3 ms·

But what's the point? The beauty of perl scripts, and later php templates, was in their BASIC-like simplicity. They were not secure or structured in any way, b

But what's the point? The beauty of perl scripts, and later php templates, was in their BASIC-like simplicity. They were not secure or structured in any way, but very accessible. Once you add these frameworks, you realize you could have started with Python or Java in the first place and get more mature infrastructure and better language along the way.

omgitsabird 5y ago
> more mature infrastructure and better language What does this mean?
- thriftwy 5y ago
  PHP is a conceptually awful language. It is created by language amateurs and it shows in many early decisions such as the multiple thousands of built-in functions already mentioned. It had its benefits since those amateurs understood their use case and their users' capacity very well. But now all of that is gone and they are still stuck with a subpar language at the core.
  - omgitsabird 5y ago
    > created by language amateurs > all of that is gone and they are still stuck with a subpar language The argument is that the language is "awful" and "subpar" because it has "early decisions" like "multiple thousands of built-in" global functions introduced by "language amateurs"? Sorry, but I remain unconvinced. I agree that there are real reasons that PHP fails as a language in particular use cases, but it seems rare that those reasons get articulated in these threads.
thriftwy 5y ago
In the mid-00s the main selling point of PHP were shared hostings with mod_php which was a cheap way to host your own web site and database. Now with the cloud that advantage is utterly gone.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I am not quite sure if Jamstack has improved anything. I feel like the entire web stack is spinning wheels and hardly progressing.
  - dgb23 5y ago
    It's moving somewhere from "not quite there yet" to "substantial, qualitative improvement" as we speak. I'm following what happens in that space with React/Node based things like Next, and Redwood (soon v1.0), and others. The building blocks are there and the integrations get better and better. The big win of those will be tighter frontend and development integrations that are just not as feasible with a different language stack (PHP/Laravel, Python/Django, Ruby/Rails).
- deniska 5y ago
  Shared hosts are still there, and are cheaper and much simpler to use than your average cloud based deployment. Some even support these new hipster programming languages ruby and python.
  - JodieBenitez 5y ago
    "new hipster" programming languages: Python 1.0: January 1994 PHP 1.0: june 1995 Ruby 1.0: December 1996
    - deniska 5y ago
      Sure, but if we're talking about these languages being "socially acceptable" for writing websites, they arrived a bit later to the party than PHP. Granted, it still happened about a decade and a half ago, so I hoped the sarcasm using the word "new" would come through.
      - JodieBenitez 5y ago
        > I hoped the sarcasm using the word "new" would come through. It did ;-) . But I frequently meet devs (young and old) that believe Python, Ruby and others are "new" languages. So I think it's worth mentioning they are not in any way. Of course age does not equate maturity. Neither social acceptance.
Isinlor 5y ago
PHP share-nothing architecture is awesome. It's amazingly simple and it scales to arbitrary size.
- masklinn 5y ago
  Complicated frameworks means the “shared nothing architecture” is unusable and you have to use fcgi/fpm to get acceptable performances out of your website. At which point there’s little difference from <everything else>.
  - ihateolives 5y ago
    "Acceptable" is different for different folks. I don't understand the general sentiment of either you have enterprise level performance or it's a fail. Not everyone is building next Facebook or Amazon and yet most developers think that they are and vastly overestimate their needs. Also most hosting provides already have fpm configured for you and if you need to do it yourself for your VPS then it's not complicated.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
    What's wrong with FastCGI? PHP provides a CGI-like model regardless of which interface to the web server is actually used.
  - heurisko 5y ago
    As I understand it, adding fpm doesn't change the "shared nothing architecture" as each request is isolated from the other. There is no application server that can potentially store state between requests.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  PHP did not invent CGI and the whole selling point of mod_php was "share-something" architecture.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    For the PHP-side application developer, PHP is in 99% of use cases shared-nothing no matter the hosting environment - CGI, FCGI, FPM, mod_php. The exceptions are persistent socket (database) related, obviously you don't have these in a CGI environment. The mod_php "share-something" question was always more relevant for ops people.
schipplock 5y ago
There is legacy code out there, and I think people are grateful for these frameworks :).
rbanffy 5y ago
> Once you add these frameworks, you realize you could have started with Python or Java in the first place and get more mature infrastructure and better language along the way. And, with things like Flask or FastAPI, you get BASIC-like simplicity and immediacy with a language that has a concept-space that scales with your understanding of it.
asadkn 5y ago
I have used PHP as a replacement for even shell scripts, like perl and python, a lot in the past. The best thing is the very strong standard lib. Everything's built-in. I like node as well, but having to install so many packages just for that one file script is a major annoyance.

omgitsabird 5y ago

> more mature infrastructure and better language What does this mean?

thriftwy 5y ago
PHP is a conceptually awful language. It is created by language amateurs and it shows in many early decisions such as the multiple thousands of built-in functions already mentioned. It had its benefits since those amateurs understood their use case and their users' capacity very well. But now all of that is gone and they are still stuck with a subpar language at the core.
- omgitsabird 5y ago
  > created by language amateurs > all of that is gone and they are still stuck with a subpar language The argument is that the language is "awful" and "subpar" because it has "early decisions" like "multiple thousands of built-in" global functions introduced by "language amateurs"? Sorry, but I remain unconvinced. I agree that there are real reasons that PHP fails as a language in particular use cases, but it seems rare that those reasons get articulated in these threads.

thriftwy 5y ago

In the mid-00s the main selling point of PHP were shared hostings with mod_php which was a cheap way to host your own web site and database. Now with the cloud that advantage is utterly gone.

systemvoltage 5y ago
I am not quite sure if Jamstack has improved anything. I feel like the entire web stack is spinning wheels and hardly progressing.
- dgb23 5y ago
  It's moving somewhere from "not quite there yet" to "substantial, qualitative improvement" as we speak. I'm following what happens in that space with React/Node based things like Next, and Redwood (soon v1.0), and others. The building blocks are there and the integrations get better and better. The big win of those will be tighter frontend and development integrations that are just not as feasible with a different language stack (PHP/Laravel, Python/Django, Ruby/Rails).
deniska 5y ago
Shared hosts are still there, and are cheaper and much simpler to use than your average cloud based deployment. Some even support these new hipster programming languages ruby and python.
- JodieBenitez 5y ago
  "new hipster" programming languages: Python 1.0: January 1994 PHP 1.0: june 1995 Ruby 1.0: December 1996
  - deniska 5y ago
    Sure, but if we're talking about these languages being "socially acceptable" for writing websites, they arrived a bit later to the party than PHP. Granted, it still happened about a decade and a half ago, so I hoped the sarcasm using the word "new" would come through.
    - JodieBenitez 5y ago
      > I hoped the sarcasm using the word "new" would come through. It did ;-) . But I frequently meet devs (young and old) that believe Python, Ruby and others are "new" languages. So I think it's worth mentioning they are not in any way. Of course age does not equate maturity. Neither social acceptance.

Isinlor 5y ago

PHP share-nothing architecture is awesome. It's amazingly simple and it scales to arbitrary size.

masklinn 5y ago
Complicated frameworks means the “shared nothing architecture” is unusable and you have to use fcgi/fpm to get acceptable performances out of your website. At which point there’s little difference from <everything else>.
- ihateolives 5y ago
  "Acceptable" is different for different folks. I don't understand the general sentiment of either you have enterprise level performance or it's a fail. Not everyone is building next Facebook or Amazon and yet most developers think that they are and vastly overestimate their needs. Also most hosting provides already have fpm configured for you and if you need to do it yourself for your VPS then it's not complicated.
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
  What's wrong with FastCGI? PHP provides a CGI-like model regardless of which interface to the web server is actually used.
- heurisko 5y ago
  As I understand it, adding fpm doesn't change the "shared nothing architecture" as each request is isolated from the other. There is no application server that can potentially store state between requests.
thriftwy 5y ago
PHP did not invent CGI and the whole selling point of mod_php was "share-something" architecture.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  For the PHP-side application developer, PHP is in 99% of use cases shared-nothing no matter the hosting environment - CGI, FCGI, FPM, mod_php. The exceptions are persistent socket (database) related, obviously you don't have these in a CGI environment. The mod_php "share-something" question was always more relevant for ops people.

schipplock 5y ago

There is legacy code out there, and I think people are grateful for these frameworks :).

rbanffy 5y ago

> Once you add these frameworks, you realize you could have started with Python or Java in the first place and get more mature infrastructure and better language along the way. And, with things like Flask or FastAPI, you get BASIC-like simplicity and immediacy with a language that has a concept-space that scales with your understanding of it.

asadkn 5y ago

I have used PHP as a replacement for even shell scripts, like perl and python, a lot in the past. The best thing is the very strong standard lib. Everything's built-in. I like node as well, but having to install so many packages just for that one file script is a major annoyance.