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Yeah, but what drives programmers nuts is that most of the problems in the language are totally independent of that ease of accessibility. Is there something a

Yeah, but what drives programmers nuts is that most of the problems in the language are totally independent of that ease of accessibility. Is there something about consistent naming, or consistent behavior of different library functions, or consistent syntax and operators -- they can be lenient and type-coercing, but consistent, like Javascript's -- that would make it a worse language for people to wade into in the form of templated HTML? Of course not. That's what irritates people, the endless parade of bad design decisions that appear totally bad, with no upside, where they could have just as easily made a good decision and didn't.

joelangeway 15y ago
I don't think that those problems are really independent, but rather, share a common cause with some of the things that made PHP a success. PHP evolved as it did in large part because its benevolent dictator refused to think about more than one problem at a time. I don't argue that that's the optimal way to do things, but it did provide a unique experiment for us all to learn from.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
How could I disagree? PHP is crazy. But these irritations are only apparent once you're inside the PHP conversion funnel. And, as I have observed time and again as a pro PHP developer, once a PHP programmer knows ten lines worth of PHP it is easier for them to struggle through the eleventh line than to start over with another system. The entrance to the funnel matters, a lot! Everyone passes through it, and the bulk of your user base will never even leave it. That's my theory of PHP's apparently inexplicable success. (It also explains a lot about every other platform's userbase, by the way.) And it's not as if one can't master PHP to the point that one could build, say, Facebook: It's empirically evident that one can build Facebook, WordPress, and Drupal in PHP. And, though PHP eventually turns into one gotcha after another - almost immediately, actually; the array() semantics are an absolute horror show - at every single step of the PHP experience there are ten people stuck on that step along with you, and you're all being coaxed ahead live, on the internet by the ten people who are stuck one step above you. So it eventually works out, at least as well as any good hack does, and trying to pretend otherwise doesn't fool anyone. You can try to tell people that PHP can't possibly fly, like the scientists in the urban legend who allegedly tried to claim that the bumblebee can't fly, and they'll smile at you and go back to struggling with PHP. The question implicit in your comment is: Could we design a system that offers the ease of accessibility of the first few steps of a PHP programmer's career but, as one climbs the learning curve, eventually blossoms into Python or Ruby or even Lisp? I wish I knew. My best guess as of this morning is that a demigod could design such a system, but it's very difficult for mortal humans to do so, because once you know how to program it's hard to avoid overdesigning, putting in things that will eventually be useful in year two but are discouraging in year zero. We make terrible pedagogical mistakes, like turning everything into an object. (Does your ORM seem intuitive to you? That is why PHP is beating your system in the marketplace.)
- icc97 15y ago
  I’ll never understand why people feel the need to criticise another language. Certainly between PHP, Ruby and Python all the languages are great and have their own pros and cons. Its not like any of them are evil corporations trying to do the world a dis-service. They’re all open source and there’s enough room on the internet for all of them. Heck there’s even enough space to get a bit of C programming in.

joelangeway 15y ago

I don't think that those problems are really independent, but rather, share a common cause with some of the things that made PHP a success. PHP evolved as it did in large part because its benevolent dictator refused to think about more than one problem at a time. I don't argue that that's the optimal way to do things, but it did provide a unique experiment for us all to learn from.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

How could I disagree? PHP is crazy. But these irritations are only apparent once you're inside the PHP conversion funnel. And, as I have observed time and again as a pro PHP developer, once a PHP programmer knows ten lines worth of PHP it is easier for them to struggle through the eleventh line than to start over with another system. The entrance to the funnel matters, a lot! Everyone passes through it, and the bulk of your user base will never even leave it. That's my theory of PHP's apparently inexplicable success. (It also explains a lot about every other platform's userbase, by the way.) And it's not as if one can't master PHP to the point that one could build, say, Facebook: It's empirically evident that one can build Facebook, WordPress, and Drupal in PHP. And, though PHP eventually turns into one gotcha after another - almost immediately, actually; the array() semantics are an absolute horror show - at every single step of the PHP experience there are ten people stuck on that step along with you, and you're all being coaxed ahead live, on the internet by the ten people who are stuck one step above you. So it eventually works out, at least as well as any good hack does, and trying to pretend otherwise doesn't fool anyone. You can try to tell people that PHP can't possibly fly, like the scientists in the urban legend who allegedly tried to claim that the bumblebee can't fly, and they'll smile at you and go back to struggling with PHP. The question implicit in your comment is: Could we design a system that offers the ease of accessibility of the first few steps of a PHP programmer's career but, as one climbs the learning curve, eventually blossoms into Python or Ruby or even Lisp? I wish I knew. My best guess as of this morning is that a demigod could design such a system, but it's very difficult for mortal humans to do so, because once you know how to program it's hard to avoid overdesigning, putting in things that will eventually be useful in year two but are discouraging in year zero. We make terrible pedagogical mistakes, like turning everything into an object. (Does your ORM seem intuitive to you? That is why PHP is beating your system in the marketplace.)

icc97 15y ago
I’ll never understand why people feel the need to criticise another language. Certainly between PHP, Ruby and Python all the languages are great and have their own pros and cons. Its not like any of them are evil corporations trying to do the world a dis-service. They’re all open source and there’s enough room on the internet for all of them. Heck there’s even enough space to get a bit of C programming in.