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> Can we just agree on "PHP used to suck but it was very easy to work with, reason why it got traction. Things got better over the years and those that only saw

by saghm 3y ago

> Can we just agree on "PHP used to suck but it was very easy to work with, reason why it got traction. Things got better over the years and those that only saw the early years, rightfully only remember how much it sucked, while those that use modern versions see how much it has changed"? This comment is super interesting to me, not because it contains anything I haven't heard before, but because the phrasing managed to break through my "bubble" of being the type of PHP naysayer you're talking about by making me realize just how similar this trend is to some other tech products that I'm not nearly as down on (I use btrfs on my personal machines, and I worked for several years at MongoDB, both of which seem to suffer from similar views of "fool me once and I'll refuse to ever give you another chance, no matter how much changes"). I still probably won't end up using PHP myself, given that I don't really do much web development anymore, but you've at least gotten one person to reconsider their opinion on PHP, so thank you for that!

johnny22 3y ago
ok, maybe i'm falling into what you're talking about here, but i saw those as 2 separate things. BTRFS had bugs that could be fixed, so when they're fixed you can use it. While with mongo, it's still fundamentally a schemaless datastore. If you have a fundamental problem with that, then there's no bugs that can be fixed to make it ok. I think in these cases you need to separate out the core criticism over simply temporary issues.
- saghm 3y ago
  The criticism of mongodb that I'm referring to is from the early days when there were some questionable defaults (e.g. writes not being required to be fully written to the database before returning success to the user, which can lead to data loss if something happens that prevents the write from completing afterwards). I agree that's a separate concern than not having the schema enforced by the database. It's possible that my experience is skewed by being more involved when I worked there, but I used to hear and see a lot more criticism of mongodb around things like data durability and ACID compliance than about the lack of an enforced schema. Maybe things have moved on enough that this isn't a common complaint anymore, which would be a pleasant surprise, and hopefully we can get to that point on PHP too.
pachico 3y ago
Very kind words, thanks!

by saghm 3y ago

johnny22 3y ago

ok, maybe i'm falling into what you're talking about here, but i saw those as 2 separate things. BTRFS had bugs that could be fixed, so when they're fixed you can use it. While with mongo, it's still fundamentally a schemaless datastore. If you have a fundamental problem with that, then there's no bugs that can be fixed to make it ok. I think in these cases you need to separate out the core criticism over simply temporary issues.

saghm 3y ago
The criticism of mongodb that I'm referring to is from the early days when there were some questionable defaults (e.g. writes not being required to be fully written to the database before returning success to the user, which can lead to data loss if something happens that prevents the write from completing afterwards). I agree that's a separate concern than not having the schema enforced by the database. It's possible that my experience is skewed by being more involved when I worked there, but I used to hear and see a lot more criticism of mongodb around things like data durability and ACID compliance than about the lack of an enforced schema. Maybe things have moved on enough that this isn't a common complaint anymore, which would be a pleasant surprise, and hopefully we can get to that point on PHP too.

pachico 3y ago

Very kind words, thanks!