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The debugging story around PHP is better than other major scripting runtimes like Node. With PHP and kcachegrind you can really understand where you're spending

The debugging story around PHP is better than other major scripting runtimes like Node. With PHP and kcachegrind you can really understand where you're spending CPU easily. The tools for Node work but just aren't there yet. Another nice combo is Java + Mission Control. Fair enough, but I was thinking more along the lines of debugging logic. With python I can open up a local repl or jupyter, run the affected functions/methods, and from there I can get a nice traceback, modify code, or monkey patch something to figure it out. If I can't reproduce the bug locally, I can run a repl directly on the server to see how the code runs differently. My frustration with PHP is just memories of making an edit, refreshing the page, and crossing my fingers. Then once it's working forgetting to save it anywhere else because there wasn't a repo to begin with. I know the tooling has got much better, and PHP developers actually use deployment pipelines these days, and it was mostly caused by myself, and my co-workers not knowing any better. Still just how I remember it. And I don't think I'm the only one.

9dev 4y ago
Fair enough as well, but the internet seems full of people who’ve used php decades ago, and spread falsehoods based on that as fact. Your REPL complaint specifically is void these days - you can do exactly the same with a php interpreter, there’s kernels for Jupyter, tracebacks, repl locally and in any production environment (readline is baked in). It’s incredibly frustrating to see people discuss the language without any actual knowledge of it. Modern php involves one of the most stable package managers of any language, an extremely fast runtime with a JIT compiler and opcode cache, asynchronous code and coroutines (well, native green threads at least, but proper coroutines via an extension), mature frameworks, stateful application servers, solid standards among frameworks, containerised stacks,… it’s a joy to work with, yet people complain about standard library function names and form handling in templates from 1999.

9dev 4y ago

Fair enough as well, but the internet seems full of people who’ve used php decades ago, and spread falsehoods based on that as fact. Your REPL complaint specifically is void these days - you can do exactly the same with a php interpreter, there’s kernels for Jupyter, tracebacks, repl locally and in any production environment (readline is baked in). It’s incredibly frustrating to see people discuss the language without any actual knowledge of it. Modern php involves one of the most stable package managers of any language, an extremely fast runtime with a JIT compiler and opcode cache, asynchronous code and coroutines (well, native green threads at least, but proper coroutines via an extension), mature frameworks, stateful application servers, solid standards among frameworks, containerised stacks,… it’s a joy to work with, yet people complain about standard library function names and form handling in templates from 1999.