PHP – The Right Way

by acqbu • 4 years ago

287 265 4 years ago

thriftwy4• 4 years ago

But what's the point?

The beauty of perl scripts, and later php templates, was in their BASIC-like simplicity. They were not secure or structured in any way, but very accessible.

Once you add these frameworks, you realize you could have started with Python or Java in the first place and get more mature infrastructure and better language along the way.

thriftwy4• 4 years ago

In the mid-00s the main selling point of PHP were shared hostings with mod_php which was a cheap way to host your own web site and database.

Now with the cloud that advantage is utterly gone.

systemvoltage• 4 years ago

I am not quite sure if Jamstack has improved anything. I feel like the entire web stack is spinning wheels and hardly progressing.

deniska2• 4 years ago

Shared hosts are still there, and are cheaper and much simpler to use than your average cloud based deployment. Some even support these new hipster programming languages ruby and python.

cutler• 4 years ago

Most of those cheap hosts served PHP via FastCGI not mod_php.

pjmlp• 4 years ago

For my tiny website there is nothing that cloud brings other than being more costly.

I have the same access to my shared hosting, and the amount of money per year is peanuts.

sdze3• 4 years ago

PHP still has a vibrant ecosystem. 1) cost 2) simplicity 3) scalability

With the advent of Chinese frameworks that solve C1000K problems like swoole, workerman and so on it even found its place as high performance interactive backend server.

Isinlor2• 4 years ago

PHP share-nothing architecture is awesome. It's amazingly simple and it scales to arbitrary size.

masklinn• 4 years ago

Complicated frameworks means the “shared nothing architecture” is unusable and you have to use fcgi/fpm to get acceptable performances out of your website.

At which point there’s little difference from <everything else>.

thriftwy4• 4 years ago

PHP did not invent CGI and the whole selling point of mod_php was "share-something" architecture.

bayesian_horse2• 4 years ago

PHP has a deep history of less than ideal defaults and Tutorials/Examples. This makes scaling a codebase without some kind of framework (even if homegrown) even more of a challenge.

And in my opinion PHP tends to be ugly and less readable by default.

cies10• 4 years ago

PHP share-nothing architecture is awesome

There's nothing PHP specific about share-nothing architecture. It's often refereed to as stateless application layer in other camps.

schipplock• 4 years ago

There is legacy code out there, and I think people are grateful for these frameworks :).

rbanffy8• 4 years ago

Once you add these frameworks, you realize you could have started with Python or Java in the first place and get more mature infrastructure and better language along the way.

And, with things like Flask or FastAPI, you get BASIC-like simplicity and immediacy with a language that has a concept-space that scales with your understanding of it.

asadkn• 4 years ago

I have used PHP as a replacement for even shell scripts, like perl and python, a lot in the past. The best thing is the very strong standard lib. Everything's built-in. I like node as well, but having to install so many packages just for that one file script is a major annoyance.

omgitsabird3• 4 years ago

more mature infrastructure and better language

What does this mean?

thriftwy4• 4 years ago

PHP is a conceptually awful language. It is created by language amateurs and it shows in many early decisions such as the multiple thousands of built-in functions already mentioned.

It had its benefits since those amateurs understood their use case and their users' capacity very well. But now all of that is gone and they are still stuck with a subpar language at the core.

TekMol10• 4 years ago

My problem with PHP is that it solves the issue of code reuse the wrong way round.

In other languages, you can import code like this:

    import mail as mailer

The external code ("mail") does not have to make assumptions how it will be called when it is used.

In PHP, it is the other way round. Every piece of code needs to try avoiding namespace conflicts by prefixing the code with something like this:

    namespace Illuminate\Mail;

Hoping the namespace (here "Illuminate") will not clash with other code.

_def• 4 years ago

You can `use Illuminate\Mail as Mailer` if you want

TekMol10• 4 years ago

That is not what I mean.

It would not prevent a clash with another "Illuminate" namespace.

The problem is that the developer of "Illuminate\Mail" had to introduce the "Illuminate" namespace and hope nobody else uses it.

Additionally it makes the code more complex. Every file needs to carry this "namespace ...." line now.

ainiriand3• 4 years ago

The way I see it is that you alias the import mail as mailer. You hope there are no other libraries called mail in your import path. PHP fixes that by requiring all libraries called mail to be dependent on their own namespace so that there will be no collisions.

I think that neither do make assumptions on how the code is called when used, only one is preventing name collisions.

TekMol10• 4 years ago

    You hope there are no other libraries
    called mail in your import path.

Let's take Python for example. With Python, I am in control of the import path.

I can put those two mail modules in:

    stuff/mail
    tools/mail

And then use them like this:

    from stuff import mail as mail1
    from tools import mail as mail2

I don't have to hope for anything.

raytube2• 4 years ago

There is 'use as'.

But it is infuriating having to namespace your code when a folder name/heirarchy could do.

agumonkey• 4 years ago

Doesn't that shield you from FS/OS impl though? I often found it the only reasonable explanation (for java too)

lmz• 4 years ago

Other languages? It's the same kind of namespacing that Java or C++ has.

tored7• 4 years ago

Namespaces in PHP are totally fake, they are not real as it is in C++, where you can actually store data within them.

In PHP the namespace is just a name added to every class construct and nothing else.

This is basically

  class MyThing

the same as this

   namespace My;

   class Thing

However namespaces was a pragmatic design choice that solved the community's problem with code organization and ever increasing project sizes and for that it worked pretty well because introducing namespaces didn't break any existing workflow.

Today though I agree that proper module system would be nicer and now with PHP evolved even further it is perhaps time to introduce them.

Without having deep knowledge about PHP internals it feels like it would be possible to do because you can already today implement your own module system. Here is just something quick & dirty as a proof of concept.

module.php

    <?php
    
    return new class {
        public const MY_CONST = 47;

        private const MY_PRIVATE_CONST = 127;
    
        // with PHP 8.1 you also have readonly properties
        public string $myPublic = 'foo';
    
        private int $myPrivate = 17;
    
        public function helloWorld(string $name): void
        {
            echo "Hello, World {$name}!";
        }
    };

main.php

    <?php
    
    final class ModuleException extends Exception {
    }
    
    function module(string $name): object
    {
        static $modules = [];
    
        if (isset($modules[$name])) {
            return $modules[$name];
        }
    
        try {
            $module = @require $name;
        } catch (Error $error) {
            throw new ModuleException("No such module {$name}", 0, $error);
        }
    
        if (!is_object($module)) {
            throw new ModuleException("Module {$name} is not an object");
        }
    
        $modules[$name] = $module;
        return $module;
    }
    
    $my = module('module.php');
    $my->helloWorld('Module system');
    
    $other = module('module.php');
    assert($my === $other);

The building block in PHP internals is the class - interfaces, traits and enums are all classes in disguise. Could it be possible to use classes for modules as well? Perhaps just add some syntactic sugar on top.

TekMol10• 4 years ago

Nice.

Is the strict_types dance necessary for this?

I really hope that if PHP introduces an import system, it does not combine it with stricter type handling.

rbanffy8• 4 years ago

I totally expected it to be a troll site. It's actually sensible advice.

But, really, I suggest using other tools. We have nicer tools now.

bayesian_horse2• 4 years ago

I guess sometimes you are forced to use tools you'd rather not.

unfocussed_mike2• 4 years ago

I don't know that many nicer tools than Laravel, to be fair.

Especially Laravel + Lighthouse, which is an extraordinarily neat GraphQL layer considering the huge deployability you get with PHP.

PHP is progressing towards a nicer language in a way that JavaScript, IMO, is not. And taking tens of millions of programmers with it.

BafS• 4 years ago

You should also have a look to api-platform (https://api-platform.com/), it's based on Symfony and you can create Rest or GraphQL APIs with ease.

tored7• 4 years ago

What tools? What server language today except PHP (and its forks) is actually designed for the web and works as the web was intended?

rbanffy8• 4 years ago

What server language today except PHP (and its forks) is actually designed for the web and works as the web was intended?

I'd say Rails is a very nice DSL for building web applications that's written as an extension of Ruby.

We have two dimensions here, one for how easily a language allows you to build a website, and how expressive, consistent and error-proof a language is. It's easy to build a simple website with PHP (as it was with ASP and JSP, or even Cold Fusion). I actually like that approach, that maps running scripts to state transitions. But I also like the consistency and expressiveness of Python, Java, Scala, or C# (which I have used). As languages, they are "nicer" (and that's completely subjective) than PHP, and that niceness more than compensates for being unable to write code inside templates.

onion2k2• 4 years ago

What server language today except PHP (and its forks) is actually designed for the web and works as the web was intended?

The implication of the question is that there's something designed into PHP that makes it better for working with web things. Why does the language need to be designed to work with the web? That part of any language can be filled out with a framework quite easily, and arguably that means it's much easier to change how the language is used. That seems to be the case with every major PHP application anyway - most use Laravel or Cake or Symphony or something. Just as most Ruby web projects use Rails, and most backend JS projects use Express, and Rust web projects use Poem, and so on.

I don't think there's a good reason to design a language specifically for web projects. If that's how PHP works these days (I haven't used PHP in a decade or so), I'd suggest that might be a bad thing. It's very rigid, and if the language gets anything wrong that compromises the design of every project that uses it. Languages should provide simple primitives that frameworks and libraries build on.

that_guy_iain8• 4 years ago

But, really, I suggest using other tools. We have nicer tools now.

Debatable really. Within the web development space the options are rather limited in my opinion.

Options:

* Spring based apps - Downside JVM is a Resource hog

* Python, Ruby, etc - The web frameworks are in my opinion not as full featured. Same with CMS systems. Also requires more resources. Also have limited OO features.

* Go, Rust, etc - Really good choices for APIs but their web frameworks are also really lacking.

The tooling around PHP is really good and stable. The language itself, the downsides are very limited and the main one that remains valid is inconsistency of function parameters. The issues with bad code are generally the same ones that can be done in another langauge.

mschuster912• 4 years ago

The language itself, the downsides are very limited and the main one that remains valid is inconsistency of function parameters.

Usually one would have an IDE's auto completion to take care about function parameters, and in any case PHP8 has named parameters now to reduce whatever confusion (especially when optional parameters come into play) remains.

StreamBright4• 4 years ago

We use Asp.NET and it is a giant surprise how good it is. We are unix ppl, Linux & MacOS so not a MS shop at all. We deploy to on-prem and AWS so no Azure.

berkes10• 4 years ago

Java, .net, C#, typescript (not my favorite) are all commonly and often used for Web Development.

They are sane languages with large ecosystems and solid frameworks for web-dev.

mtberatwork• 4 years ago

Downside JVM is a Resource hog

I have to disagree. The JVM is one of the biggest pluses and might be one of the most battle-tested pieces of software out there.

The web frameworks are in my opinion not as full featured.

Again, have to disagree here. Django is by far one of the most full-featured, well-documented web frameworks out there (IMO).

The tooling around PHP is really good and stable. The language itself, the downsides are very limited and the main one that remains valid is inconsistency of function parameters. The issues with bad code are generally the same ones that can be done in another langauge.

I agree here and I think with PHP 8 incorporating JIT compilation, I think the future looks bright for PHP. I think the biggest foot guns these days are to be found in the JS ecosystem...but again, IMO.

inoop4• 4 years ago

Downside JVM is a Resource hog

The fuck are you smoking? The JVM is one of the most mature, resource efficient, and fast language runtimes out there.

See, this is why nobody can take you people seriously.

chinathrow• 4 years ago

But, really, I suggest using other tools. We have nicer tools now.

Citation needed.

For folks not wishing to switch frameworks and tooling every year, you can get a lot done with PHP.

rbanffy8• 4 years ago

Citation needed.

I really like Django as an opinionated framework. I have also used Flask, Falcon, and FastAPI, all with good results in their own niche. I also like Play and Scala and Spring Boot with Java.

For folks not wishing to switch frameworks and tooling every year, you can get a lot done with PHP.

You can also get a lot done with wood and nails, but that doesn't mean it's the best tool for all kind of jobs.

lpcvoid• 4 years ago

I, for one, would chose PHP8 over Javascript all day, every day. And there seem to be millions like me.

rbanffy8• 4 years ago

Well... I wouldn't recommend JavaScript. TypeScript is much nicer and removes a lot of the JS pitfalls.

wraptile• 4 years ago

As someone who had to learn a bit of PHP recently, I really don't see why would anyone pick it up these days other than vendor/business lock in. Laravel is great but there are hundreds of equally as great frameworks on dozens of more moderns and better though out languages: go, python, nim, ruby etc. A bunch of useful functions expanded into the default namespace is no longer that special.

ihateolives3• 4 years ago

there are hundreds of equally as great frameworks on dozens of more moderns and better though out languages: go, python, nim, ruby etc

Have you actually tried using for Nim for building a scalable web service or even just complex websites with auth of your choice? Nim does not even come close to what PHP has to offer in terms of solutions for every need you may have.

jbverschoor• 4 years ago

Why not install using asdf ?

porker• 4 years ago

When I looked ~ 2 months ago, PHP via asdf looked buggy and abandoned?

I would _love_ to use asdf for everything, but outside a core set of languages/developers it doesn't seem to have the community around it.

jonwinstanley2• 4 years ago

PHP is actually a really decent option these days. And several libraries and frameworks built around it are flourishing.

cies10• 4 years ago

And several libraries and frameworks built around it are flourishing.

Yes.

PHP is actually a really decent option these days.

I beg to differ. What comparative options do you have experience with to base your claim on?

Ronsenshi• 4 years ago

I'm not the OP, but I have plenty of comparative experience working with Python and JS on the backend (node) and I find PHP to be a very decent option compared to those two.

PHP has an amazing infrastructure of third-party libraries/packages around it, particularly if you're using PHP for web development. In comparison, Python simply does not have the same quality of framework for web like Symfony or Laravel. Django is good, but just that - good. And then there's the matter of speed with Python which is by all metrics slower than PHP.

Then there's node. Node is significantly faster than PHP, but all that speed is wasted away because of all that nightmarish mess that is node_modules. Node infrastructure for backend web dev is nowhere near close to where PHP or even Python is.

jonwinstanley2• 4 years ago

The main comparisons I have are building sites with Ruby/Rails and doing JS front ends attached to REST APIs. All three types of project have their own pros and cons.

FinalBriefing• 4 years ago

Laravel and its ecosystem is really great. I used to hate PHP, but now I find it quite enjoyable, at least in the realm of building websites.

If you stick to modern versions and frameworks, it's a much different experience from PHP 8 years ago.

psychoslave2• 4 years ago

Actually, that make me remember statements of Linus Torvalds on Git at Google Tech Talk Conference:

But I did end up using CVS for seven years at a commercial company and I hated it with a passion. When I say I hate CVS with a passion, I have to also say that if there are any SVN users in Subversion, users in the audience, you might want to leave because my hatred of CVS has meant that I see Subversion as being the most pointless project ever started, because the slogan for Subversion for a while was, CVS done right or something like that.

And if you start with that kind of slogan, there’s nowhere you can go. It’s like — there is no way to do CVS right. So that’s the negative kind of credit.

https://singjupost.com/linus-torvalds-on-git-at-google-tech-...

omgitsabird3• 4 years ago

There are a plethora of articles for "foo best practices" or "bar done right".

I feel like you are stretching a quote to fit a premise that doesn't match the context of this thread or article.

psychoslave2• 4 years ago

I didn’t mean to stretch anything, that just the immediate thing that popped in my mind when I red "PHP – The Right Way".

Now, I don’t mean PHP is never the right way to go. Especially if you have to deal with a large existing code base, rewriting everything in whatever shiny bright language there is available currently on the shelve is probably a far worst option.

tored7• 4 years ago

Funny considering Linus Torvalds believes that C is the best since sliced bread.

https://www.google.com/search?q=c+the+right+way

pas3• 4 years ago

He seems pretty chill about Rust, maybe even positive.

He hates C++ with a passion though. (Like CVS.) And .. it's understandable. C++ did not fix anything back then, that he cared about. Quite the opposite, only made things even worse for low-level code, because it was even more undecipherable by mere mortals. (And ... mostly still is.)

WalterGR2• 4 years ago

That sure is a big a web page for having no table of contents!

There’s a ToC on https://leanpub.com/phptherightway but I can’t link directly to it as the in-page link uses JS. (I’m on mobile though, so I can’t read the source. Maybe there’s an anchor someone else could link to.)

jorams• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what you're seeing, but for me the page starts with a massive ToC. On even smaller screens it turns into a button fixed at the bottom of the screen that opens a ToC in an overlay.

WalterGR2• 4 years ago

Hmm… Not sure what’s going on then.

exikyut• 4 years ago

To answer the immediate question, I had a look and nooope, no <a name="">, not even <a> anywhere, that I could find. However I just (begrudgingly) realized this is somewhere text fragments can shine: https://leanpub.com/phptherightway#:~:text=Getting%20Started

To answer the bigger-picture question, the first thing I see (the above-the-fold part) upon loading the page (on both desktop and mobile) is a stylized ToC.

benjamir• 4 years ago

A language that changes the semantics of functions between minor versions has no "right way". "count()"less examples of crap. I have currently two weeks of code migration behind me because code running correctly on 7.0 fails on 7.3 -- while I see the reason for change was necessary I also see the hopelessness of rebuilding a flawed house with a fundament build on a pile of manure.

And the good news given to me by a colleague is that they pulled the same stunt going from 7.3 to 7.4. It's like depending on stumbling alcoholics instead of language designers.

Not much has changed since core devs tried to mitigate an overflow by testing for "$variable < MAXINT".

cies10• 4 years ago

Totally agree. This is beyond taste or preference.

Yes you can build a great app in PHP. But so you can in Kotlin or Ruby or ...

Yes some have a career by starting with PHP. But that does not make it a good language for beginners. Same can be said (and to me is verrrry true) fro JavaScript.

Language design matters. It shapes how you think about code. Talk to people who've learned AND USED many languages including some esoteric ones like Haskell, a LISP or OCaml. Then see what they have to say PHP and JS for beginners.

berkes10• 4 years ago

For me, a "beginner friendly language" has these properties:

* A welcoming, helping and open community.

* Built-in guidance or enforcement away from The Wrong Way and towards The Right Way. E.g. by making the former hard to do and the latter easy.

* Ecosystem of high-quality, properly designed libraries and sample code.

I see this in e.g. Rust. But e.g. JavaScript or PHP fail on all my three points. As does my main language, Ruby, sadly.

lowwave• 4 years ago

Same can be said (and to me is verrrry true) fro JavaScript. Not if you use JS like Scheme: https://www.crockford.com/little.html

In fact JS is much more pleasant to write than PHP, the main reason to move way from PHP after using it for over 10 years.

nesarkvechnep• 4 years ago

Elixir is one such language for beginners.

dotancohen7• 4 years ago

I've upgraded quite a few PHP systems, and 7.2 was the major stumbling block that I've seen for most projects. Which "changes the semantics of functions between minor versions" are you referring to? In the 7.0 update there was the changing of order that e.g. $foo[bar]->boom[baz] would be evaluated, but obviously that isn't your complaint.

medv• 4 years ago

PHP versions don’t follow semver.

And yes, it’s ok. Semver not a silver bullet.

pooya72• 4 years ago

Also a lot of the positive changes were do to the efforts of Nikita Popov[1] who has now left. It's led to the creation of the PHP foundation.[2] I haven't kept up to date with the foundation's efforts.

[1] https://www.npopov.com/aboutMe.html

[2] https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2021/11/the-php-foundati...

Darmody3• 4 years ago

Nikita is a beast, one of the smartests guys around.

I wish I was half as smart as he is.

kilburn• 4 years ago

I was curious about this rant since I'm maintaning a number of PHP projects and I haven't had any issues with "count".

In the Changelog section of the "count" docs at https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.count.php we find:

7.2.0 - count() will now yield a warning on invalid countable types passed to the value parameter.

So in 7.2.0 they started raising a warning in cases where the application was doing a stupid thing (calling count on a non-countable object). Notice that PHP's warnings won't stop execution by default. The expected side-effect here is that you get a warning in the logs and everything keeps working normally. Of course, many development setups halt execution on warnings, but this is a decision that devs make to "force" them to writte better code, not something enforced by PHP itself.

8.0.0 - count() will now throw TypeError on invalid countable types passed to the value parameter.

In the next major version, they turned the warning into an error. Pretty understandable way to improve the language I would say. Of course it would've been better if this was an error from the beginning, but given a mistake was made here, this is definitely the best way to correct it I can think of.

I'm sorry it took time for you to fix the legacy apps you've inherited. However, calling this out as an example of bad programming language evolution seems very wrong to me. I for one would LOVE that all languages and libraries in my project's dependency chains where as dilligent as in this example.

throwaway_r211• 4 years ago

In the next major version, they turned the warning into an error. Pretty understandable way to improve the language I would say.

Breaking changes (at runtime no less) are the worst way to improve any language. They should have created a new count method if they wanted to change behavior in a breaking way. Forcing millions of developers to comb through their code just because some designer doesn't like the way someone else does something is just narcissistic.

p.s. Semver isn't worth the shit paper its printed on, it can't even version itself and all it does is give shit developers shit excuses to impose their own naval gazing induced shitstorms on other developers.

cletus2• 4 years ago

I assume then that you disqualify Python for the same reason?

Python 3.x has decided that breaking changes in minor releases is fine. My favourite: string prefixes (eg s'foo', u'foo') were legal in 2.x, removed in 3.0, added back in 3.3. There are other subtle breakages (eg open() flags).

Hating on PHP is a tired cliche at this point.

faho2• 4 years ago

Python 3.x has decided that breaking changes in minor releases is fine. My favourite: string prefixes (eg s'foo', u'foo') were legal in 2.x, removed in 3.0, added back in 3.3.

Python 3.0 was very much not a minor release, so your example is invalid.

The general point that Python does breaking changes in minor releases stands, but they do typically go through a deprecation period first.

SergeAx• 4 years ago

PHP doesn't guarantee backward compatibility between minor version. It is the way things are in PHP since 5.x, when Semver wasn't even a thing.

mrunkel• 4 years ago

https://getrector.org/

nalekberov5• 4 years ago

The reason why people now care about PHP is that, decades ago they thought PHP would the right way to develop projects, now they are stuck, because they cannot get rid of PHP any more. If you look at any well grounded projects, they try to avoid PHP at all cost. Only handful amount people are responsible for core development. Decision are made based on "copying" other languages like Java, plus you always end up using lots of tools just to make your code safer.

There are tons of tools to get things done, PHP is one of the worst ones.

hotz• 4 years ago

A poor developer can make any tool look bad.

nalekberov5• 4 years ago

sure, but why would you use poor tool in the first place?

cardanome5• 4 years ago

The reason why people now care about PHP is that, decades ago they thought PHP would the right way to develop projects, now they are stuck

I worked on many greenfield projects in recent year where the conscious choice was made to use PHP.

For the majority of projects NOT using PHP is basically throwing money in the trash. Best deployment story. Great ecosystem.

Decision are made based on "copying" other languages like Java, plus you always end up using lots of tools just to make your code safer.

This is a really big strength. PHP is able to learn from other languages and when implementing features can avoid mistakes that they made.

nalekberov5• 4 years ago

I worked on many greenfield projects in recent year where the conscious choice was made to use PHP.

What kind of greenfield projects were they, and who was making those conscious choices? Without context it's just non-sense.

For the majority of projects NOT using PHP is basically throwing money in the trash. Best deployment story. Great ecosystem.

What other technologies have you used in your experience, that came to conclusion?

This is a really big strength. PHP is able to learn from other languages and when implementing features can avoid mistakes that they made.

Name features PHP avoided while copying.

TazeTSchnitzel5• 4 years ago

PHP is a language with various features that might make it attractive to certain people:

• CGI-like execution model when used for the web, making resource leaks very difficult and encouraging scalable design

• not only integers and floats, but also strings, lists and dictionaries as mutable value types (copy-on-write) — this is a big difference from JavaScript and Python

• unusually for a dynamic “scripting” language: true classes and interfaces, and optional type declarations enforced by the runtime

• a standard library that doesn't require import statements!

• (a very new feature:) fibers, a way do asynchronous execution without every function in the callstack having to be aware of it

• binary-safe strings without presumptions from the language about what encoding is in use

• a very nice package manager

• a highly optimised runtime

But its history has made it a quite messy language which can be frustrating to learn, and which will always carry a higher mental burden than something like Python. It is a shame.

diarrhea• 4 years ago

not only integers and floats, but also strings, lists and dictionaries as mutable value types (copy-on-write)

Lists and dictionaries are also mutable in Python. Strings are not. With CoW, are your referring to garbage collection? (value that is no longer assigned to a name will eventually be purged). That would be independent of (im)mutability, so I'm not sure I understand.

withinboredom4• 4 years ago

With copy-on-write:

    $a = ['a'];
    $b = $a;

$a and $b both point to the exact same bit of memory. Thus passing an array between functions is zero-cost.

When you do:

    $b[] = 'b'; // append 'b'

a new array is allocated, the old data copied to it, and 'b' appended to it (basically, but IIRC, it is a bit more optimized than that).

synergy20• 4 years ago

so is object(array,map,etc) in javascript, many scripting languages have non-primitives mutable, the OP seems wrong on this claim(e.g. only PHP does that)

fooyc• 4 years ago

Pretty sure they meant immutable in that quote.

babuskov• 4 years ago

* duct-tape style of arrays that Just Work(tm) as arrays, hash maps, etc. without having to use any boilerplate code.

It's the main reason why I still prefer PHP for quick&dirty scripting and data processing.

Navarr• 4 years ago

I love PHP "arrays" but there is one tiny gotcha that becomes more important as we do type-safety stuff more and more.

`$a['1'] = 'string';` becomes `$a[1] = 'string';`. This appears to be the case for any fully-fledged decimal number where `(string)(int)$key === $key`

So if you are expecting `array_keys` to return all strings, you might get surprised

withinboredom4• 4 years ago

I don't think fibers are that great. There's no indication that a function call will create a fiber and do things[1] that might screw with your current state. When you know fibers are around, you need to code more defensively.

[1] https://withinboredom.info/blog/2022/01/04/thoughts-on-php-f...

eyelidlessness4• 4 years ago

a standard library that doesn't require import statements

I consider this a non-feature in JS. The global namespace is enormous and growing rapidly. As I recall, PHP’s global namespace is similarly enormous (and notorious for its inconsistencies and redundancies). I understand that there are ergonomic advantages to not having to import built-ins, but I think framing it as a feature deserves a healthy asterisk :)

fibers, a way do asynchronous execution without every function in the callstack having to be aware of it

This isn’t built into JS, but there’s an implementation of it, mostly used and popularized by Meteor. Again it has some ergonomic benefits, but I think it can too easily hide/obscure deoptimizations—eg performing IO operations in sequence which would be better performed concurrently.

asddubs• 4 years ago

well, PHP does have proper namespace support so you can easily avoid collisions. although I don't really think it's that much of a problem either way

kyriakos• 4 years ago

I think JavaScript global namespace is massive in the browser. Under nodejs things are much saner.

cletus2• 4 years ago

The best features of PHP are:

1. Core API of stateless functions. Compare this to the bootstrapping requirements of, say, Java or Python;

2. CGI-like resource management in that you tear down everything after a request. Many people get upset at, say, the "global" keyword but "global" here just means "request-scoped". There are no STW GC pauses and it's difficult (but not impossible) to leak resources;

3. Executing code for a request is single-threaded. This is almost always what you want; and

4. PHP's copy-on-write arrays (that are really hash maps) that maintain insertion order are so incredibly useful and is almost always what you want.

Crapping on PHP for things like function inconsistency (eg functions that use underscores vs those that don't, needle/haystack inconsistency) is a tired cliche and boring at this point. It really adds no value complaining about things that just don't matter and/or are historical.

My biggest grievance is that Hack (FB's fork) is basically better in almost every way. The collection types (vec, keyset, dict) are better (eg less weird coercion defaults). The type system is leaps and bounds ahead of anything PHP has. Nullability as part of the type system is amazing. It's a shame Hack didn't become the dominant dialect.

As for the book, I went through it and it's really solid. Good job to the authors and maintainers. It covers a lot of issues like register globals, sanitizing input, Unicode and so on. It also has links to more detailed information on any of these topics.

Darmody3• 4 years ago

    3. Executing code for a request is single-threaded. This is almost always what you want;

And now with fibers you can launch "threads", which are not threads but work like them.

zzt123• 4 years ago

Aren’t fibers designed from the perspective of usage in underlying libraries, rather than something for everyday end users in the fashion of async/await?

xet7• 4 years ago

I'm trying to learn https://haxe.org , so that if some target language does not work, I could use some other target language. Currently I have hard time updating to newer version of Node.js, dependencies etc. I tried to code something with PHP 8.1 directly, but I presume any following update could change syntax etc.

mapmap• 4 years ago

Is there a page like this for c# dot net?

faho2• 4 years ago

PHP is still full of awkward decisions.

One that baffles me is that 8.0 changed it so all scripts default to a "C" (i.e. english, ascii-only) locale. [0]

So this is now a scripting language that requires you to call `setlocale` for every script manually.

Contrast python, which tries to fix the locale so it's at least UTF-8 aware. [1]

[0]: From https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration80.incompatible.php "The default locale on startup is now always "C". No locales are inherited from the environment by default. Previously, LC_ALL was set to "C", while LC_CTYPE was inherited from the environment. However, some functions did not respect the inherited locale without an explicit setlocale() call. An explicit setlocale() call is now always required if a locale component should be changed from the default. "

[1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0538/

pas3• 4 years ago

It seems awkward, but it's not. It picks picks a deterministic default instead of a "whatever you have in your OS environment".

It practice all these env config initialization things are handled by the php.ini, and/or by a framework.

(Plus using the mb_string ext is how any minimally sane string handling is done in PHP nowadays.)

Yes, probably in ~10 years the PHP world too will move to a unicode by default setup :)

But hey, progress!

norman7843• 4 years ago

I want to like PHP, but it seems that there are so many better/modern alternatives out there, IMHO Go and Rust are the most notable new ones, Go is almost (if not yet) ahead of PHP in terms of community and resources (learning and packages), while Rust still needs a few years to establish (the async issue and few others) and the maturity of the ecosystem, there are no killer solution yet (maybe there will never be).

I tried PHP last year (or should I say Laravel) and didn't found any good, the type system is bad for a project like Laravel, you have too many different files where you declare things and the type system doesn't now, so you end up without autocompletions (and warnings or errors from the php interpreter) you only catch those at runtime (I'm too used now to get the errors before run a project, or at least get a hind from the editor/IDE).

pluc• 4 years ago

You didn't try PHP, you tried Laravel.

tonyjstark• 4 years ago

Not sure about your experience with Laravel, but I don’t see how the type system is bad for it. It works surprisingly well for me. With a bit of tooling I get even autocompletions for database fields when using Eloquent. PhpStorm with the (paid) Laravel plug-in are pretty awesome and give me more information during file-editing than for example Xcode.

Laravel has also a pretty active and productive community and so many things just work out of the box, I’m not sure if Go or Rust has anything comparable.

I have to mention: I didn’t touch Go for over a year now and never used Rust. I felt that Go is pretty easy to learn in its basics but quickly throwing things together for a prototype with DB access, I would go for PHP at any time.

norman7843• 4 years ago

It also could be that the learning curve is steep to get some things done and this was a side project that I wanted to get done. That could have contributed to my bad experience, also I'm not developing in php professionally anymore and sometimes when I want to get shit done, but this time it didn't worked for me.

I would not go with nodejs/deno because it doesn't feel a resilient foundation, let's say you put your php server out there, it wouldn't crash easily or if it "crash" would not kill the entire server, so there are benefits with php in that regard, it feels more easy to fire and forget.

Go should have my go to, but because never used didn't wanted to go that route, then Rust that is more painful than php in regard of the frameworks, there are not so mature ecosystem in the web category, but I can build a resilient system with rust, even I could write plain old sql that get's validated at compile time[1], that sounds amazing (well there are few drawbacks, but I like to be able to freely refactor the app in the future and the tooling tells me where I broke it, and with all other alternatives, except Go, there is no such library).

So this is more personal preference and php didn't meet my expectations, that doesn't mean that php is bad, but for me and my use case is, we cannot blame to php yet, but I think the core developers must push even harder the type system, offer better 1st party tooling and more guaranties in regard of the integrity of your program, this is one take of rust that if it compiles it works so when you do code review you only need to review the logic :)

[1] https://github.com/launchbadge/sqlx

hooby• 4 years ago

It's a decent website - a useful collection of information and links to additional information, that can serve as a starting point to learn more. For those who use PHP, or for those who'd like to learn to use it, this might be useful resource.

The same thing can't really be said of the comments in here though. I don't see how emotionally charged debates over what is the "best" or "worst" language, help anyone.

It's almost as if some people can truly have their ego shattered, by someone on the internet liking another language than they do...

Couldn't we just agree that there is no "best" language for every possible use case, and that everyone is allowed to like whatever language they want to like? It's not like the whole bickering is going to change anyone's opinion.

pak9rabid• 4 years ago

In its early days (version 4 and below) PHP was a bit of a mess. However it got its act together with version 5, as it implemented an object model almost on par with Java's, which I thought kind of set the standard for how OOP should be done. It's just unfortunate that much of the mistakes with version 4 and below had to be kept in order to preserve backwards compatibility.

lotyrin• 4 years ago

More than the design of the language itself, the culture suffered (and still suffers to a lesser degree) from the legacy of those bad designs, such that if you wanted to avoid a whole ton of awful codebases, poor practices and mediocre developers you could have easily done so by putting a language barrier between you and them and "graduating" to some other language.

Many teams and codebases these days have moved onwards and upwards toward a world where sensible design exists.

dec0dedab0de• 4 years ago

You're right, but you're missing the emotional damage many hackers of a certain age feel when they remember troubleshooting PHP problems, or constantly having to look things up, before they left for whatever their language of choice is now. People complaining about PHP are mostly just venting frustrations from 15 years ago.

eyelidlessness4• 4 years ago

I tend to stay out of these discussions, precisely because I have such negative associations from PHP 3-5, but I don’t want to shit on anyone (or make anyone feel shit upon) who uses PHP today. The language and ecosystem has clearly improved and matured a lot, and while I don’t have any interest in revisiting it, I respect that.

throwtcp5327• 4 years ago

Just wanna dump a bunch of similar PHP sites you might find useful:

(The only proper) PDO tutorial: https://phpdelusions.net/pdo/

Organize a php project according to industry best practice: https://github.com/thephpleague/skeleton

PHP Best Practices - A short, practical guide for common and confusing PHP tasks: https://phpbestpractices.org/

Modern PHP Cheat Sheet - A to-the-point summary of all awesome PHP features: https://front-line-php.com/cheat-sheet

Laravel, PHP, JavaScript: https://freek.dev/

PHP security: https://paragonie.com/blog

haolez• 4 years ago

Slightly of topic, but is Hack a thing outside of Facebook? I'm a little thrown off by the confusing standard library of PHP, but I don't know if using Hack instead would solve more problems than it creates.

irq-1• 4 years ago

Right now PHP does not support Unicode at a low level. There are ways to ensure that UTF-8 strings are processed OK, but it’s not easy, and it requires digging in to almost all levels of the web app, from HTML to SQL to PHP. We’ll aim for a brief, practical summary.

https://phptherightway.com/#php_and_utf8

This is a web language? PHP still has these kind of issues because of its culture: Get it done now and ignore any future costs.

ofrzeta• 4 years ago

Updated in January but not really up to date. It doesn't mention union types, the nullsafe operator, matching expressions and a lot of other features you can find here: https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8

Maybe not everything is "the right way" but at least the nullsafe operator is, I think.

PHP – The Right Way

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