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The first half of your post is basically a long-winded appeal to popularity. Yes, most people on the web use PHP and Apache. Most people on the web also need no

by ceol 14y ago

The first half of your post is basically a long-winded appeal to popularity. Yes, most people on the web use PHP and Apache. Most people on the web also need nothing more than a WordPress installation and their online needs are met. Does that mean WordPress is the best tool out there? You should stop confusing popularity with quality, because the two rarely overlap. > C10K is not a problem and never was. Somebody better tell the developers of nginx, Lighttpd, Tornado, node.js, Cherokee, Apache Deft, IIS, and Jetty! All those hours wasted developing solutions to a problem that doesn't exist. > Which is why people continue to use Apache. For someone who just decried a situation "infinitely more complex" a few line breaks ago, you sure did generalize the reason millions of servers use a certain piece of software. It couldn't be because Apache has an easier installation on most of the common distros or that cPanel/WHM, the most-used virtual hosting control panel, only supports Apache as its web server. It also couldn't be because of mod_php. This all stems from your conflation of popularity with quality. PHP did not become popular because it was good. It became popular because it was easy to learn and run. > Except that article was written by somebody who doesn't have much experience in PHP and most of those complaints don't apply to the current stable version. The rest are easily avoided with sane design. Most of his criticisms were completely valid, so I'm not sure where you're getting the author doesn't have much experience in PHP. Which ones have been fixed in the current stable PHP? And which ones can be avoided "with sane design"? > Which explains why Python is so unpopular. Now I know you're spouting nonsense: https://github.com/languages/ https://github.com/languages/

wvenable 14y ago
> Most of his criticisms were completely valid Not even close. The author trolled through a bunch of other misinformed articles, copied some them verbatim mistakes and all. He doesn't know PHP and didn't research anything. > Which ones have been fixed in the current stable PHP? And which ones can be avoided "with sane design"? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177516 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177516
- ceol 14y ago
  In regard to his "objects compare higher..." point, I think he was referring to this: class MyClass {} class YourClass {} $myclass = new MyClass(); $yourclass = new YourClass(); var_dump($myclass > $yourclass); // false var_dump($myclass < $yourclass); // false? In regard to his "there's no pass-by-object identity..." point, there's no way to do this: class MyClass {} $myclass = MyClass; $anotherclass = $myclass(); I really don't have the energy to refute the rest, but most of them are relatively subjective. (I say relatively because most of them promote better programming, but their absence doesn't directly harm)
  - wvenable 14y ago
    > In regard to his "objects compare higher..." point, I think he was referring to this: That all comparisons between objects, except equals and strict equals, return false doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. > In regard to his "there's no pass-by-object identity..." point, there's no way to do this: class MyClass {} $myclass = new ReflectionClass('MyClass'); $anotherclass = $myclass; $instance = $anotherclass->newInstance(); $myclass = 'MyClass'; $instance = new $myclass(); > I really don't have the energy to refute the rest, but most of them are relatively subjective. I think you'll be hard pressed to find too much fault with my criticisms of that article. The author doesn't even know common language terms like private/public/protected. And clearly he's never even seen C++.
    - ceol 14y ago
      > return false doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. It should throw an error, not return false. This goes back to PHP's "try as hard as possible to run the script" mentality. The author doesn't need to know C++ to comment on PHP's failings, does he? And he knows private/public/protected— you even quote him using them. You're probably not familiar with Python, but there aren't any private methods (aside from double underscored-prefixed methods, but that's not entirely the same). That's where he was coming from. It's not that he doesn't know those terms; it's that he thinks that's how they should work. Judging by your other responses, you're quick to toss out whether someone is a "PHP programmer" or not, as if that has any bearing on their argument. I'll tell you right now, I work in PHP five days a week, and I agree with most all of eevee's points.
batista 14y ago
>The first half of your post is basically a long-winded appeal to popularity. No it's not. We're not talking about music --how popular Bieber is vs Bach, for example. So he didnt just say "tons of people use PHP", he said "tons of people use PHP and it solves their problems giving results". This is not an "argument by popularity", its an argument by number of empirical verifications. Which is supposedly what engineering and science is all about. On the other hand your arguments are appeals to "logic", "theory", etc, eg idealism and elitism in the face of actual results. "That's (eg python) is how a language should be, and not like php" etc. All the while forgetting to take no account practical, verified, php benefits. >Yes, most people on the web use PHP and Apache. Most people on the web also need nothing more than a WordPress installation and their online needs are met. Does that mean WordPress is the best tool out there? OIf it meets their needs and has them happy, of course! Anything else would be dellusional to say.
- ceol 14y ago
  > So he didnt just say "tons of people use PHP", he said "tons of people use PHP and it solves their problems giving results". The original discussion was about whether PHP was a good language. He came in and said, "It is because look at all the people who use it! Obviously it's fine!" That's an appeal to popularity. > On the other hand your arguments are appeals to "logic", "theory", etc, eg idealism and elitism in the face of actual results. What results? We're not talking about Mom & Pop's Homepage, here. Posting about how most sites run on PHP doesn't help us when we're not talking about most sites. We're talking about building apps.

by ceol 14y ago

wvenable 14y ago

> Most of his criticisms were completely valid Not even close. The author trolled through a bunch of other misinformed articles, copied some them verbatim mistakes and all. He doesn't know PHP and didn't research anything. > Which ones have been fixed in the current stable PHP? And which ones can be avoided "with sane design"? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177516 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177516

ceol 14y ago
In regard to his "objects compare higher..." point, I think he was referring to this: class MyClass {} class YourClass {} $myclass = new MyClass(); $yourclass = new YourClass(); var_dump($myclass > $yourclass); // false var_dump($myclass < $yourclass); // false? In regard to his "there's no pass-by-object identity..." point, there's no way to do this: class MyClass {} $myclass = MyClass; $anotherclass = $myclass(); I really don't have the energy to refute the rest, but most of them are relatively subjective. (I say relatively because most of them promote better programming, but their absence doesn't directly harm)
- wvenable 14y ago
  > In regard to his "objects compare higher..." point, I think he was referring to this: That all comparisons between objects, except equals and strict equals, return false doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. > In regard to his "there's no pass-by-object identity..." point, there's no way to do this: class MyClass {} $myclass = new ReflectionClass('MyClass'); $anotherclass = $myclass; $instance = $anotherclass->newInstance(); $myclass = 'MyClass'; $instance = new $myclass(); > I really don't have the energy to refute the rest, but most of them are relatively subjective. I think you'll be hard pressed to find too much fault with my criticisms of that article. The author doesn't even know common language terms like private/public/protected. And clearly he's never even seen C++.
  - ceol 14y ago
    > return false doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. It should throw an error, not return false. This goes back to PHP's "try as hard as possible to run the script" mentality. The author doesn't need to know C++ to comment on PHP's failings, does he? And he knows private/public/protected— you even quote him using them. You're probably not familiar with Python, but there aren't any private methods (aside from double underscored-prefixed methods, but that's not entirely the same). That's where he was coming from. It's not that he doesn't know those terms; it's that he thinks that's how they should work. Judging by your other responses, you're quick to toss out whether someone is a "PHP programmer" or not, as if that has any bearing on their argument. I'll tell you right now, I work in PHP five days a week, and I agree with most all of eevee's points.

batista 14y ago

>The first half of your post is basically a long-winded appeal to popularity. No it's not. We're not talking about music --how popular Bieber is vs Bach, for example. So he didnt just say "tons of people use PHP", he said "tons of people use PHP and it solves their problems giving results". This is not an "argument by popularity", its an argument by number of empirical verifications. Which is supposedly what engineering and science is all about. On the other hand your arguments are appeals to "logic", "theory", etc, eg idealism and elitism in the face of actual results. "That's (eg python) is how a language should be, and not like php" etc. All the while forgetting to take no account practical, verified, php benefits. >Yes, most people on the web use PHP and Apache. Most people on the web also need nothing more than a WordPress installation and their online needs are met. Does that mean WordPress is the best tool out there? OIf it meets their needs and has them happy, of course! Anything else would be dellusional to say.

ceol 14y ago
> So he didnt just say "tons of people use PHP", he said "tons of people use PHP and it solves their problems giving results". The original discussion was about whether PHP was a good language. He came in and said, "It is because look at all the people who use it! Obviously it's fine!" That's an appeal to popularity. > On the other hand your arguments are appeals to "logic", "theory", etc, eg idealism and elitism in the face of actual results. What results? We're not talking about Mom & Pop's Homepage, here. Posting about how most sites run on PHP doesn't help us when we're not talking about most sites. We're talking about building apps.