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> Besides PHP serves the largest website on Earth (Facebook) and a good 20% or more of the rest (via Wordpres, Drupal et al). Popular != good. None of those p

> Besides PHP serves the largest website on Earth (Facebook) and a good 20% or more of the rest (via Wordpres, Drupal et al). Popular != good. None of those points mean anything, PHP is still a badly designed language that lacks consistency and makes language designers feel like puking. It's a collection of hacks more than a language.

mikeschinkel 11y ago
A language designer's gastrointestinal state is orthogonal to a programming language's usefulness and usability. PHP is both of the latter in part by virtue of it's ubiquity. Further, many years development experience has allowed me to appreciate that the benefits of a programming language are often inversely proportional to it's level of design purity. And the greater the longevity of a widely-useful programming language, the more haters it will have.
coldtea 11y ago
>Popular != good. That maybe so in pop music and matters of taste. In the context of software, popular as in powering half of the web means stable, reliable and battle-tested. That it doesn't satisfy some ideological purity doesn't mean much. All languages have crappy parts, especially the more popular ones. C++ has a pile-on-kitchen-sink design, and yet it powers 90% of the desktop software world. C has horrible safety mechanism, and it rules in systems programming. Javascript, the other web darling, I won't even get into that. Java has all the legacy SDK crap and the needles boilerplate ceremony, and it just got closures like yesterday. Sorry, but the world isn't built on Haskell and CL, and even less so in Dylan or whatever exotic thing you have in mind.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > In the context of software, popular as in powering half of the web means stable, reliable and battle-tested. No, it doesn't, it merely means popular.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    Additionally, context is never relevant, popular doesn't mean quality in any context. Something can be both popular and quality, but popularity doesn't make something quality.
- codygman 11y ago
  WordPress and stable/battle tested don't really go together in my experience. Especially since plugin quality varies widely. Edit: I guess I can concede that vanilla WordPress is mostly stable and very battle tested.

mikeschinkel 11y ago

A language designer's gastrointestinal state is orthogonal to a programming language's usefulness and usability. PHP is both of the latter in part by virtue of it's ubiquity. Further, many years development experience has allowed me to appreciate that the benefits of a programming language are often inversely proportional to it's level of design purity. And the greater the longevity of a widely-useful programming language, the more haters it will have.

coldtea 11y ago

>Popular != good. That maybe so in pop music and matters of taste. In the context of software, popular as in powering half of the web means stable, reliable and battle-tested. That it doesn't satisfy some ideological purity doesn't mean much. All languages have crappy parts, especially the more popular ones. C++ has a pile-on-kitchen-sink design, and yet it powers 90% of the desktop software world. C has horrible safety mechanism, and it rules in systems programming. Javascript, the other web darling, I won't even get into that. Java has all the legacy SDK crap and the needles boilerplate ceremony, and it just got closures like yesterday. Sorry, but the world isn't built on Haskell and CL, and even less so in Dylan or whatever exotic thing you have in mind.

gnaritas 11y ago
> In the context of software, popular as in powering half of the web means stable, reliable and battle-tested. No, it doesn't, it merely means popular.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  Additionally, context is never relevant, popular doesn't mean quality in any context. Something can be both popular and quality, but popularity doesn't make something quality.
codygman 11y ago
WordPress and stable/battle tested don't really go together in my experience. Especially since plugin quality varies widely. Edit: I guess I can concede that vanilla WordPress is mostly stable and very battle tested.