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How good is PHP? I was thinking about peer review the other day, and how one measures peer review. One of the most important metrics is the number of citations

How good is PHP? I was thinking about peer review the other day, and how one measures peer review. One of the most important metrics is the number of citations an article acquires. If an article is published and, over the next 20 years, is only cited 3 times, we can say that it failed to influence its field, but if an article accumulates 1,000 citations, we can say that it definitely had some impact. Then I thought about PHP, and how it compared with other languages. I went to Google and started searching: influenced by gosling java influenced by hickey clojure influenced by matz ruby influenced by Stroustrup C++ influenced by larry wall perl and then finally: influenced by lerdorf php You look through some of those links and you notice a difference. A lot of people write about the brilliant things that have been said by Gosling and Hickey and Matz and Larry Wall and Stroustrup but no one ever cites Ramus Lerdorf as an inspiration, nor does anyone seem to think he has ever said anything especially brilliant or insightful. I'm sure if you dig you might find exceptions, but as a rough metric of who has influenced who, I think this reveals something important about how computer programmers perceive the quality of PHP and one of its core contributors. (You could counter-argue that PHP has several core contributors, in which case, I would counter-counter-argue by asking that you please suggest a core contributor to PHP who is quoted with the same admiration expressed for the other architects that I've listed here.)

jtreminio 14y ago
Symfony2 gets quite a bit of love here on HN... as much love as anything PHP-related can get. Its creator, Fabien Potencier, is usually cited as someone bringing sanity and quality to the PHP world.
- mylittlepony 14y ago
  I think some PHP devs are either shy or don't even bother with these discussions. Personally, I think Symfony2 can beat Rails any day of the week. Amateurs have a hard time finding out what is more important: syntactic sugar and "coolness"? Or architecture and getting things done? There is also the fact that lots of HN devs are stuck in the past. Just the other day someone asked "What does it feel like to develop in a language that does not have namespaces?". Seriously? That was ~4 years ago. I'm sorry if their languages don't evolve as fast as PHP does.
jiggy2011 14y ago
lerdorf seems like quite an understated guy from what I've seen of videos of him talking on youtube. He doesn't seem to want to influence anybody, clearly a smart guy but more of a regular "working class" developer who accidentally became a language inventor. I think he's said a few times on the record that he didn't really know anything about language design when he invented PHP.
10098 14y ago
Not to say that you don't have a point, but how is this relevant to the linked project?
guywhohatesphp 14y ago
yet another dig on php and how it's not revolutionary enough for the most brilliant minds of the world. yawn.
hjay 14y ago
The point you present is interesting. What also interests me is that the links on your HN profile seem to be Wordpress (built on PHP) related.
leepowers 14y ago
No one should be influenced by PHP's ad-hoc language design. PHP is an idiosyncratic, programmable API for web apps - it's not really a proper programming language. More pidgin than high elvish.
notJim 14y ago
You're not wrong, but this doesn't seem to relate to the topic at-hand, except peripherally. I get it, PHP sucks. We all know PHP sucks. We've been talking about how much PHP sucks on HN for probably years. How about we talk about something new, such as the library this fucking post is actually about. If you really want to grind your ax against PHP (which we all generally agree is terrible), please make this its own post and submit it separately, so that we can actually talk about the submission.
huherto 14y ago
Sure Lerdford is smarter than most hackers. But I you compare him with Guido, Larry, Goslin, etc is not match.And I think it shows in the language.
krapp 14y ago
"Because Rasmus Lerdorf doesn't sit with the popular kids" is not a valid reason to dislike PHP.

jtreminio 14y ago

Symfony2 gets quite a bit of love here on HN... as much love as anything PHP-related can get. Its creator, Fabien Potencier, is usually cited as someone bringing sanity and quality to the PHP world.

mylittlepony 14y ago
I think some PHP devs are either shy or don't even bother with these discussions. Personally, I think Symfony2 can beat Rails any day of the week. Amateurs have a hard time finding out what is more important: syntactic sugar and "coolness"? Or architecture and getting things done? There is also the fact that lots of HN devs are stuck in the past. Just the other day someone asked "What does it feel like to develop in a language that does not have namespaces?". Seriously? That was ~4 years ago. I'm sorry if their languages don't evolve as fast as PHP does.

jiggy2011 14y ago

lerdorf seems like quite an understated guy from what I've seen of videos of him talking on youtube. He doesn't seem to want to influence anybody, clearly a smart guy but more of a regular "working class" developer who accidentally became a language inventor. I think he's said a few times on the record that he didn't really know anything about language design when he invented PHP.

10098 14y ago

Not to say that you don't have a point, but how is this relevant to the linked project?

guywhohatesphp 14y ago

yet another dig on php and how it's not revolutionary enough for the most brilliant minds of the world. yawn.

hjay 14y ago

The point you present is interesting. What also interests me is that the links on your HN profile seem to be Wordpress (built on PHP) related.

leepowers 14y ago

No one should be influenced by PHP's ad-hoc language design. PHP is an idiosyncratic, programmable API for web apps - it's not really a proper programming language. More pidgin than high elvish.

notJim 14y ago

You're not wrong, but this doesn't seem to relate to the topic at-hand, except peripherally. I get it, PHP sucks. We all know PHP sucks. We've been talking about how much PHP sucks on HN for probably years. How about we talk about something new, such as the library this fucking post is actually about. If you really want to grind your ax against PHP (which we all generally agree is terrible), please make this its own post and submit it separately, so that we can actually talk about the submission.

huherto 14y ago

Sure Lerdford is smarter than most hackers. But I you compare him with Guido, Larry, Goslin, etc is not match.And I think it shows in the language.

krapp 14y ago

"Because Rasmus Lerdorf doesn't sit with the popular kids" is not a valid reason to dislike PHP.