6 ms·

Please take your hipster elitism somewhere else. Every language has warts and learning how to avoid them is always a good idea.

by maratd 14y ago

msbarnett 14y ago
False equivalence. The fact that every language has warts does not mean that all languages are equally warty. There rapidly comes a point when you're spending so much time working around PHP's prolific warts that it would be more efficient for you to move to a less warty language.
kstrauser 14y ago
That's not elitism; that's reality. Notice that PHP is pretty much the sole language garnering this reaction? No one actively makes fun of C#, Python, Clojure, Haskell, Perl, Java, etc., even when they dislike them. For example, I don't care for Java at all, but I admit that it's a really good implementation of a language I just don't happen to like very much. Same for C#. My reasons for not using it have nothing to do with the language itself (which is perfectly decent by all accounts). Programmers joke about Perl looking like line noise, but even that's a criticism of how some people use the language and not anything bad about Perl directly. But no one other than PHP programmers seems to have anything good to say about PHP. It's nearly universally disrespected as an insecure, inconsistent, buggy mess. That's very unusual - perhaps unique - among major programming languages. Maybe there's a reason that non-Java programmers have a grudging respect for Java, non-Python programmers can find things they like about Python, but non-PHP programmers almost never have anything good to say about PHP. When a lot of subject matter experts vocally dislike something, maybe that thing is misunderstood. When nearly all of them dislike it, perhaps there's a reason for it.
- icelancer 14y ago
  "No one actively makes fun of C#, Python, Clojure, Haskell, Perl, Java, etc., even when they dislike them." This is laughable. Especially Java. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom...
- wvenable 14y ago
  > But no one other than PHP programmers seems to have anything good to say about PHP. The people least familiar with the language have the most negative to say about it. Making fun of PHP is pretty much a fad -- this particular topic, about htmlspecialchars(), I heard originally 5 years ago and it just cycles around and around. Even the most famously quoted articles about PHP's shortcomings are typically at least 50% flat-out wrong and 25% opinion. That being said, PHP has a fair share of warts -- it's a language with a long history and rapid change with little overall direction.
  - kstrauser 14y ago
    My experience is to the contrary: the people who've had to use it at work (as opposed to voluntarily for their own projects) are the ones who despise it most. It looks pretty neat at first, after all. It's only when you've dug deeply into it - and have experience in other languages to compare it to - that you genuinely start to loathe it.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I criticized PHP for years without ever really using it. Then I finally did some real work in the language. Did my opinion change from the exposure? You bet it did. Turns out that PHP is even worse than I had thought. I know plenty of people experienced with PHP who actively criticize it. People who have never used it generally tend not to care about it.
  - brendoncrawford 14y ago
    > The people least familiar with the language have the most negative to say about it My 12 years of experience with PHP would beg to differ. It is, by ANY standard, a terrible language. In fact, it's primary defense of being "convenient" is not even true. Most developers would probably get a Django site up and running in the same amount of time it would take them to get a Cake or CodeIgniter site up and running.
- maratd 14y ago
  > Notice that PHP is pretty much the sole language garnering this reaction? Nope. There's another one. JavaScript. PHP is the most popular language on the server, JavaScript is the most popular language in the browser. Coincidence? I think not. Do you know what the definition of a hipster is? Hating that which is mainstream and popular. You, sir, are a hipster.
  - kstrauser 14y ago
    I like JavaScript quite a bit. Ruby is way more trendy than PHP but you don't hear much bad about it.

Please take your hipster elitism somewhere else. Every language has warts and learning how to avoid them is always a good idea.

by maratd 14y ago

Please take your hipster elitism somewhere else. Every language has warts and learning how to avoid them is always a good idea.

msbarnett 14y ago

False equivalence. The fact that every language has warts does not mean that all languages are equally warty. There rapidly comes a point when you're spending so much time working around PHP's prolific warts that it would be more efficient for you to move to a less warty language.

kstrauser 14y ago

That's not elitism; that's reality. Notice that PHP is pretty much the sole language garnering this reaction? No one actively makes fun of C#, Python, Clojure, Haskell, Perl, Java, etc., even when they dislike them. For example, I don't care for Java at all, but I admit that it's a really good implementation of a language I just don't happen to like very much. Same for C#. My reasons for not using it have nothing to do with the language itself (which is perfectly decent by all accounts). Programmers joke about Perl looking like line noise, but even that's a criticism of how some people use the language and not anything bad about Perl directly. But no one other than PHP programmers seems to have anything good to say about PHP. It's nearly universally disrespected as an insecure, inconsistent, buggy mess. That's very unusual - perhaps unique - among major programming languages. Maybe there's a reason that non-Java programmers have a grudging respect for Java, non-Python programmers can find things they like about Python, but non-PHP programmers almost never have anything good to say about PHP. When a lot of subject matter experts vocally dislike something, maybe that thing is misunderstood. When nearly all of them dislike it, perhaps there's a reason for it.

icelancer 14y ago
"No one actively makes fun of C#, Python, Clojure, Haskell, Perl, Java, etc., even when they dislike them." This is laughable. Especially Java. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom...
wvenable 14y ago
> But no one other than PHP programmers seems to have anything good to say about PHP. The people least familiar with the language have the most negative to say about it. Making fun of PHP is pretty much a fad -- this particular topic, about htmlspecialchars(), I heard originally 5 years ago and it just cycles around and around. Even the most famously quoted articles about PHP's shortcomings are typically at least 50% flat-out wrong and 25% opinion. That being said, PHP has a fair share of warts -- it's a language with a long history and rapid change with little overall direction.
- kstrauser 14y ago
  My experience is to the contrary: the people who've had to use it at work (as opposed to voluntarily for their own projects) are the ones who despise it most. It looks pretty neat at first, after all. It's only when you've dug deeply into it - and have experience in other languages to compare it to - that you genuinely start to loathe it.
- mikeash 14y ago
  I criticized PHP for years without ever really using it. Then I finally did some real work in the language. Did my opinion change from the exposure? You bet it did. Turns out that PHP is even worse than I had thought. I know plenty of people experienced with PHP who actively criticize it. People who have never used it generally tend not to care about it.
- brendoncrawford 14y ago
  > The people least familiar with the language have the most negative to say about it My 12 years of experience with PHP would beg to differ. It is, by ANY standard, a terrible language. In fact, it's primary defense of being "convenient" is not even true. Most developers would probably get a Django site up and running in the same amount of time it would take them to get a Cake or CodeIgniter site up and running.
maratd 14y ago
> Notice that PHP is pretty much the sole language garnering this reaction? Nope. There's another one. JavaScript. PHP is the most popular language on the server, JavaScript is the most popular language in the browser. Coincidence? I think not. Do you know what the definition of a hipster is? Hating that which is mainstream and popular. You, sir, are a hipster.
- kstrauser 14y ago
  I like JavaScript quite a bit. Ruby is way more trendy than PHP but you don't hear much bad about it.