9 ms·

I love how, through all the hate and bandwagoning, some people don't get discouraged and actually do something to improve the product. We still do new projects

by neals 13y ago

I love how, through all the hate and bandwagoning, some people don't get discouraged and actually do something to improve the product. We still do new projects in PHP and we couldn't be happier.

adamors 13y ago
> We still do new projects in PHP and we couldn't be happier. I concur, especially when frameworks like Symfony exist. Reading all this smack talk about PHP on HN is so alien considering how thriving the PHP community actually is.
- awestroke 13y ago
  Nobody mentions how much or little the PHP community thrives. People point out how bad PHP compares against other languages. The fact that you enjoy using PHP and that you can create great products with it does not imply that it has no flaws. Many have been where you are now, and then moved on to other languages to never ever look back. From what I've seen, the reverse is much less common.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - newaccountfool 13y ago
    If you enjoy programming in it, and you can create great code then what's the problem?
    - coldtea 13y ago
      That you are too pragmatic for the fashion victims of programming.
    - CHY872 12y ago
      because real world people don't program because it's fun, they program because they need to make money.
      - tripzilch 12y ago
        Oh, come on. I've probably written about 20x as much code in my life for fun, than I did to make money. Guess I'm not a "real world people". Though that ratio changes a bit closer to 3:1 looking at only PHP code I ever wrote. The "for fun" element was good times though, my first steps in server side programming :)
        CHY872 12y ago
        Something needs to pay the bills. If a PHP project takes longer to complete (I'm not saying it does), is harder to maintain, etc than an equivalent project written in another language, then you will simply be less productive in PHP. This is the case for any language. No matter how much you enjoy something, if a design choice you made (like choosing PHP, or Perl, or C++) means that you spend more of your time on the project, you've made a mistake. The purpose of a language is to remove as much of the incidental complexity of the project as possible, leaving only the (more enjoyable) intrinsic complexity.
  - adamors 13y ago
    > Nobody mentions how much or little the PHP community thrives. People point out how bad PHP compares against other languages. I don't actually think that faults in a language matter that much if the people using it are competent. Both Javascript and Perl come close to PHP in terms of negative traits, yet a lot of good software was written with both. The same can be said about PHP, the only difference is that people on HN have very little idea about what contemporary PHP (language and software) looks like.
    - lern_too_spel 13y ago
      JavaScript is a horrible language. The fact that a lot of good software is written in JavaScript because there is no good alternative in the browser does not make it any less a horrible language. The problem with PHP is that it is a horrible language and there are plenty of better options in its niche. Those two factors combine to make PHP a nonstarter for programmers who are familiar with the other options. I dispute that there is any good software written in Perl.
      - jafaku 12y ago
        > I dispute that there is any good software written in Perl. Do you even Linux? Have you ever installed anything? If you pay attention you will notice that lots of the libraries you are using for everything are written in Perl.
    - meowface 12y ago
      There are many good PHP web frameworks out there today, yes. These don't somehow erase PHP's core flaws as a language though. You can make a new project in Symfony or Laravel, sure, but you'll get that same niceness plus way more goodies if you use a popular Python or Ruby framework.
      - debaserab2 12y ago
        I think you need to qualify that a bit - what are "way more goodies" exactly? Can you name something that Python can do that PHP can't?
  - jafaku 13y ago
    > Many have been where you are now, and then moved on to other languages to never ever look back. From what I've seen, the reverse is much less common. I really doubt that. In my experience there haven't been a single time when someone attacking PHP actually knew something about it that wasn't outdated by at least 5 years. It's funny how difficult it is for people like you to grasp that the language and its ecosystem evolves every day, much faster than other languages. Just look at what you just said. How can someone have been where I am right now? They used a time machine? Or you are assuming that the language stopped evolving at some point, or never evolved at all in the first place?
- Kiro 13y ago
  What's so good about Symfony compared to other PHP frameworks?
  - adamors 13y ago
    It's a mature, well designed and cleanly written piece of software that is very modular. It also has a great documentation and knowledgeable community around it. Other PHP frameworks lack some or most of these features: some are either very opinionated and rigid (Yii, Cake) huge and sparsely documented (Zend 2) or just old and approaching abandonment (Codeigniter, Kohana).
    - captain_mars 13y ago
      I'm just starting to learn PHP, and I noticed that recently there have a few new books about Laravel. So, it seems to be the "new hot thing" in PHP. To a newbie, would you recommend Symfony, or Laravel? Thanks!
      - jafaku 12y ago
        Symfony can be overwhelming for a newbie, but that's because web development is becoming a bigger field every day. There is so much to learn, and Symfony will teach you all kinds of best practices and other things that are not framework-specific at all. To learn Symfony is to learn web development done right. Laravel is basically a wrapper around Symfony, to make it simpler and easier. A newbie might prefer to use that, but at some point after feeling comfortable with the basics like MVC, ORM, etc. you will definitely want to move to the more professional Symfony.
      - adamors 12y ago
        Yup, Laravel is a great starter framework. Like jafaku said, it uses a lot of Symfony components under the hood so it will be familiar territory if you decide to try out Symfony one day. Be sure to check out Jeffrey Way's Laracasts, it's a really good site offering tutorials mostly for newbies.
    - brusch64 12y ago
muppetman 13y ago
Dmitry is the man who originally wrote eaccelerator, Zend caught wind of him and hired him! Then he worked on opcache and has done some amazing things in getting the Zend Engine and PHP itself flying. He's a very smart cookie.
- mtdewcmu 13y ago
  His good sense is obvious by the way he stopped going down the JIT route and zeroed in on the bigger performance drain, memory allocation, instead. The smart programmer knows how to write a JIT; the wise programmer knows how to not write a JIT.
  - smsm42 12y ago
    JIT is probably coming too, just with current way the engine built it turns out it is very hard to do JIT that makes any real-life impact. One can get magnificent benchmarks, but once you hit real-life apps, you get very low improvement. Thus a more attainable goal was chosen, but JIT may come back yet.
    - mtdewcmu 12y ago
      It's been folklore in the Drupal community for years that it's the deeply-nested arrays that are slow. It's Amdahl's law. Profile Drupal, WordPress and the other heaviest users and look for the big wins.
pan69 13y ago
About a year ago I was ready to jump ship on PHP. Then someone introduced me to Composer, Symfony 2 and Doctrine 2. I fell in love with PHP again, not because of the language but because of the tools. Its now clear to me that the language doesn't really matter that much, it's the tooling around the language that makes the difference.
- alttab 13y ago
  Agreed. One thing to consider is how the features and performance of a language shape the tools. The tools can be great, but to some degree you're riding a long distance skateboard with a generator on the back... Edit: This comment comes off as me making fun of PHP, when I simply meant to say that tools can make something effective but what underlies an effective work environment can still be crap. I don't think PHP is "crap," but at a certain level of complexity its easier to get the "average developer" to be effective using another set of tools.

by neals 13y ago

I love how, through all the hate and bandwagoning, some people don't get discouraged and actually do something to improve the product. We still do new projects in PHP and we couldn't be happier.

adamors 13y ago

> We still do new projects in PHP and we couldn't be happier. I concur, especially when frameworks like Symfony exist. Reading all this smack talk about PHP on HN is so alien considering how thriving the PHP community actually is.

awestroke 13y ago
Nobody mentions how much or little the PHP community thrives. People point out how bad PHP compares against other languages. The fact that you enjoy using PHP and that you can create great products with it does not imply that it has no flaws. Many have been where you are now, and then moved on to other languages to never ever look back. From what I've seen, the reverse is much less common.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- newaccountfool 13y ago
  If you enjoy programming in it, and you can create great code then what's the problem?
  - coldtea 13y ago
    That you are too pragmatic for the fashion victims of programming.
  - CHY872 12y ago
    because real world people don't program because it's fun, they program because they need to make money.
    - tripzilch 12y ago
      Oh, come on. I've probably written about 20x as much code in my life for fun, than I did to make money. Guess I'm not a "real world people". Though that ratio changes a bit closer to 3:1 looking at only PHP code I ever wrote. The "for fun" element was good times though, my first steps in server side programming :)
      - CHY872 12y ago
        Something needs to pay the bills. If a PHP project takes longer to complete (I'm not saying it does), is harder to maintain, etc than an equivalent project written in another language, then you will simply be less productive in PHP. This is the case for any language. No matter how much you enjoy something, if a design choice you made (like choosing PHP, or Perl, or C++) means that you spend more of your time on the project, you've made a mistake. The purpose of a language is to remove as much of the incidental complexity of the project as possible, leaving only the (more enjoyable) intrinsic complexity.
- adamors 13y ago
  > Nobody mentions how much or little the PHP community thrives. People point out how bad PHP compares against other languages. I don't actually think that faults in a language matter that much if the people using it are competent. Both Javascript and Perl come close to PHP in terms of negative traits, yet a lot of good software was written with both. The same can be said about PHP, the only difference is that people on HN have very little idea about what contemporary PHP (language and software) looks like.
  - lern_too_spel 13y ago
    JavaScript is a horrible language. The fact that a lot of good software is written in JavaScript because there is no good alternative in the browser does not make it any less a horrible language. The problem with PHP is that it is a horrible language and there are plenty of better options in its niche. Those two factors combine to make PHP a nonstarter for programmers who are familiar with the other options. I dispute that there is any good software written in Perl.
    - jafaku 12y ago
      > I dispute that there is any good software written in Perl. Do you even Linux? Have you ever installed anything? If you pay attention you will notice that lots of the libraries you are using for everything are written in Perl.
  - meowface 12y ago
    There are many good PHP web frameworks out there today, yes. These don't somehow erase PHP's core flaws as a language though. You can make a new project in Symfony or Laravel, sure, but you'll get that same niceness plus way more goodies if you use a popular Python or Ruby framework.
    - debaserab2 12y ago
      I think you need to qualify that a bit - what are "way more goodies" exactly? Can you name something that Python can do that PHP can't?
- jafaku 13y ago
  > Many have been where you are now, and then moved on to other languages to never ever look back. From what I've seen, the reverse is much less common. I really doubt that. In my experience there haven't been a single time when someone attacking PHP actually knew something about it that wasn't outdated by at least 5 years. It's funny how difficult it is for people like you to grasp that the language and its ecosystem evolves every day, much faster than other languages. Just look at what you just said. How can someone have been where I am right now? They used a time machine? Or you are assuming that the language stopped evolving at some point, or never evolved at all in the first place?
Kiro 13y ago
What's so good about Symfony compared to other PHP frameworks?
- adamors 13y ago
  It's a mature, well designed and cleanly written piece of software that is very modular. It also has a great documentation and knowledgeable community around it. Other PHP frameworks lack some or most of these features: some are either very opinionated and rigid (Yii, Cake) huge and sparsely documented (Zend 2) or just old and approaching abandonment (Codeigniter, Kohana).
  - captain_mars 13y ago
    I'm just starting to learn PHP, and I noticed that recently there have a few new books about Laravel. So, it seems to be the "new hot thing" in PHP. To a newbie, would you recommend Symfony, or Laravel? Thanks!
    - jafaku 12y ago
      Symfony can be overwhelming for a newbie, but that's because web development is becoming a bigger field every day. There is so much to learn, and Symfony will teach you all kinds of best practices and other things that are not framework-specific at all. To learn Symfony is to learn web development done right. Laravel is basically a wrapper around Symfony, to make it simpler and easier. A newbie might prefer to use that, but at some point after feeling comfortable with the basics like MVC, ORM, etc. you will definitely want to move to the more professional Symfony.
    - adamors 12y ago
      Yup, Laravel is a great starter framework. Like jafaku said, it uses a lot of Symfony components under the hood so it will be familiar territory if you decide to try out Symfony one day. Be sure to check out Jeffrey Way's Laracasts, it's a really good site offering tutorials mostly for newbies.
  - brusch64 12y ago

muppetman 13y ago

Dmitry is the man who originally wrote eaccelerator, Zend caught wind of him and hired him! Then he worked on opcache and has done some amazing things in getting the Zend Engine and PHP itself flying. He's a very smart cookie.

mtdewcmu 13y ago
His good sense is obvious by the way he stopped going down the JIT route and zeroed in on the bigger performance drain, memory allocation, instead. The smart programmer knows how to write a JIT; the wise programmer knows how to not write a JIT.
- smsm42 12y ago
  JIT is probably coming too, just with current way the engine built it turns out it is very hard to do JIT that makes any real-life impact. One can get magnificent benchmarks, but once you hit real-life apps, you get very low improvement. Thus a more attainable goal was chosen, but JIT may come back yet.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago
    It's been folklore in the Drupal community for years that it's the deeply-nested arrays that are slow. It's Amdahl's law. Profile Drupal, WordPress and the other heaviest users and look for the big wins.

pan69 13y ago

About a year ago I was ready to jump ship on PHP. Then someone introduced me to Composer, Symfony 2 and Doctrine 2. I fell in love with PHP again, not because of the language but because of the tools. Its now clear to me that the language doesn't really matter that much, it's the tooling around the language that makes the difference.

alttab 13y ago
Agreed. One thing to consider is how the features and performance of a language shape the tools. The tools can be great, but to some degree you're riding a long distance skateboard with a generator on the back... Edit: This comment comes off as me making fun of PHP, when I simply meant to say that tools can make something effective but what underlies an effective work environment can still be crap. I don't think PHP is "crap," but at a certain level of complexity its easier to get the "average developer" to be effective using another set of tools.