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* Easy to deploy * Cheap to deploy * Easy to find programmers to help you * Affordable programmers * Code is easy to read for non-programmers who understand

by iguana 13y ago

* Easy to deploy * Cheap to deploy * Easy to find programmers to help you * Affordable programmers * Code is easy to read for non-programmers who understand HTML * Ton of free code available to reuse Inconsistency, poorly thought out OO, lack of purity, and disdain by hipsters are a small price to pay for those merits.

krapp 13y ago
... disdain by hipsters is a bonus in my book.
- astrodust 13y ago
  So you're a hipster, basically. "Hating PHP? That's so mainstream. Personally, I'm hating on Haskell and NodeJS."
  - krapp 13y ago
    I plan to hate Python once I learn enough of it.
    - brokenparser 13y ago
      Significant whitespace.
eevee 13y ago
So you're saying that, as a programmer, it's in my best interests to learn something other than PHP so I'll be less affordable...?
- iguana 13y ago
  Depends on why you're a programmer. If you wish to optimize for compensation, by all means, learn as many different languages, platforms, and technologies as you can. So I would say you should learn something in addition to PHP so that you bring more value where you go. Put another way: don't be a PHP programmer. Be a programmer. Then, use the right tool for the job based on the constraints given to you. If that ends up being PHP, you'll still be paid more to do it.
astrodust 13y ago
You get what you pay for in the PHP world. You can hire some kid out of high-school to slap together some application in a weekend and pay them in beer, sure, but what will you get? The maintenance costs on this abomination will quickly consume any up-front savings. Secondly, the reason some programmers are more expensive than others is because they're more efficient. Who would you rather have? Six PHP programmers that flail away for a month and ship a buggy but usable application? Or maybe two Ruby or Python developers that ship a unit-tested, well engineered application? The two developers will cost you about the same as the six others if they're top-notch, but they will not make the same mistakes and they will not stumble into every potential pitfall along the way to the solution.
- iguana 13y ago
  You're mixing technologies (PHP vs Ruby / Python) with types of programmers (inexperienced vs experienced). Wielding a master's sword does not a swordmaster make. Surely you've seen enough RoR and Django projects to know that. Some people will say that something not written in a strongly typed language is not well engineered. If it's not compiled, it's not efficient. This is just programming snobbery. For what it's worth, I was that kid in high school, except back then it was Perl. That's how I learned. Something that makes it even easier? That just creates more programmers. Without shitty programmers, we'd be paid a lot less. I talk a lot of smack about PHP and JavaScript, but these terrible languages have brought more people to programming than any other languages.
  - astrodust 13y ago
    I've seen some screwed up Rails and Django projects, but the severity of the damage is never, ever, as bad as a bespoke PHP application. It's not even in the same league. Remember, both PHP and JavaScript were serious tar-pits ten years ago. JavaScript has made enormous strides in that time, the cultural shift is unbelievable. People went from writing absolutely terrible client-side code, to using frameworks (Moo, Scriptaculous at first, later jQuery, RequireJS) to using it server-side for serious applications. It's gone from complete anarchy to highly civilized. There's some things JavaScript does very well now, and in an elegant way mostly free of quirky tradition and/or obnoxious anachronisms. Meanwhile PHP has only degraded. It's improved, technically, but the community is now hyper-fragmented. Best practices are routinely ignored. Frameworks don't inter-operate even on the most basic level. There's no leadership. There's opposition to even the most obvious improvements to PHP, like deprecating components that are doing nothing but holding PHP back. Killing off `mysql_query`, for example, is absolutely imperative, but it's going to be a bitter fight.

by iguana 13y ago

krapp 13y ago

... disdain by hipsters is a bonus in my book.

astrodust 13y ago
So you're a hipster, basically. "Hating PHP? That's so mainstream. Personally, I'm hating on Haskell and NodeJS."
- krapp 13y ago
  I plan to hate Python once I learn enough of it.
  - brokenparser 13y ago
    Significant whitespace.

eevee 13y ago

So you're saying that, as a programmer, it's in my best interests to learn something other than PHP so I'll be less affordable...?

iguana 13y ago
Depends on why you're a programmer. If you wish to optimize for compensation, by all means, learn as many different languages, platforms, and technologies as you can. So I would say you should learn something in addition to PHP so that you bring more value where you go. Put another way: don't be a PHP programmer. Be a programmer. Then, use the right tool for the job based on the constraints given to you. If that ends up being PHP, you'll still be paid more to do it.

astrodust 13y ago

You get what you pay for in the PHP world. You can hire some kid out of high-school to slap together some application in a weekend and pay them in beer, sure, but what will you get? The maintenance costs on this abomination will quickly consume any up-front savings. Secondly, the reason some programmers are more expensive than others is because they're more efficient. Who would you rather have? Six PHP programmers that flail away for a month and ship a buggy but usable application? Or maybe two Ruby or Python developers that ship a unit-tested, well engineered application? The two developers will cost you about the same as the six others if they're top-notch, but they will not make the same mistakes and they will not stumble into every potential pitfall along the way to the solution.

iguana 13y ago
You're mixing technologies (PHP vs Ruby / Python) with types of programmers (inexperienced vs experienced). Wielding a master's sword does not a swordmaster make. Surely you've seen enough RoR and Django projects to know that. Some people will say that something not written in a strongly typed language is not well engineered. If it's not compiled, it's not efficient. This is just programming snobbery. For what it's worth, I was that kid in high school, except back then it was Perl. That's how I learned. Something that makes it even easier? That just creates more programmers. Without shitty programmers, we'd be paid a lot less. I talk a lot of smack about PHP and JavaScript, but these terrible languages have brought more people to programming than any other languages.
- astrodust 13y ago
  I've seen some screwed up Rails and Django projects, but the severity of the damage is never, ever, as bad as a bespoke PHP application. It's not even in the same league. Remember, both PHP and JavaScript were serious tar-pits ten years ago. JavaScript has made enormous strides in that time, the cultural shift is unbelievable. People went from writing absolutely terrible client-side code, to using frameworks (Moo, Scriptaculous at first, later jQuery, RequireJS) to using it server-side for serious applications. It's gone from complete anarchy to highly civilized. There's some things JavaScript does very well now, and in an elegant way mostly free of quirky tradition and/or obnoxious anachronisms. Meanwhile PHP has only degraded. It's improved, technically, but the community is now hyper-fragmented. Best practices are routinely ignored. Frameworks don't inter-operate even on the most basic level. There's no leadership. There's opposition to even the most obvious improvements to PHP, like deprecating components that are doing nothing but holding PHP back. Killing off `mysql_query`, for example, is absolutely imperative, but it's going to be a bitter fight.