4 ms·

The reason why people now care about PHP is that, decades ago they thought PHP would the right way to develop projects, now they are stuck, because they cannot

The reason why people now care about PHP is that, decades ago they thought PHP would the right way to develop projects, now they are stuck, because they cannot get rid of PHP any more. If you look at any well grounded projects, they try to avoid PHP at all cost. Only handful amount people are responsible for core development. Decision are made based on "copying" other languages like Java, plus you always end up using lots of tools just to make your code safer. There are tons of tools to get things done, PHP is one of the worst ones.

hotz 5y ago
A poor developer can make any tool look bad.
- nalekberov 5y ago
  sure, but why would you use poor tool in the first place?
  - archerx 5y ago
    What is your experience to make such ignorant statements?
    - nalekberov 5y ago
      I will just leave these here: https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ https://software-gunslinger.tumblr.com/post/47131406821/php-is-meant-to-die https://software-gunslinger.tumblr.com/post/47131406821/php-...
      - bowersbros 5y ago
        That first article is a decade old.
        xigoi 5y ago
        The article has been updated over the decade. It mentions which things have been fixed — most of them haven't.
        kgeist 5y ago
        I used to hate PHP with passion myself (having read those articles too) before I had to take on a large project which used modern practices (PHP 7+, latest Symfony) and I can say it's been a surprisingly smooth sailing so far, most of the time you use nicely designed abstractions over the core APIs provided by the framework (or its modules) and don't use built-in functions directly. The actual annoyances I notice everyday are things like inconsistent argument order in array_* functions (people prefer to use them directly), but you quickly get used to it and there's not that many of such functions in day-to-day work. What you usually do is generic stuff like defining models, writing controllers etc. and most of the time it doesn't feel much different from other enterprisey languages I've used such as C# or Java. From time to time you have to use some arcane PHP function because the framework doesn't provide it for you but there's a custom, at our company at least, to wrap such functions in nice utility classes once and forget they exist.
      - archerx 5y ago
        Ah I see, you partake in cargo cult development. Thank you for elaborating and have a good day.
        nalekberov 5y ago
        check, next PHP fan boy please.
      - sgjohnson 5y ago
        Those articles are 10 years old.
cardanome 5y ago
> The reason why people now care about PHP is that, decades ago they thought PHP would the right way to develop projects, now they are stuck I worked on many greenfield projects in recent year where the conscious choice was made to use PHP. For the majority of projects NOT using PHP is basically throwing money in the trash. Best deployment story. Great ecosystem. > Decision are made based on "copying" other languages like Java, plus you always end up using lots of tools just to make your code safer. This is a really big strength. PHP is able to learn from other languages and when implementing features can avoid mistakes that they made.
- nalekberov 5y ago
  > I worked on many greenfield projects in recent year where the conscious choice was made to use PHP. What kind of greenfield projects were they, and who was making those conscious choices? Without context it's just non-sense. > For the majority of projects NOT using PHP is basically throwing money in the trash. Best deployment story. Great ecosystem. What other technologies have you used in your experience, that came to conclusion? > This is a really big strength. PHP is able to learn from other languages and when implementing features can avoid mistakes that they made. Name features PHP avoided while copying.
  - cardanome 5y ago
    > What kind of greenfield projects were they, and who was making those conscious choices? Without context it's just non-sense. B2B shop, Marketplace, lots typical CRUD stuff. I don't think there is much of a pattern. Developers wanted to use PHP. Though of course here in Germany PHP is much more popular than in the states. > What other technologies have you used in your experience, that came to conclusion? For server-side stuff: Ruby, Python, JS/TS, Squeak/smalltalk (yes actually in production) Ruby used to have some productivity advantages because of Rails but these day, as PHP frameworks have caught up, I see many shops that did both PHP and Ruby going back to PHP. > Name features PHP avoided while copying. Those that PHP does not have? Not sure how to make a negative list.

hotz 5y ago

A poor developer can make any tool look bad.

nalekberov 5y ago
sure, but why would you use poor tool in the first place?
- archerx 5y ago
  What is your experience to make such ignorant statements?
  - nalekberov 5y ago
    I will just leave these here: https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ https://software-gunslinger.tumblr.com/post/47131406821/php-is-meant-to-die https://software-gunslinger.tumblr.com/post/47131406821/php-...
    - bowersbros 5y ago
      That first article is a decade old.
      - xigoi 5y ago
        The article has been updated over the decade. It mentions which things have been fixed — most of them haven't.
        kgeist 5y ago
        I used to hate PHP with passion myself (having read those articles too) before I had to take on a large project which used modern practices (PHP 7+, latest Symfony) and I can say it's been a surprisingly smooth sailing so far, most of the time you use nicely designed abstractions over the core APIs provided by the framework (or its modules) and don't use built-in functions directly. The actual annoyances I notice everyday are things like inconsistent argument order in array_* functions (people prefer to use them directly), but you quickly get used to it and there's not that many of such functions in day-to-day work. What you usually do is generic stuff like defining models, writing controllers etc. and most of the time it doesn't feel much different from other enterprisey languages I've used such as C# or Java. From time to time you have to use some arcane PHP function because the framework doesn't provide it for you but there's a custom, at our company at least, to wrap such functions in nice utility classes once and forget they exist.
    - archerx 5y ago
      Ah I see, you partake in cargo cult development. Thank you for elaborating and have a good day.
      - nalekberov 5y ago
        check, next PHP fan boy please.
    - sgjohnson 5y ago
      Those articles are 10 years old.

cardanome 5y ago

> The reason why people now care about PHP is that, decades ago they thought PHP would the right way to develop projects, now they are stuck I worked on many greenfield projects in recent year where the conscious choice was made to use PHP. For the majority of projects NOT using PHP is basically throwing money in the trash. Best deployment story. Great ecosystem. > Decision are made based on "copying" other languages like Java, plus you always end up using lots of tools just to make your code safer. This is a really big strength. PHP is able to learn from other languages and when implementing features can avoid mistakes that they made.

nalekberov 5y ago
> I worked on many greenfield projects in recent year where the conscious choice was made to use PHP. What kind of greenfield projects were they, and who was making those conscious choices? Without context it's just non-sense. > For the majority of projects NOT using PHP is basically throwing money in the trash. Best deployment story. Great ecosystem. What other technologies have you used in your experience, that came to conclusion? > This is a really big strength. PHP is able to learn from other languages and when implementing features can avoid mistakes that they made. Name features PHP avoided while copying.
- cardanome 5y ago
  > What kind of greenfield projects were they, and who was making those conscious choices? Without context it's just non-sense. B2B shop, Marketplace, lots typical CRUD stuff. I don't think there is much of a pattern. Developers wanted to use PHP. Though of course here in Germany PHP is much more popular than in the states. > What other technologies have you used in your experience, that came to conclusion? For server-side stuff: Ruby, Python, JS/TS, Squeak/smalltalk (yes actually in production) Ruby used to have some productivity advantages because of Rails but these day, as PHP frameworks have caught up, I see many shops that did both PHP and Ruby going back to PHP. > Name features PHP avoided while copying. Those that PHP does not have? Not sure how to make a negative list.