knell rang a long time ago. You might as well try to convince me I should start my next business with cutting edge software written in Fortran or COBOL.

exclusiv 5y ago
Nobody cares about convincing YOU; you made up your mind a long time ago and could care less about all the nice things in PHP 8, the performance improvements and the massive ecosystem and huge parts of the web still driven by PHP.
ianhawes 5y ago
Is there a preferable language?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sumanthvepa 5y ago
I consult with startups a lot and routinely program in a variety of programming languages -- C++, Java, Swift, Kotlin, JS/NodeJS, Python, Ruby, PHP and a bunch of bash,awk,sed and perl. Most of these languages have been evolving to support most modern programming styles and have package ecosystems that are well managed and relatively easy to use. The point is not to prove that one language is better. For the most part, for web development, there isn't much difference in productivity for a programmer competent in the language between (JS/NodeJS, PHP, Python and Ruby) Java is a little more heavyweight for pure web development but if you have a bunch of backend services that need to be reliable you will find the type system to be of help.) What is more important for productivity is a deep familiarity with the frameworks, and tools -- the IDEs CI systems etc. that you need to build and deploy your solution. The other important thing is the ease with which you can hire programmers for that language in your market. Here in India finding PHP programmers is easier than say finding Kotlin programmers but harder than finding Java programmers. But that is not the case in other markets like the US. There is also the issue of perception of candidates. If like you, a large majority of candidates think the language is legacy, you'll end up having to pay more to hire them (because they will be harder to find -- most of the extra cost will be search costs not salary costs.) To the extent that the PHP community can convince folks that it is not a legacy language (and it really isn't) that is good for not just the language but the overall tech community. And this article furthers that goal well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
asddubs 5y ago
if people are out here voluntarily writing server-side javascript code, I see no reason to call PHP dead
- __float 5y ago
  what are your feelings about server side typescript? it's quite a nice language, and for many many cases is certainly fast enough these days.
  - oaiey 5y ago
    It think there is a reasonable argument that in PHP and JS there are an equal amount of issues. Inconsistent API, inconsistent language, bad data types, same speed .. just to name a few. Not that I would not also prefer node over PHP ... But that is mainly because of C/C#/Java familiarity and frontend code reuse/familiarity than anything else.
Uehreka 5y ago
Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP. You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go? Hell no. You hire someone cheaper whose skillset isn’t systems programming or ML, and they spit out a templated site in a weekend that looks sleek and makes a good impression, and when you need more content you tell them and they turn it around in an hour, and you spend your time on the Go stuff. And that market, the market for Good Enough sites that front Really Good products and are fast to work with: that’s a great market for a lot of people who want to sling some code, get things done, clock out at 5 and spend time with their kids in a nice house in the suburbs. That’s why for people who want that kind of life, I recommend learning some PHP (or rather, learning the super-common frameworks that use PHP).
- mikl 5y ago
  > Do you write that site in Go? Yes! https://gohugo.io/ https://gohugo.io/ would be a great choice for that kind of thing.
  - innocenat 5y ago
    But you don't write Go if you use hugo?
    - mikl 5y ago
      Depends a bit on how fancy your Hugo-site is. Unless you’re just feeding markdown into a pre-made template, you’ll at least use the Go template syntax, since that’s what Hugo’s templates are written in. And if you want to integrate Hugo with anything, Go is the way.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    That would likely then require a developer to update the content. Not ideal for a marketing website.
onion2k 5y ago
I think the news of PHP's death came a bit too early. Most people I know claimed it was dead during the time Node was getting popular and people started pushing for things like websockets to make updating pages faster. PHP couldn't do that so people said it would die, and honestly if you were in a startup or a FAANG at the time it looked like it would. Everyone was moving from a REST web 2.0 model to a "live, concurrent users" model. But the trend didn't continue. People did it for a whilw, but then moved on to other models which still worked for PHP because few apps really need live data and concurrency like that. The problem for PHP is that the reputation for being "a dying language" stuck.
- exclusiv 5y ago
  That reputation is only viewed that way by a tiny number of nerds, typically with static language backgrounds that don't ship much code or product. I added more value to a tech agency and their clients with PHP than several of the senior Java guys did combined. And they were talented. Just set in their ways and lacked a focus of getting things done and adding value. They'd waste time overbuilding shit that nobody used because it was interesting to them, not that it would create value for the client or end-users. Also, I took over several large Node projects built by hipsters and they are the messiest code bases I've ever seen. And I've inherited a lot of trash PHP ones over the years. Regarding the concurrency thing with PHP - ReactPHP is very nice, PHP 7 and on performance gains were massive, and real-time (search, chat, etc) can be better handled by Algolia/Pusher/etc anyway. The Node hype train had a great run. And I still like Node. But PHP is the language of getting shit done.

by dolni 5y ago

exclusiv 5y ago

Nobody cares about convincing YOU; you made up your mind a long time ago and could care less about all the nice things in PHP 8, the performance improvements and the massive ecosystem and huge parts of the web still driven by PHP.

ianhawes 5y ago

Is there a preferable language?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sumanthvepa 5y ago

I consult with startups a lot and routinely program in a variety of programming languages -- C++, Java, Swift, Kotlin, JS/NodeJS, Python, Ruby, PHP and a bunch of bash,awk,sed and perl. Most of these languages have been evolving to support most modern programming styles and have package ecosystems that are well managed and relatively easy to use. The point is not to prove that one language is better. For the most part, for web development, there isn't much difference in productivity for a programmer competent in the language between (JS/NodeJS, PHP, Python and Ruby) Java is a little more heavyweight for pure web development but if you have a bunch of backend services that need to be reliable you will find the type system to be of help.) What is more important for productivity is a deep familiarity with the frameworks, and tools -- the IDEs CI systems etc. that you need to build and deploy your solution. The other important thing is the ease with which you can hire programmers for that language in your market. Here in India finding PHP programmers is easier than say finding Kotlin programmers but harder than finding Java programmers. But that is not the case in other markets like the US. There is also the issue of perception of candidates. If like you, a large majority of candidates think the language is legacy, you'll end up having to pay more to hire them (because they will be harder to find -- most of the extra cost will be search costs not salary costs.) To the extent that the PHP community can convince folks that it is not a legacy language (and it really isn't) that is good for not just the language but the overall tech community. And this article furthers that goal well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

asddubs 5y ago

if people are out here voluntarily writing server-side javascript code, I see no reason to call PHP dead

__float 5y ago
what are your feelings about server side typescript? it's quite a nice language, and for many many cases is certainly fast enough these days.
- oaiey 5y ago
  It think there is a reasonable argument that in PHP and JS there are an equal amount of issues. Inconsistent API, inconsistent language, bad data types, same speed .. just to name a few. Not that I would not also prefer node over PHP ... But that is mainly because of C/C#/Java familiarity and frontend code reuse/familiarity than anything else.

Uehreka 5y ago

Here’s something to think about: You and some buddies start a startup whose product is a complicated piece of medical software that uses Tensorflow’s inference but most of it is written in Go. Cool stuff, you’d never do that in PHP. You’re getting ready to launch, and you’re going to need a marketing site and a site with documentation and help articles for users. Do you write that site in Go? Hell no. You hire someone cheaper whose skillset isn’t systems programming or ML, and they spit out a templated site in a weekend that looks sleek and makes a good impression, and when you need more content you tell them and they turn it around in an hour, and you spend your time on the Go stuff. And that market, the market for Good Enough sites that front Really Good products and are fast to work with: that’s a great market for a lot of people who want to sling some code, get things done, clock out at 5 and spend time with their kids in a nice house in the suburbs. That’s why for people who want that kind of life, I recommend learning some PHP (or rather, learning the super-common frameworks that use PHP).

mikl 5y ago
> Do you write that site in Go? Yes! https://gohugo.io/ https://gohugo.io/ would be a great choice for that kind of thing.
- innocenat 5y ago
  But you don't write Go if you use hugo?
  - mikl 5y ago
    Depends a bit on how fancy your Hugo-site is. Unless you’re just feeding markdown into a pre-made template, you’ll at least use the Go template syntax, since that’s what Hugo’s templates are written in. And if you want to integrate Hugo with anything, Go is the way.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  That would likely then require a developer to update the content. Not ideal for a marketing website.

onion2k 5y ago

I think the news of PHP's death came a bit too early. Most people I know claimed it was dead during the time Node was getting popular and people started pushing for things like websockets to make updating pages faster. PHP couldn't do that so people said it would die, and honestly if you were in a startup or a FAANG at the time it looked like it would. Everyone was moving from a REST web 2.0 model to a "live, concurrent users" model. But the trend didn't continue. People did it for a whilw, but then moved on to other models which still worked for PHP because few apps really need live data and concurrency like that. The problem for PHP is that the reputation for being "a dying language" stuck.

exclusiv 5y ago
That reputation is only viewed that way by a tiny number of nerds, typically with static language backgrounds that don't ship much code or product. I added more value to a tech agency and their clients with PHP than several of the senior Java guys did combined. And they were talented. Just set in their ways and lacked a focus of getting things done and adding value. They'd waste time overbuilding shit that nobody used because it was interesting to them, not that it would create value for the client or end-users. Also, I took over several large Node projects built by hipsters and they are the messiest code bases I've ever seen. And I've inherited a lot of trash PHP ones over the years. Regarding the concurrency thing with PHP - ReactPHP is very nice, PHP 7 and on performance gains were massive, and real-time (search, chat, etc) can be better handled by Algolia/Pusher/etc anyway. The Node hype train had a great run. And I still like Node. But PHP is the language of getting shit done.