7 ms·

PHP is popular because it's incredibly easy to get started for someone used to doing things with HTML. An HTML page can be renamed to .php, and that is a valid

by iguana 13y ago

PHP is popular because it's incredibly easy to get started for someone used to doing things with HTML. An HTML page can be renamed to .php, and that is a valid PHP page. For someone trying to go from HTML/CSS to the server side, PHP presents the path of least resistance. When using PHP, a lot of the basic data structure transforms are implemented in the core language. You can integrate simple server side functionality into a static HTML page in just a few minutes, and it will work on 99%+ of hosting providers, and requires no fees and no tools. For pedantic hackers like us, sure, it's garbage, but for the average person that just wants to get things done, it is pure gold. Also, WordPress, while the biggest POS in almost every possible way, has a vast community of users, designers, plugin makers, and a marketplace for various extensions and themes. Google just opened up a huge chunk of the web app / CMS market.

umsm 13y ago
> For pedantic hackers like us, sure, it's garbage, but for the average person that just wants to get things done, it is pure gold. I disagree. The developers of Wordpress are not "the average person". There are too many production sites that run on PHP to say it's garbage.
- TheHydroImpulse 13y ago
  Wordpress is garbage. Just because there are a lot of production sites built or using Wordpress doesn't mean it's good. Wordpress is popular because of it's community, use of PHP which allows you to host it on many providers, and a ton of themes and plugins. Wordpress is probably the worst spaghetti code I've ever seen (we'll, close).
  - umsm 13y ago
    Most of the arguments are biased opinions and can't really be defended. But... if you don't like wordpress, why not assess projects such as Symfony2 or Drupal?
    - jtreminio 13y ago
      Because quality projects like symphony Symfony 2 does not fit into his works view of php.
      - astrodust 13y ago
        If Symfony is so amazing, why does nobody use it? I mean nobody in the almost literal sense. Stack Overflow serves as a rough barometer of popularity and either Symfony users have no questions, use another support platform, or they don't make up a significant population. The #1 problem with the PHP community is it's complete anarchy and filled with people that should not be developing web apps, or at least should not be developing the way they're going about it. Maybe Symfony could fix that, but there's a lot of work to be done here.
        jtreminio 13y ago
        You'd be very incorrect if you thought no one was using Symfony2. I am specifically talking about Symfony2, by the way. A great number of frameworks and CMSs are using Symfony2 components. Two popular ones are the http-kernel and http-foundation components. Drupal is integrating several Symfony2 components. Composer, the PHP package manager that has taken the community by storm, is using Symfony components. eZ publish is integrating several Symfony2 components. Joomla! adopted YAML, using a Symfony2 component. Stating that Symfony2 is not widely used simply tells me you're not keeping up with the PHP community - which would be fine if you're not a PHP developer, but makes your statement not trustworthy. edit: PHPUnit, the defacto standard PHP unit testing framework, also uses Symfony2's YAML component. I can go on.
        astrodust 13y ago
        It's like Symfony2 is a gourmet restaurant in a town that finds McDonald's too expensive. Nobody uses Drupal, or eZ Publish or Joomla. They just don't. There's good reasons for this, notably these are some really obnoxious platforms to build for, but that aside their impact on the PHP world at large is inconsequential. PHP, by and large, consists of people slamming together applications from the ground up the same way they built them in the 1990s. It shouldn't be this way, and people should fix it through education and outreach, but I really don't see that happening on the scale that's required. Also, if you think even a quarter of the PHP devs out there even know what a unit testing framework is, you're more of an optimist than I am.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >Wordpress is garbage. Just because there are a lot of production sites built or using Wordpress doesn't mean it's good. No, it does mean it's good. You're comparing opinion (everybody has one) with actual hard real world results (tons of major sites with million hits running on Wordpress and around 15% of the web too).
pestaa 13y ago
You put it very lightly. It is not pedantry or elitist hackers, it is computer science. A sane engineer with a little bit of experience would not start off with PHP to build anything at all.
- camus 13y ago
  Because no engineer out there use php to develop anything ? right ? those folks at dailymotion , (the only youtube real competitor that yahoo wanted to purchase ), they are such insane engineers using php... i bet you are better than them hey , what did you build that is famous and used by millions of people around the world ?
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Facebook. Wikipedia. Yahoo.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Were either of the first two started by "a sane engineer with a bit of experience"? Inertia is powerful.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Doesn't matter what your site is coded in if it isn't revenue positive/have funding/etc.
      - eropple 13y ago
        I'm not sure where you got that from my post. Though, to be honest, I don't think that using Play (today) or Rails/Django (yesterday) is sufficiently less productive to merit the technical debt you almost certainly will incur starting with a PHP stack. (And I am an ex-PHP person, to the point of hacking around in PHP core...that's a few months I'd love to have back.)
  - Legion 13y ago

by iguana 13y ago

umsm 13y ago

> For pedantic hackers like us, sure, it's garbage, but for the average person that just wants to get things done, it is pure gold. I disagree. The developers of Wordpress are not "the average person". There are too many production sites that run on PHP to say it's garbage.

TheHydroImpulse 13y ago
Wordpress is garbage. Just because there are a lot of production sites built or using Wordpress doesn't mean it's good. Wordpress is popular because of it's community, use of PHP which allows you to host it on many providers, and a ton of themes and plugins. Wordpress is probably the worst spaghetti code I've ever seen (we'll, close).
- umsm 13y ago
  Most of the arguments are biased opinions and can't really be defended. But... if you don't like wordpress, why not assess projects such as Symfony2 or Drupal?
  - jtreminio 13y ago
    Because quality projects like symphony Symfony 2 does not fit into his works view of php.
    - astrodust 13y ago
      If Symfony is so amazing, why does nobody use it? I mean nobody in the almost literal sense. Stack Overflow serves as a rough barometer of popularity and either Symfony users have no questions, use another support platform, or they don't make up a significant population. The #1 problem with the PHP community is it's complete anarchy and filled with people that should not be developing web apps, or at least should not be developing the way they're going about it. Maybe Symfony could fix that, but there's a lot of work to be done here.
      - jtreminio 13y ago
        You'd be very incorrect if you thought no one was using Symfony2. I am specifically talking about Symfony2, by the way. A great number of frameworks and CMSs are using Symfony2 components. Two popular ones are the http-kernel and http-foundation components. Drupal is integrating several Symfony2 components. Composer, the PHP package manager that has taken the community by storm, is using Symfony components. eZ publish is integrating several Symfony2 components. Joomla! adopted YAML, using a Symfony2 component. Stating that Symfony2 is not widely used simply tells me you're not keeping up with the PHP community - which would be fine if you're not a PHP developer, but makes your statement not trustworthy. edit: PHPUnit, the defacto standard PHP unit testing framework, also uses Symfony2's YAML component. I can go on.
        astrodust 13y ago
        It's like Symfony2 is a gourmet restaurant in a town that finds McDonald's too expensive. Nobody uses Drupal, or eZ Publish or Joomla. They just don't. There's good reasons for this, notably these are some really obnoxious platforms to build for, but that aside their impact on the PHP world at large is inconsequential. PHP, by and large, consists of people slamming together applications from the ground up the same way they built them in the 1990s. It shouldn't be this way, and people should fix it through education and outreach, but I really don't see that happening on the scale that's required. Also, if you think even a quarter of the PHP devs out there even know what a unit testing framework is, you're more of an optimist than I am.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Wordpress is garbage. Just because there are a lot of production sites built or using Wordpress doesn't mean it's good. No, it does mean it's good. You're comparing opinion (everybody has one) with actual hard real world results (tons of major sites with million hits running on Wordpress and around 15% of the web too).

pestaa 13y ago

You put it very lightly. It is not pedantry or elitist hackers, it is computer science. A sane engineer with a little bit of experience would not start off with PHP to build anything at all.

camus 13y ago
Because no engineer out there use php to develop anything ? right ? those folks at dailymotion , (the only youtube real competitor that yahoo wanted to purchase ), they are such insane engineers using php... i bet you are better than them hey , what did you build that is famous and used by millions of people around the world ?
toomuchtodo 13y ago
Facebook. Wikipedia. Yahoo.
- eropple 13y ago
  Were either of the first two started by "a sane engineer with a bit of experience"? Inertia is powerful.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Doesn't matter what your site is coded in if it isn't revenue positive/have funding/etc.
    - eropple 13y ago
      I'm not sure where you got that from my post. Though, to be honest, I don't think that using Play (today) or Rails/Django (yesterday) is sufficiently less productive to merit the technical debt you almost certainly will incur starting with a PHP stack. (And I am an ex-PHP person, to the point of hacking around in PHP core...that's a few months I'd love to have back.)
- Legion 13y ago