5 ms·

Why should people move on? I want people to be educated in how horrible PHP is, I want to see PHP burn and be abandoned.

swansw 13y ago
Sorry to break it to you but that's simply not going to happen (at least anytime soon). Why not direct your effort at improving the language instead? Edit: I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I just want to know what your reasons would be to see it die rather than be improved.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  "Why not direct your effort at improving the language instead?" Or indeed developing a successor. Loads of people bitch about how bad PHP is - I see very few efforts to even come up with a better alternative.
  - mjburgess 13y ago
    They already exist (python, ruby, ...). Improvement is the only way the PHP commuity as the php community will progress.
    - berkes 13y ago
      Sadly, for that PHP-community, many developers outgrow PHP and move on. Instead of the developers growing and improving, and so pulling the entire community upwards, many simply choose to leave. I've had this personally with Drupal: many, many years did I poor a (joined!) effort into getting proper TDD, OOP, deployment strategies into this CMS, but in the end I gave up. I mean: why put effort into making Drupal something it does not want to be; while a few weeks of learning a new language, the thing I wanted Drupal to become, already exists. I think PHP is mostly a station in the career of many webdeveloper, before they move on to what are often considered "more professional environments". Sure, there are a few brilliant and very professional PHP-devs who stick around. But relatively seen, they are a tiny minority.
userbinator 13y ago
I like the story of PHP because it is a very powerful reminder that ultimately what matters is that something works, not that it is beautifully designed or appeals to some other higher-order train of thought. It's a very grassroots-style of innovation where pragmatism prevails, and there is no "right" way that people dogmatically follow. You don't have to know much about data structures or hashing to do anything useful, just find a way that works. You don't have to worry about finding the "perfect design". If people can learn a language like English with far more irregularity, inconsistent function names are the least of their worries. Just do it. And I find that very inspirational and motivating because it says that anyone who puts enough effort into getting something done, will.
- awestroke 13y ago
  I completely lost interest in programming because of PHP. When I discovered other languages where I didn't need to search the documentation every time I tried to remember a function name, or debug crazy text encoding/silent failure bugs, programming because fun again. I have written good amounts of PHP code since then, and maintained even more of it. I've also used MVC frameworks like Symfony2, where few of the usual arguments against PHP apply, but it still feels like a low quality language with the tens to hunddeds of pitfalls one has to watch out for. And don't get me started on the Wordpress development that seems to be the main technology for webdev jobs today. The argument that PHP is easy to get started with for beginners is a lie. Sure, you can install LAMP and start writing echo statements and it just works, but what then? The behavior of your code is sometimes weird, functions have cryptic names, and there's really nothing to point you in the right directions. There's no enforced or even encouraged conventions, and there's heaps of "Common Knowledge" one must acquire to write safe code.
neals 13y ago
Ah, the great PHP massiah. This indeed looks like some very productive use of your time and effort.
coldtea 13y ago
Perhaps you never learned that you are on the wrong side of the "Worse is Better" divide...
jtreminio 13y ago
yes but simply put, no one gives a shit what you want, other than the ones that already share your feelings. You're not going to convince good php developers to stop using php, but you will convince the bad ones... actually go on with your bad self, ruby/python needs more bad devs
damon_c 13y ago
I have been a longtime PHP avoider myself, but I just recently installed Wordpress for the first time and I admit to being impressed by a few things. One is the fact that because of the implementation of PHP, where I assume a totally new process is created for every web request, a PHP app can actually edit itself and emerge different for the next incoming request. Because of this, Wordpress has amazing features where non technical users can install plugins and even edit the source code of Wordpress, in Wordpress... This would not be as easily done in any of the various reputable languages I'm aware of... at least not in the standard implementations of those languages.
- awestroke 13y ago
  Plugin support is not something that is exclusive, or even easily implemented, in PHP. Compiled languages with Lua bindings does this better, with the benefit of very easy sandboxing. Ghost (https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/) is a more mainstream example, and it has plugin support. As someone who has developed wordpress themes, the plugin support in wordpress is a gigantic source of frustration. It is not amazing under the hood.
Kiro 13y ago
I love PHP.

swansw 13y ago

Sorry to break it to you but that's simply not going to happen (at least anytime soon). Why not direct your effort at improving the language instead? Edit: I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I just want to know what your reasons would be to see it die rather than be improved.

mgkimsal 13y ago
"Why not direct your effort at improving the language instead?" Or indeed developing a successor. Loads of people bitch about how bad PHP is - I see very few efforts to even come up with a better alternative.
- mjburgess 13y ago
  They already exist (python, ruby, ...). Improvement is the only way the PHP commuity as the php community will progress.
  - berkes 13y ago
    Sadly, for that PHP-community, many developers outgrow PHP and move on. Instead of the developers growing and improving, and so pulling the entire community upwards, many simply choose to leave. I've had this personally with Drupal: many, many years did I poor a (joined!) effort into getting proper TDD, OOP, deployment strategies into this CMS, but in the end I gave up. I mean: why put effort into making Drupal something it does not want to be; while a few weeks of learning a new language, the thing I wanted Drupal to become, already exists. I think PHP is mostly a station in the career of many webdeveloper, before they move on to what are often considered "more professional environments". Sure, there are a few brilliant and very professional PHP-devs who stick around. But relatively seen, they are a tiny minority.

userbinator 13y ago

I like the story of PHP because it is a very powerful reminder that ultimately what matters is that something works, not that it is beautifully designed or appeals to some other higher-order train of thought. It's a very grassroots-style of innovation where pragmatism prevails, and there is no "right" way that people dogmatically follow. You don't have to know much about data structures or hashing to do anything useful, just find a way that works. You don't have to worry about finding the "perfect design". If people can learn a language like English with far more irregularity, inconsistent function names are the least of their worries. Just do it. And I find that very inspirational and motivating because it says that anyone who puts enough effort into getting something done, will.

awestroke 13y ago
I completely lost interest in programming because of PHP. When I discovered other languages where I didn't need to search the documentation every time I tried to remember a function name, or debug crazy text encoding/silent failure bugs, programming because fun again. I have written good amounts of PHP code since then, and maintained even more of it. I've also used MVC frameworks like Symfony2, where few of the usual arguments against PHP apply, but it still feels like a low quality language with the tens to hunddeds of pitfalls one has to watch out for. And don't get me started on the Wordpress development that seems to be the main technology for webdev jobs today. The argument that PHP is easy to get started with for beginners is a lie. Sure, you can install LAMP and start writing echo statements and it just works, but what then? The behavior of your code is sometimes weird, functions have cryptic names, and there's really nothing to point you in the right directions. There's no enforced or even encouraged conventions, and there's heaps of "Common Knowledge" one must acquire to write safe code.

neals 13y ago

Ah, the great PHP massiah. This indeed looks like some very productive use of your time and effort.

coldtea 13y ago

Perhaps you never learned that you are on the wrong side of the "Worse is Better" divide...

jtreminio 13y ago

yes but simply put, no one gives a shit what you want, other than the ones that already share your feelings. You're not going to convince good php developers to stop using php, but you will convince the bad ones... actually go on with your bad self, ruby/python needs more bad devs

damon_c 13y ago

I have been a longtime PHP avoider myself, but I just recently installed Wordpress for the first time and I admit to being impressed by a few things. One is the fact that because of the implementation of PHP, where I assume a totally new process is created for every web request, a PHP app can actually edit itself and emerge different for the next incoming request. Because of this, Wordpress has amazing features where non technical users can install plugins and even edit the source code of Wordpress, in Wordpress... This would not be as easily done in any of the various reputable languages I'm aware of... at least not in the standard implementations of those languages.

awestroke 13y ago
Plugin support is not something that is exclusive, or even easily implemented, in PHP. Compiled languages with Lua bindings does this better, with the benefit of very easy sandboxing. Ghost (https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/) is a more mainstream example, and it has plugin support. As someone who has developed wordpress themes, the plugin support in wordpress is a gigantic source of frustration. It is not amazing under the hood.

Kiro 13y ago

I love PHP.