4 ms·

So, the problem with PHP is that it is popular? I guess it was the same crime that Java committed 10 years ago. And C++ before that. Makes sense - There's defi

by troels 14y ago

So, the problem with PHP is that it is popular? I guess it was the same crime that Java committed 10 years ago. And C++ before that. Makes sense - There's definitely a pattern of bashing the popular languages.

brudgers 14y ago
The problem isn't that it's popular - television programs about Bigfoot are popular, too. The problem is that PHP is extremely useful and easy to use in addition to being widely used. Reading the article, I was struck by its similarity in structure and language to classic Windows bashing rants of the past two decades - i.e. "the problem with PHP is that it has no taste." In fairness, the call to action is radically different; to build rather than to buy something.
- troels 14y ago
  Well, I doubt it would ever become popular if it wasn't useful and easy to use. Actually, I think it is exactly because it's popular. All languages have odd ends, but you rarely hear people rant over Pythons lack of lambdas and weird explicit "self" parameter or Ruby's incomprehensible scoping rules. I'm betting that once they fall out of fashion, we will. And no, I disagree. The main sentiment of the article is negative. It's a call to figure out how to dethrone PHP, but without telling us why this would be such an important goal.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    >"Well, I doubt it would ever become popular if it wasn't useful and easy to use." Like Windows 3.1?
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I hear about them a lot. The difference is that PHP is so much worse. Yes, every language has warts. But PHP is the only popular language I know of which is essentially nothing but warts. Of course that's subjective, and people disagree, but there really does seem to be a real, qualitative difference between the warts on a mostly nice language like Python, and the ubiquitous bizarro world that makes up just about the entirety of PHP.
    - wvenable 14y ago
      > But PHP is the only popular language I know of which is essentially nothing but warts. This is entirely untrue. PHP isn't even a bad language on the scale of actual bad languages. It has some warts but they don't really impede the development of good software. There are many languages that make developing good software nearly impossible.
      - mikeash 14y ago
        What other popular language is as bad? COBOL? I don't know about impeding the development of good software. Warts can always be worked around as long as you know about them and how to handle them. But that doesn't mean they don't matter, and PHP has so many that it's difficult to enumerate them. What other popular languages silently convert strings to floats and then do math or floating-point comparisons on them? What other popular languages have literally hundreds of failing unit tests in their mainline implementation, allowing ridiculous and insecure regressions that were actually caught by testing but never noticed to ship in an official release? I doubt there's any one wart that's exclusive to PHP. What's remarkable about PHP is how it manages to gather so many in one place. Each one alone is not that bad, but the sheer number of them is astounding.
        wvenable 14y ago
        > What other popular languages silently convert strings to floats and then do math or floating-point comparisons on them? JavaScript. Most of the "issues" around comparisons/conversions/etc equally applies to JavaScript as it does to PHP. But PHP does some very stupid casts but it's really just one problem. In the lists of "failures" tend to show that same problem 15 different ways to show how screwed up things are. If your code is well designed and secure you don't encounter these problems anyway. > What other popular languages have literally hundreds of failing unit tests in their mainline implementation... I'll give you that. Since that happened, the PHP developers have worked to ensure it won't happen in the future. No platform is free of particularly big security fails (Rails).
        14y ago

by troels 14y ago

brudgers 14y ago

The problem isn't that it's popular - television programs about Bigfoot are popular, too. The problem is that PHP is extremely useful and easy to use in addition to being widely used. Reading the article, I was struck by its similarity in structure and language to classic Windows bashing rants of the past two decades - i.e. "the problem with PHP is that it has no taste." In fairness, the call to action is radically different; to build rather than to buy something.

troels 14y ago
Well, I doubt it would ever become popular if it wasn't useful and easy to use. Actually, I think it is exactly because it's popular. All languages have odd ends, but you rarely hear people rant over Pythons lack of lambdas and weird explicit "self" parameter or Ruby's incomprehensible scoping rules. I'm betting that once they fall out of fashion, we will. And no, I disagree. The main sentiment of the article is negative. It's a call to figure out how to dethrone PHP, but without telling us why this would be such an important goal.
- brudgers 14y ago
  >"Well, I doubt it would ever become popular if it wasn't useful and easy to use." Like Windows 3.1?
- mikeash 14y ago
  I hear about them a lot. The difference is that PHP is so much worse. Yes, every language has warts. But PHP is the only popular language I know of which is essentially nothing but warts. Of course that's subjective, and people disagree, but there really does seem to be a real, qualitative difference between the warts on a mostly nice language like Python, and the ubiquitous bizarro world that makes up just about the entirety of PHP.
  - wvenable 14y ago
    > But PHP is the only popular language I know of which is essentially nothing but warts. This is entirely untrue. PHP isn't even a bad language on the scale of actual bad languages. It has some warts but they don't really impede the development of good software. There are many languages that make developing good software nearly impossible.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      What other popular language is as bad? COBOL? I don't know about impeding the development of good software. Warts can always be worked around as long as you know about them and how to handle them. But that doesn't mean they don't matter, and PHP has so many that it's difficult to enumerate them. What other popular languages silently convert strings to floats and then do math or floating-point comparisons on them? What other popular languages have literally hundreds of failing unit tests in their mainline implementation, allowing ridiculous and insecure regressions that were actually caught by testing but never noticed to ship in an official release? I doubt there's any one wart that's exclusive to PHP. What's remarkable about PHP is how it manages to gather so many in one place. Each one alone is not that bad, but the sheer number of them is astounding.
      - wvenable 14y ago
        > What other popular languages silently convert strings to floats and then do math or floating-point comparisons on them? JavaScript. Most of the "issues" around comparisons/conversions/etc equally applies to JavaScript as it does to PHP. But PHP does some very stupid casts but it's really just one problem. In the lists of "failures" tend to show that same problem 15 different ways to show how screwed up things are. If your code is well designed and secure you don't encounter these problems anyway. > What other popular languages have literally hundreds of failing unit tests in their mainline implementation... I'll give you that. Since that happened, the PHP developers have worked to ensure it won't happen in the future. No platform is free of particularly big security fails (Rails).
        14y ago