6 ms·

Honestly excited about this, I am one of those people that really love PHP from the old days and I still use it from time to time to build small web apps and ap

Honestly excited about this, I am one of those people that really love PHP from the old days and I still use it from time to time to build small web apps and api's. I don't get the hate that PHP usually gets, I've always kinda liked it. These days I mostly program in C, CAPL and Python but I would love to build apps in PHP.

39 3y ago
Totally agree, modern PHP is quite fun.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  I kinda hope PHP would adopt java-like types for strings etc, to somewhat clean up the mess of its functions, e.g for strings - instead of str_contains, strtr, substr_compare you can do $myString->contains("test"); https://github.com/nikic/scalar_objects https://github.com/nikic/scalar_objects provides it as a plugin, but its not fully fleshed out.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Laravel has a Str class that does exactly that.
  - holoduke 3y ago
    No please no. PHP is a top layer of C. Not Java.
krick 3y ago
PHP in 2023 is a great language, I always scoff when somebody tries to imply that Python or JS are "clearly superior" languages to PHP (which, to me, is a clear sign of illiteracy). But I am also kind of "the right tool for the job" proponent. Now is PHP the right tool to build Desktop Apps? - It is cumbersome to distribute. Rarely people have PHP installed outside of a docker container, and given quite short development lifecycle chances are their version of PHP is already outdated. - Concurrency support in PHP is still very poor. That seems quite a big deal for a desktop app. - NativePHP is anything but native. It relies on Electron, which is somewhat questionable on its own (even though very common nowadays). - …And, since it pretty much is just Electron, why do I need a Laravel app underneath anyway?! If there is a job for JS, it's exactly programming UIs (primarily because there are millions of UIs and thousands UI-targeted libraries written in JS by now) So, I am very skeptical.
- artificialLimbs 3y ago
  >> why do I need a Laravel app underneath anyway?! I don't know much about nativephp/electron/desktop ui's, but I would guess Filament is a pretty decent reason.
  - tommica 3y ago
    Good point, building a desktop app with filament would probably be quite fast!
- omgmajk 3y ago
  I mean, you are completely right. Those are very valid points. But this still sounds sorta fun to me, I like crazy projects :)
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  php years ago was a great lang... The fact that is less popular now, being replaced as the "new shiny" by JS and Python as gotten alot of new devs out of the space which is what caused the vast majority of the negative press around php, it was never the language, but the fact that is was very approachable and very forgiving for new devs so alot of them did stupid things
  - jw1224 3y ago
    Laravel has a dedicated marketing page specifically targeted towards JS-first developers: https://laravel.com/frontend https://laravel.com/frontend
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    > it was never the language That's just, not correct. I programmed web sites primarily in PHP back in the PHP3-5 days (and have had some jobs and contracts since, in PHP7+). PHP, pre-5.3ish, was a bad language. It had terrible design decisions, a polluted global space, bad default configurations, weird scoping rules, function/objects with massive security holes that the developer had to patch around (the MySQL functions, being notorious) and a terrible object model. PHP5-5.3 did a lot to fix that, and 5.3+ became a usable language. PHP7 finally did a ton of work to clean up the global environment, deprecate and toss out old/buggy libraries, clean up the ABI and improve performance. They also reworked the object model completely. It is now a genuinely decent language. But it was not "always great".
rabuse 3y ago
I've used PHP daily for over 10 years. Honestly, my favorite language, along with Python. "It just works" on pretty much every Linux distro out of the box.

39 3y ago

Totally agree, modern PHP is quite fun.

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
I kinda hope PHP would adopt java-like types for strings etc, to somewhat clean up the mess of its functions, e.g for strings - instead of str_contains, strtr, substr_compare you can do $myString->contains("test"); https://github.com/nikic/scalar_objects https://github.com/nikic/scalar_objects provides it as a plugin, but its not fully fleshed out.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Laravel has a Str class that does exactly that.
- holoduke 3y ago
  No please no. PHP is a top layer of C. Not Java.

krick 3y ago

PHP in 2023 is a great language, I always scoff when somebody tries to imply that Python or JS are "clearly superior" languages to PHP (which, to me, is a clear sign of illiteracy). But I am also kind of "the right tool for the job" proponent. Now is PHP the right tool to build Desktop Apps? - It is cumbersome to distribute. Rarely people have PHP installed outside of a docker container, and given quite short development lifecycle chances are their version of PHP is already outdated. - Concurrency support in PHP is still very poor. That seems quite a big deal for a desktop app. - NativePHP is anything but native. It relies on Electron, which is somewhat questionable on its own (even though very common nowadays). - …And, since it pretty much is just Electron, why do I need a Laravel app underneath anyway?! If there is a job for JS, it's exactly programming UIs (primarily because there are millions of UIs and thousands UI-targeted libraries written in JS by now) So, I am very skeptical.

artificialLimbs 3y ago
>> why do I need a Laravel app underneath anyway?! I don't know much about nativephp/electron/desktop ui's, but I would guess Filament is a pretty decent reason.
- tommica 3y ago
  Good point, building a desktop app with filament would probably be quite fast!
omgmajk 3y ago
I mean, you are completely right. Those are very valid points. But this still sounds sorta fun to me, I like crazy projects :)
phpisthebest 3y ago
php years ago was a great lang... The fact that is less popular now, being replaced as the "new shiny" by JS and Python as gotten alot of new devs out of the space which is what caused the vast majority of the negative press around php, it was never the language, but the fact that is was very approachable and very forgiving for new devs so alot of them did stupid things
- jw1224 3y ago
  Laravel has a dedicated marketing page specifically targeted towards JS-first developers: https://laravel.com/frontend https://laravel.com/frontend
- deaddodo 3y ago
  > it was never the language That's just, not correct. I programmed web sites primarily in PHP back in the PHP3-5 days (and have had some jobs and contracts since, in PHP7+). PHP, pre-5.3ish, was a bad language. It had terrible design decisions, a polluted global space, bad default configurations, weird scoping rules, function/objects with massive security holes that the developer had to patch around (the MySQL functions, being notorious) and a terrible object model. PHP5-5.3 did a lot to fix that, and 5.3+ became a usable language. PHP7 finally did a ton of work to clean up the global environment, deprecate and toss out old/buggy libraries, clean up the ABI and improve performance. They also reworked the object model completely. It is now a genuinely decent language. But it was not "always great".

rabuse 3y ago

I've used PHP daily for over 10 years. Honestly, my favorite language, along with Python. "It just works" on pretty much every Linux distro out of the box.