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Speaking as somebody who has done PHP for some 8-9 years, I still cringe my nose at it. See, the thing is, PHP has gotten better. That's not in dispute. The pr
by joepie91_ 12y ago
Speaking as somebody who has done PHP for some 8-9 years, I still cringe my nose at it.
See, the thing is, PHP has gotten better. That's not in dispute. The problem is that, even after it "has gotten better", it's still far behind most other options that are commonly in use, and still highly inconsistent and upredictable. It is rather telling in and of itself when you have to use "well, it has gotten better" as a crutch to argue that, at least, it meets a minimum standard of viability.
Frameworks don't really solve this problem. Fundamentally, you're still working with a language that does some really weird things - things that are weird enough to cause near-untraceable bugs and completely unexpected vulnerabilities. You can slap a lot of abstraction onto it, and it does make it less unwieldy, but in the end you're still limited by what the language or platform has to offer you in terms of inherent consistency, predictability, and debuggability.
Just take, for example, PHP's CGI-like nature. Yes, it is theoretically possible to have a long-running process, and it's theoretically possible to implement real-time services with it, but it's going to be a major headache and incredibly hard to maintain. The tools are just not really there. Any solution you come up with will, in the end, be a giant hack.
Don't assume that somebody who cringes at PHP is just somebody who likes jumping on bandwagons. There are very real and rational reasons to dislike PHP, even (especially!) as an experienced PHP developer.
- airtonix 12y agohey, remember if you turn your nose up at shitty languages and platforms, you're somehow revealing something bad about yourself. Not like the exemplary attitude of "awesome lets cut our wrists all day and open windows explorer to deploy"
- yc1010 12y agoPHP doesn't do EVERYTHING but it is good for surprisingly a lot of cases What happens when you have existing code in Java or python that does something you do not wish to reinvent the wheel with is you simply interface/bridge with from you PHP code. Right now I have 5 servers running python batch jobs processing some data (for a few months now) which is called by php with results being added to datastore for later access with php In the past I worked on an asset tracking system where we collected data from RFID readers, whole system was done in PHP with some glue Java and C code for more "to the bone" edge cases Everything I have done in PHP i could have done in C which I first learned and still use alot of, doesn't mean I want to spend my life wasting it on 90% of cases where a quick php script does the job within reasonable time I never claimed PHP is "awesome" or whatever you think I did, but it is a very capable language at getting things done fast, especially if you know what you are doing Yes there are armies of noobs giving PHP a bad name, but instead of turning your nose at them one is better helping them and showing them how to do things better
- imakesnowflakes 12y agoThe most dangerous thing about PHP is it's amiable appearance. But it's friendly appearance is like a car without seat belts. "Hey, look, there is nothing restricting your movement inside the cabin.". The horrid (and unfixable) nature of the language does not become apparent until after you use it for a while. (How long it takes may vary, but you ll hit it eventually, if you keep yourself in good company.). So if you list features of PHP, you might get a list of nice features. But every one of them will be subtly broken when put to real use...
- joepie91_ 12y agoThe problem is that there are many languages that can do the job better and faster (especially in the non-compiled world). By arguing that "PHP is good enough", you're effectively arguing for mediocrity. Regardless of whether it's "good enough", it still isn't the optimal solution, and calling it subpar is still justified.