4 ms·

No, languages simply matter much less than they once did due to widespread adoption of best practices and good design. The tooling around languages matters muc

No, languages simply matter much less than they once did due to widespread adoption of best practices and good design. The tooling around languages matters much more. C++ isn't still popular because it's the best language. Only real reason I'd always pick PHP over JS is not because I love PHP, but because Laravel is better than any node framework.

happytiger 3y ago
That's why I keep using PHP in my projects personally. Laravel is just so damn pleasant to work with.
miohtama 3y ago
While you may pick, most developers do not. You are not the most developers, as you are special and probably much more talented. They pick JS because they know the language best and are more productive in it than in Laravel. There is nothing Laravel can do about it - being best is not going to change the direction, because the limiting factor is the knowledge of programming languages of most of developers.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  They picked JS for the server because they have a choice in what languages they can run on the server, but they don't have a choice about what languages they can run in the browser, so JavaScript it is. There are HUGE advantages and efficiencies to using the same language in the browser and the server. Most developers are (rightfully) lazy and simply don't want to learn and juggle two different languages in two different places, when they can use simply one language everywhere. For example, when switching between PHP and JavaScript, you have to remember that the ?: ternary conditional operator in PHP has idiotic left-associativity, so you have to use extra parenthesis to disambiguate it, while the identical looking ?: ternary operator in JavaScript and all other languages has sane right-associativity. "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." -Rasmus Lerdorf "We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all." -Rasmus Lerdorf
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    You don't have to remember that, any IDE will yell at you. I don't find it inconvenient to write PHP or JS syntax, it's completely trivial for a professional.
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      Don't be such an apologist for terrible careless programming language design, expecting professional programmers to tolerate IDE's "yelling at them" about unforced language design flaws and loaded footguns, using terribly designed languages that were mindlessly thrown together by anti-intellectual amateurs like Rasmus Lerdorf, a self proclaimed "not a real programmer", who says he doesn't even like programming, who doesn't even know the difference between left and right associativity, or even "care about this crap at all". "We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all." -Rasmus Lerdorf "There are people who actually like programming. I don't understand why they like programming." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." -Rasmus Lerdorf "Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes." -Jamie Zawinski "I used to think that PHP was the biggest, stinkiest dump that the computer industry had taken on my life in a decade. Then I started needing to do things that could only be accomplished in AppleScript." -Jamie Zawinski "From what I've seen, PHP isn't so much a language as a random collection of arbitrary stuff, a virtual explosion at the keyword and function factory. Bear in mind this is coming from a guy who was weaned on BASIC, a language that gets about as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield. So I am not unfamiliar with the genre." -Jeff Atwood https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ On the other hand, Anders Hejlsberg is a highly skilled, careful, conscientious, experienced professional programming language designer, who actually knows what he's doing, and LIKES programming. And as a professional programmer who's been writing lots of code in many languages since the early 1980's, I much prefer and enjoy using his well designed IDEs and programming languages like Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript, to carelessly hacked together fractals of bad design like PHP. PHP: a fractal of bad design: 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/ And you're still totally missing the point about the advantages of using one programming language on both the client an server side, sharing libraries, data, APIs, mental energy, and effort. If you were really a professional programmer, you wouldn't be stuck in a rut using and apologizing for PHP, because you would be capable of learning and using many other vastly superior and more powerful programming languages and tools than PHP, and you wouldn't have to waste your time and mental effort rationalizing and making excuses, remembering to avoid so many unforced foot guns and idiotic bad design fractals, and carefully and defensively working around all of its flaws, while getting "yelled at by your IDE" all the time, instead of actually spending your finite time and energy solving problems.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  With GPT, I don't really find that I am more "productive" in one scripting language or another given that it has the ability to perfectly translate between them on the fly.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Perfectly? Oh really? Have you tried actually reading the code you're copying and pasting from ChatGPT into production? Are you actually letting it do all your architectural design and security auditing for you, too? If ChatGPT is already perfectly solving all of your programming problems, then you should learn a lot more about programing, design, architecture, and security, so you can take on more challenging projects, and actually design decent APIs and architectures, instead of just paint-by-number monkey coding, and produce better more thoughtful designs and code than an LLM, because your job is already obsolete.
  - latexr 3y ago
    If you think the current crop of AI does the translation “perfectly”, you’re going to have a bad time. Or maybe not you, but your customers, client, or the poor chap that replaces you is going to have something blow up in their faces.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  "From my perspective, the point of all these "PHP is broken" rants is not just to complain, but to help educate and potentially warn off new coders starting new codebases. Some fine, even historic work has been done in PHP despite the madness, unquestionably. But now we need to work together to fix what is broken. The best way to fix the PHP problem at this point is to make the alternatives so outstanding that the choice of the better hammer becomes obvious." -Jeff Atwood https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    It's also possible PHP isn't a 'problem' any more. Perhaps even some alternatives that once were better are now worse.

happytiger 3y ago

That's why I keep using PHP in my projects personally. Laravel is just so damn pleasant to work with.

miohtama 3y ago

While you may pick, most developers do not. You are not the most developers, as you are special and probably much more talented. They pick JS because they know the language best and are more productive in it than in Laravel. There is nothing Laravel can do about it - being best is not going to change the direction, because the limiting factor is the knowledge of programming languages of most of developers.

DonHopkins 3y ago
They picked JS for the server because they have a choice in what languages they can run on the server, but they don't have a choice about what languages they can run in the browser, so JavaScript it is. There are HUGE advantages and efficiencies to using the same language in the browser and the server. Most developers are (rightfully) lazy and simply don't want to learn and juggle two different languages in two different places, when they can use simply one language everywhere. For example, when switching between PHP and JavaScript, you have to remember that the ?: ternary conditional operator in PHP has idiotic left-associativity, so you have to use extra parenthesis to disambiguate it, while the identical looking ?: ternary operator in JavaScript and all other languages has sane right-associativity. "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." -Rasmus Lerdorf "We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all." -Rasmus Lerdorf
- boringuser2 3y ago
  You don't have to remember that, any IDE will yell at you. I don't find it inconvenient to write PHP or JS syntax, it's completely trivial for a professional.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Don't be such an apologist for terrible careless programming language design, expecting professional programmers to tolerate IDE's "yelling at them" about unforced language design flaws and loaded footguns, using terribly designed languages that were mindlessly thrown together by anti-intellectual amateurs like Rasmus Lerdorf, a self proclaimed "not a real programmer", who says he doesn't even like programming, who doesn't even know the difference between left and right associativity, or even "care about this crap at all". "We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all." -Rasmus Lerdorf "There are people who actually like programming. I don't understand why they like programming." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." -Rasmus Lerdorf "Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes." -Jamie Zawinski "I used to think that PHP was the biggest, stinkiest dump that the computer industry had taken on my life in a decade. Then I started needing to do things that could only be accomplished in AppleScript." -Jamie Zawinski "From what I've seen, PHP isn't so much a language as a random collection of arbitrary stuff, a virtual explosion at the keyword and function factory. Bear in mind this is coming from a guy who was weaned on BASIC, a language that gets about as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield. So I am not unfamiliar with the genre." -Jeff Atwood https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ On the other hand, Anders Hejlsberg is a highly skilled, careful, conscientious, experienced professional programming language designer, who actually knows what he's doing, and LIKES programming. And as a professional programmer who's been writing lots of code in many languages since the early 1980's, I much prefer and enjoy using his well designed IDEs and programming languages like Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript, to carelessly hacked together fractals of bad design like PHP. PHP: a fractal of bad design: 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/ And you're still totally missing the point about the advantages of using one programming language on both the client an server side, sharing libraries, data, APIs, mental energy, and effort. If you were really a professional programmer, you wouldn't be stuck in a rut using and apologizing for PHP, because you would be capable of learning and using many other vastly superior and more powerful programming languages and tools than PHP, and you wouldn't have to waste your time and mental effort rationalizing and making excuses, remembering to avoid so many unforced foot guns and idiotic bad design fractals, and carefully and defensively working around all of its flaws, while getting "yelled at by your IDE" all the time, instead of actually spending your finite time and energy solving problems.
boringuser2 3y ago
With GPT, I don't really find that I am more "productive" in one scripting language or another given that it has the ability to perfectly translate between them on the fly.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  Perfectly? Oh really? Have you tried actually reading the code you're copying and pasting from ChatGPT into production? Are you actually letting it do all your architectural design and security auditing for you, too? If ChatGPT is already perfectly solving all of your programming problems, then you should learn a lot more about programing, design, architecture, and security, so you can take on more challenging projects, and actually design decent APIs and architectures, instead of just paint-by-number monkey coding, and produce better more thoughtful designs and code than an LLM, because your job is already obsolete.
- latexr 3y ago
  If you think the current crop of AI does the translation “perfectly”, you’re going to have a bad time. Or maybe not you, but your customers, client, or the poor chap that replaces you is going to have something blow up in their faces.
DonHopkins 3y ago
"From my perspective, the point of all these "PHP is broken" rants is not just to complain, but to help educate and potentially warn off new coders starting new codebases. Some fine, even historic work has been done in PHP despite the madness, unquestionably. But now we need to work together to fix what is broken. The best way to fix the PHP problem at this point is to make the alternatives so outstanding that the choice of the better hammer becomes obvious." -Jeff Atwood https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  It's also possible PHP isn't a 'problem' any more. Perhaps even some alternatives that once were better are now worse.