PHP Sucks But I Like It

http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2012/04/php-sucks-but-i-like-it.html

by ircmaxell • 14 years ago

326 230 14 years ago

blog.ircmaxell.com

"WSGI in Python gets you part of the way there, but you still need to import a library to talk to the server. This makes PHP just plain easier to get off the ground for web applications."

The first sentence is mostly accurate, but I disagree strongly with the assertion in the second sentence. Grouping related functionality into libraries reduces the cognitive load of programming. The same could be said for his assertion about the benefits of HTTP as a "first-class citizen."

I do agree that getting a PHP application running on a LAMP stack is easier than say getting a WSGI implementation up and running, but this has nothing to do with libraries.

ircmaxell2• 14 years ago

My intention was the full process from creating the first file, to getting a server to serve the content is far easier to do in PHP than Python (granted, in Python it's pretty much boilerplate, but there's a lot more than needs to happen).

As far as the benefit of first-class vs libraries for handling the request, that's something to consider (as there are arguments on both sides)...

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

That was pretty thoroughly discussed in the original thread. Yes, PHP throws everything you can do into functions in global scope. It's "convenient" but it's messy. It's also, correct me, but an incredibly trivial distinction.

nthitz• 14 years ago

Can we all just agree PHP (like many other languages) has some bad features / design choices (evolutionary features, whatever you wanna call em), yet when used properly under the right circumstances it does the job quite well?

Killswitch4• 14 years ago

Agreed.

mikeash2• 14 years ago

I'll accept "does the job". I don't accept "quite well". I've seen PHP do a lot, but I've yet to see it do anything truly well.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

Indeed. It lets you write verbose tangled masses of SQL, code, and HTML. That gets the job done, but when you see the power of declarative programming and good libraries, you can do a lot more with a lot less code.

methodin• 14 years ago

What does it not do well?

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

A truely masterful carpenter could build you a pretty impressive desk with nothing but a few jagged rocks. But put better tools in his hands, and the same guy will do a much better job, faster. That was the point of the original blog post, and this one didn't really contradict it in any meaningful way.

Killswitch4• 14 years ago

Well said. PHP gets a lot of crap thrown at it, but in the end, one of the biggest companies and second biggest website on the internet uses it as it's primary language.. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for any of us to use.

kaiju• 14 years ago

The wide adoption of PHP has nothing to do with it's actual quality, though.

ssmall• 14 years ago

It helps though. High adoption, especially with bigger companies, leads to my eyes on the code which can cause a higher quality run time. It also means there are more tools, frameworks, reference books, and ultimately jobs out there for it.

huggyface• 14 years ago

"If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for any of us to use."

This doesn't follow at all.

dasil003• 14 years ago

I think the point he's trying to make is that you can choose PHP and you're never going to hit a wall where it can no longer be used because the project is getting too big and serious.

That's a strawman argument to be sure, but I think it's reasonable to point out given the oft-repeated claimed that PHP is fine for small-scale hacking but is inadequate for "serious" software engineering.

100985• 14 years ago

Facebook pretty much has to use php, they can't afford to rewrite all of this huge codebase. They have written their own compiler that translates php to c++ and then uses g++ to compile that into native code. I'm sure they had some pretty serious reasons to do that. And they probably wouldn't have to do that sort of thing if facebook wasn't written in php in the first place. Thus, the argument "hey, facebook is written in php so let's use php" is invalid, it's a typical "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy.

Killswitch4• 14 years ago

That's the backend. The front end stuff that average Facebook users interact with is raw PHP.

trebor• 14 years ago

I'm with you Anthony.

I work all day with PHP even though I love Ruby (and Rails, and Sinatra...) because practically ALL our client base wants either a static site or Wordpress, or another PHP-based CMS. Few of our clients have the budget for a custom web app with its own custom web stack to power it.

There's almost nothing faster to get bootstrapped into a functional application or script than PHP. Assuming your server is already configured with PHP you just upload the project.

PHP 5.3 and 5.4 give me great hope for the future of the language.

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

"rails new project-name", and I have a full app. and heroku makes deployment just a push away.

Its not like phps ease of use is not a good thing -- it is. but other languages/platforms aren't _that_ much harder

ranza• 14 years ago

I would still have to say that PHP, by all its flaws, gets the job done. And in the end of the day thats what count to me. That might be a bad view to have but I've been sticking with it for a lot of years now even though Ive flirted with a lot of other languages. Its still the girl i get home to every night

natesm2• 14 years ago

I don't like the "tools" analogy that always comes up. For example, Robertson screws are better than Phillips head screws, which in turn are better than flatheads. All of them are tools, and they all effectively do the same thing. But the Robertson screw is better.

jack-r-abbit5• 14 years ago

And yet I have 5-6 different sized Phillips and standard screw drivers. I've never even heard of Robertson screws.

natesm2• 14 years ago

Well, they're good for the same reason that hex/Torx is, and I think most people have a set or two of those.

stan_rogers• 14 years ago

They tend to be known outside of Canada as "square drive" screws. They can't cam out, are nearly impossible to strip in normal use, and will stay on the driver tip without assistance in almost any attitude other than straight down. They're the darling of woodworkers even in the United States of Phillips.

The American bias towards towards the Phillips screwdriver has mostly to do with the gift of patent made to the government in order to support the war effort, putting them effectively into the public domain. They were better than flat screws/drivers, but that's not saying much: when I worked in aircraft maintenance, about half of all of the Phillips-head captive fasteners (Camlock or Dzus type) on inspection and access panels needed to be replaced between periodic (400-hour) major inspections due to stripped heads.

Jach5• 14 years ago

The best screw is the one which I have a screwdriver/drill head for! (Thus PHP is still the best language for a newbie on $5/mo or less shared web hosting!) But really I agree with your point that these metaphors and analogies into other fields hurt the discussion since it changes to being about pointing out problems with the analogy rather than about whatever the discussion was originally about.

Zr40• 14 years ago

Actually, your own analogy is very apt. When correctly applied, all kinds of screws can perform the same task fine. The difference lies in how the screw is driven.

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

only php is a screw made out of silly putty, which is fine for extremely simple things, but would take a great deal of ingenuity and creativity to make work for larger problems

kprobst• 14 years ago

Not sure this is a valid analogy at all; PHP is a tool, not a type of problem (insert joke here), so rather it would be a choice between brands or types of screwdrivers.

untog2• 14 years ago

Exactly, though I'm not sure you're making the point you want to. I have dozens of Phillips screws at home, and at least two Phillips screwdrivers. I've never heard of Robertson screws.

I could get a new set of screws and screwdrivers, but it's a lot more difficult and expensive than just using the Phillips stuff I have lying around. Depending on how important my project is (am I making a load-bearing shelf or am I putting up a poster frame?) the answer may differ.

msbarnett• 14 years ago

> I've never heard of Robertson screws.

Common in Canada, where they were invented. They're square head. Nearly impossible to strip, will stay on your driver with no support at almost any angle.

Not well known in the US because of a decision Ford made nearly 100 years ago to not pay Robertson the price he was asking.

Thus, to this day, any product that comes with screws is likely to come with Phillip's head, and all of its terrible downsides (I keep a supply of Robertson heads so that I never have to deal with Phillips' inherent shittyness).

Bad legacy decision making and inertia conspire to aggravate generations, long after the original thinking behind those decisions stopped making sense. The parallels to PHP are pretty clear.

adambyrtek• 14 years ago

I would claim that a programming language is more like material than a tool. You can easily switch tools during the course of the project and discard them once it's done, but it's not that easy to replace faulty material. If you want good results, you should invest in quality material.

(Of course every analogy holds only up to a certain point.)

grandalf• 14 years ago

I've found that the people I know (even excellent programmers) who love PHP tend to hate Ruby and find it extremely confusing.

Maybe there is just a fundamental brain-structure difference between individuals... I don't actually think PHP is easier for a beginner than something like Sinatra, so I don't buy the explanation that PHP is easier for those new to programming.

drumdance2• 14 years ago

I like both.

flyosity• 14 years ago

I think there may be something to this. I'm used to programming in PHP and Objective-C and going to Ruby just throws my brain for a loop. I just can't grok it, and reading someone else's Ruby code confuses the hell out of me. I'm more of a designer than a programmer, so take this all with a grain of salt, but coming from a C-style language background I totally feel like a different part of my brain needs to turn on (or off?) to program in Ruby.

Jach5• 14 years ago

Have you tried Python? My own biased opinion is that Ruby is a problem for some people in the same way Perl is a problem for some people: too much syntax. (I happen to like both Perl and (more so) Python but not really Ruby for other reasons.) Edit: Oh, and PHP was my first language. My feelings about PHP are more or less expressed within this submission.

286c8cb04bda• 14 years ago

This is a warning for future you:

Objective-C, when used like Objective-C and not just C-with-classes, is a lot like Ruby. Both have a shared heritage in Smalltalk.

E.g. http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?HigherOrderMessaging

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

The problem is that if all you know is a C style language, getting past non c style syntax is a hard job all by itself. I had a hard time learning clojure, but once I did it was a snap to learn common lisp, scheme, and elisp. Same kind of deal (only I think, a bit more extreme), its a matter of having the right background

emilw• 14 years ago

I would prefer a different analogy. Something like, Heavy Metal & Classical music or Dub-Step & Country.

I leave assigning these as an exercise for the reader.

danso• 14 years ago

I used PHP awhile back, but how much of its inconsistencies can be resolved without fundamentally changing the language's positive features? That is, not caring about backward incompatibility. Like, I can't imagine the inconsistency of "==" has any bearing on PHP's flexibility.

wvenable3• 14 years ago

If you don't care about backwards compatibility you leave a lot of users in the lurch. PHP4 to PHP5 took years to migrate over and Python 3 still hasn't taken over from Python 2. Perl 5 and 6.

If you can't get syntax/semantic changes adopted in a single language then getting a whole new language adopted is a non-starter.

I think the core PHP developers should take a long look at the inconsistencies of the language and formulate a plan to reduce/eliminate them without breaking backwards compatibility. In some cases, it should be relatively easy but in others it will be very difficult. The inconsistency of "==" would be hard to fix while making sure old code still runs correctly.

1SaltwaterC• 14 years ago

The biggest WTF was that "tied to Apache" section. Being running nginx + PHP-FPM for years, even before FPM was accepted as official SAPI.

I guess that people still think that they know better than their sysadmin regarding how to set up a production environment (regarding to the php.ini rant). Maybe because the sysadmins know that expose_php = off turns off those pesky easter eggs. Or they are better at Reading The F[...]riendly Manual (http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.expose-php).

Had a good laugh at the complaints about PECL libraries that provide "everything but the kitchen sink". Last time I checked, it was still "The PHP Extension Community Library". People should complain about that particular project, if they need to. It has nothing to do with the internals team.

Wondering how he could forget about the <script language="php"></script> bit.

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

PHP is like living in a big city. There are all sorts of things wrong with it, like homelessness, noise pollution, traffic, bad neighborhoods, corrupt politicians, perennially-under-funded public transit; the list goes on.

And yet there's nowhere like it. You could move to some ideal community somewhere, and maybe you visit there now and then because it doesn't have all those other problems, but all the arts and culture, all your favorite restaurants and bars, all the meetups and hangouts and friends and co-workers make your city worth the downsides.

brendn3• 14 years ago

I like your city analogy. I won't stoop to comparing programming languages to actual American cities, but I would counter that "PHP is like living in [a particular] big city."

Here's where I disagree: it's not enough to say "hold your nose around these parts, but it's OK because those few blocks on Main St. are worth it."

There will be flaws in any city, and sometimes due to mismanagement, the flaws will be neglected until blight sets in. Here's where the citizens of the city need to step up: they either flee the city and it continues to decay, or they acknowledge the flaws and address them. Don't just accept the downsides! Fix things. Make improvements. The city only thrives on the investments of its citizens.

Kilimanjaro7• 14 years ago

I've always said somebody should fork php and polish it, getting rid of all the backward compatibility issues and leaving intact the ease of use and deployment. It is unbelievable to me how nobody sees the huge potential it has in books, blogs, docs, frameworks, etc. Like giving php a second chance, this time done right.

Rasmus himself should give it a try as a side project with a different name. I would follow him from day one.

PHP has a lot of bad parts and, like javascript, is asking for its cup of coffee. The time is ripe.

kingkilr• 14 years ago

Yeah, or I can live in some other big city that doesn't have all the shitty parts (or at least less of them). Plus it has all the good stuff. Please stop with this insane dichotomy that I have to choose between the stuff I like and living somewhere without crap. Damnit I want it all, and I'm getting it.

antihero3• 14 years ago

Continuing your analogy, you see it as an interesting, rich big city, I see it as a shite big city, devoid of interesting culture, lots of poorly run bars and shops, everyone is miserable, it takes ages to get anywhere and it's always raining. Anyone with skill and the ability has abandoned it or is trying to. Python or Ruby however are cooler, slightly smaller cities which have a decent community feel, a good art scene, and are thankfully free of people who live in the big city but are too ignorant or lazy to venture out and get there.

PHP has no fucking culture, the vast majority of 3rd party libraries and classes and snippets are garbage, the vast majority of tutorials are garbage. There are some gleaming institutions like Symfony, and some little places that are trying really hard to make it a better place, but other than that it's a wasteland.

Let's not romanticise dog shit. Yes, the original guy's post was unnecessarily harsh to the development community and people who work hard to make their life in said city, but this city is a clusterfuck in comparison to pretty much anywhere else. It's one redeeming feature being that it's easy to get to and everyone's heard of it.

brendn3• 14 years ago

The arguments in favor of PHP that I continue to hear run along the lines of "everybody's using it" or "it's not that bad if you know what you're doing" or "it's great because it's the Swiss Army knife of languages."

It's hard to argue with those sentiments. And I think the root of the argument stems from the diverging convictions of two distinctly different camps of hackers. There are grease monkeys who love tinkering and see value in a tried-and-true tool that works everywhere. And then there are the craftsmen who strive for elegant code and choose their tools carefully. (There's truth in both of those aspirations. Let's not get carried away in value judgements between the two camps.)

But hearing "PHP sucks but I like it" sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me. There are some great aspects to PHP that other web stacks and frameworks could learn from. Yet there are some major flaws that actually get in the way of productivity. I hope we can keep the discussion constructive and learn from both camps in building the future of web programming.

jack-r-abbit5• 14 years ago

I don't think you necessarily meant it as such but in this context it appears that you just referred to PHP developers as "grease monkeys" and other developers as "craftsman". One could misinterpret that as a highly offensive remark.

brendn3• 14 years ago

I think you're misinterpreting my use of "grease monkeys" in general as offensive. (I said not to project value judgements in my original comment. There are certainly developers who see "craftsmen" as aloof purists who look down on practical matters. It cuts both ways.)

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

> "You don't need a library or a framework to talk HTTP."

With 'library' typically meaning 'extension' in PHP parlance, you do. The socket methods are part of the Socket extension, cURL is an extension you have to compile in.

The only reason you'd not actually notice this is because, unless you compiled your own copy of PHP, it will have been done in the default install bundled with the OS, or in xAMP, and will have automatically been injected into the 'global' scope.

This is all just daft, though. You could go on forever with the "it can't do X but it can do Y" schtick, with any language.

wvenable3• 14 years ago

I think what he meant wasn't about sockets or Curl, but the fact that PHP is integrated with the HTTP request itself. You don't need an extension for PHP to output HTML or read in query parameters.

Python developers user REPL to quickly test elements of their code or play around with the language; PHP developers hit refresh.

Jach5• 14 years ago

There are two other interpretations of the statement. One is that you don't need any import/includes, which is true of PHP but not of Python. The second is you don't need any external dependencies "out of the box", ignoring the fact that someone had to make the box[1] for you at some point which you mention here. This is true of PHP, and only half-true of Python: I remember messing with "import cgi" at some point, Flask is so so much better.

[1] Gentoo's USE flags for PHP (the ones with - are the ones I haven't compiled in for my box):

    apache2 bcmath berkdb bzip2 cgi cjk cli crypt ctype curl curlwrappers fileinfo filter ftp gd gdbm hash iconv ipv6 json mysql mysqli nls pdo phar posix postgres readline session simplexml sockets spell sqlite sqlite3 ssl threads tokenizer truetype unicode xml xmlreader xpm zip zlib -calendar -cdb -debug -doc -embed -enchant -exif -firebird -flatfile -fpm -frontbase -gmp -imap -inifile -intl -iodbc -kerberos -kolab -ldap -ldap-sasl -libedit -mhash -mssql -mysqlnd -oci8-instant-client -odbc -pcntl -pic -qdbm -recode -sharedmem -snmp -soap -suhosin -sybase-ct -sysvipc -tidy -wddx -xmlrpc -xmlwriter -xsl

ygmelnikova• 14 years ago

Can't we all just get along?

mickgardner• 14 years ago

"PHP Sucks" [....] Yep, agree with that part....

greggman2• 14 years ago

The problem is everyone is conflating things.

PHP the language sucks ass.

PHP the environment (part of the server + html processor + no setup or configuration for most users + page is the app + etc..) = WIN for many many people.

Not a single other environment has ever duplicated that. Until someone does they'll never displace PHP. It's ripe for the replacing but understand that it's not just the language, it's the entire environment surrounding it.

frankus• 14 years ago

I found myself thinking whether one could make an heir apparent to PHP that removed the suckiest aspects and left the same basic "no configuration, just a bunch of files" model in place (any inherent problems with that model notwithstanding). Sort of how SVN fixed some of the most glaring issues with CVS without forcing people to really change their habits.

But I think that the things PHP really has going for it (huge installed base of the runtime, huge installed base of legacy apps, huge developer community) aren't going to smoothly make the jump to a new language. And once you've given up that sort of backward compatibility, why not fix a few other things while you're at it?

Still, I think there might be potential for a PHP-like language that breaks some backward compatibility but fixes a lot of basic things like unicode support, modules loaded at startup or runtime rather than as a ./Configure flag, syntactic quirks, etc. Something where you could spend a few minutes to a few hours (max) refactoring a PHP script into PHQ (or whatever you want to call it) script and gradually modernize your app.

Zarel• 14 years ago

Most of the gripes with PHP seem to do with its syntax, error messages, and inconsistent function naming.

It seems like it shouldn't be too difficult to write an automatic converter from "PHP" to "Improved PHP", which might solve a lot of these issues.

roryokane• 14 years ago

Pharen (http://scriptor.github.com/pharen/), a Lisp that compiles to PHP, might be or become such a language. It's not quite as simple to jump right into as PHP is because you need to run Pharen's compiler after editing your code, or set up a script to watch for changes and then compile. But Pharen could theoretically improve its tooling and get very close to PHP's ease of use.

wvenable3• 14 years ago

The thing is, the language doesn't fully suck. It has a few sucky parts that are more or less easy to ignore. As has been said elsewhere in this topic[1], the code one produces in PHP is pretty equivalent to what you do in most other languages.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824767

TylerE2• 14 years ago

So, what exactly ARE the good parts?

* Syntax? Sucks * Arrays? Or wait, are they hash tables? Sucks * Stdlib? Sucks * Performance? Sucks

chaostheory3• 14 years ago

"Not a single other environment has ever duplicated that. Until someone does they'll never displace PHP"

Someone in the Rails community is trying with a small start.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1397300529/railsapp

Ruby and its community are far from perfect. The biggest difference that I see between it and other communities, is that when a lot of people come about some negative aspect of using Ruby, eventually within a few months people start working on actually fixing it. X number of months later, it ships.

maratd5• 14 years ago

> PHP the language sucks ass.

Depends on how you define the language? Nobody is twisting your arm, you don't have to use any of the inconsistent syntax. Just write your own functions.

The core language is actually very similar to C.

danellis• 14 years ago

The core language has a superficial similarity to C, that's all.

lhnn• 14 years ago

This is the best way to describe it.

I wrote a few tools for my IT team a month or two back. I needed a Quick and Dirty web UI. How do I write some .py files that output HTML, put them in a web directory, then goto http://server/tool.py?

It was just easier to use mod_php and rewrite the simple tools in PHP. Trust me, I REALLY wanted to use Python, but couldn't. To be fair, I didn't have superuser, but I did look for docs on how to do this for Python, and apparently isn't not easy. You have to use WSGI or something? I don't know.

My tool now works well, in PHP.

jamesgeck0• 14 years ago

Phusion Passenger is your Apache plugin and/or standalone server. It supports Python and is really easy to setup. Flask is your quick and dirty web UI. It comes with some of the best documentation I've ever seen.

You need different knowledge than PHP, but I can't say that it's harder than PHP.

antihero3• 14 years ago

I don't think people replicate it because having an environment that is based on directly mapping to the filesystem tree is completely inane for modern webapps. Most decent PHP software now hands the request off to a single file (eg index.php) that handles the routing.

Yes, PHP has mass appeal for people that are happy to limit themselves to the lowest common denominator, however people that want to reach even a tiny bit further can discover other languages that have better ways of doing things.

For instance, his "Hello world" example is completely fucking inane, and just spitting out a thing like that will lead to poor app design and unmaintainable spaghetti code.

rometest• 14 years ago

wait. after reading the earlier article, i started learning python. you guys cant do this.

i need to go back to php now or wait till the wwIII is over

Gigablah• 14 years ago

Why not learn both?

PerG• 14 years ago

Good point there, Gigablah

vectorpush5• 14 years ago

A novice programmer can write dangerously horrible code in C or C++ but we don't say those languages suck (most of the time). I'd rather debug/refactor a poorly engineered PHP project than a poorly engineered C or C++ application any day of the week.

Locke1689• 14 years ago

No, pretty much everyone says that C++ sucks.

Scriptor• 14 years ago

C or C++ aren't competing with PHP. You'd have to look at Python or Ruby in this case. While it's definitely possible to write shitty code in those languages it doesn't provide nearly as many ways to screw up. Besides the lack of language features like @ (error silencing), you won't find nearly as many terrible tutorials out there created by some guy who's been learning for a few weeks and decided to write a blog post.

Given a poorly engineered PHP or Python project, I will always pick the latter. However, if I were to start a project on my own I'm confident enough in my PHP that the language choice is harder to make.

vectorpush5• 14 years ago

C or C++ aren't competing with PHP.

That's true, but my point is that there isn't such a visceral hatred for C and C++ even though they are widespread and notorious for memory leaks, vulnerabilities, indecipherable corporate quagmires (perhaps due to an over-engineered OO architecture or 700 line functions or opaque symbol names or dependency hell, etc).

Besides the lack of language features like @ (error silencing)

Red-flag bad practices exist on all platforms. The horror story of a PHP project littered with error suppression is like opening up a C project and discovering that the control flow is guided by a 200 label GOTO architecture. It's not PHP's fault that the programmer abuses the language, it's the employer's fault for hiring a highschool student at $15/hr.

cageface2• 14 years ago

The difference is that in exchange for the difficulty of C/C++ you get low-level control and performance that no other language can consistently match. They are still the right tool for some jobs.

You get nothing in exchange for the extra headaches of PHP.

vectorpush5• 14 years ago

You get nothing in exchange for the extra headaches of PHP.

Of course you receive something in exchange. Whatever explanation you have for the ubiquity of PHP is the benefit one receives in exchange.

Besides, my point is that headaches are not inherent to PHP. Just because a community of hobbyists and novices churn out shaky code doesn't mean that developers employing best practices will.

https://github.com/symphonycms/symphony-2/tree/master/sympho...

Here is an example of quality PHP code. Clear and organized OO structure, useful comments, self documenting method and variable identifiers. Why is this inherently wrong?

Kilimanjaro7• 14 years ago

I code like this in php, python, ruby, node and golang:

    include 'app';
    include 'models';
    include 'templates';

    $data = models::getCustomers()
    $view = templates::parse('customers',$data)
    app::show($view)

What's so ugly about that? I bet you I can build 90% of sites on the web with that basic snippet of code. In any language...

vectorpush5• 14 years ago

Agreed. My web applications maintain nearly identical structures (with slight variations due to some OO quirks across platforms) regardless of language choice. At the end of the day most imperative scripting languages are semantically equivalent.

anonymousab• 14 years ago

It's often called "c++ on the internet" but C++ was never a pretty language. At the very least, it is better than ASP. Good lord, ASP is such a hunk of garbage.

TomGullen• 14 years ago

ASP.net or Classic? Remember Classic was first released 14 years ago, a lot of great stuff has been built in it. I'm not sure why you would call either a hunk of garbage!

datasage• 14 years ago

Maybe its just me, but there seems to be a bit of confusion between frameworks and language. Or many its that some languages are now rarely seen out of the frameworks that made them prominent.

Because PHP was built for a web environment and has features that make it quite useful out of the box, for that environment.

With Ruby or Phython you need to do extra work or jump into a framework to get to that "starting point". However, if you are going to start comparing Ruby/Python with a framework to PHP, then you need to look at PHP through one of the prominent frameworks out today (Symphony, ZF, Etc). Otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

The resounding theme is: "I've only used PHP, and I like it. Therefore it's good."

Try getting good at a different programming language, then write your blog post about how PHP is awesome.

soupboy• 14 years ago

I don't buy your argument. You don't need to try all (or any) programming languages in the world in order to like a single language. I know Python, and I really like Python and think it is awesome. I don't need to have tried Ruby or Haskell or C# to say this.

Also, your comment kind of becomes moot because he goes on to say "I do know and actively use Python and server-side JS ..."

kstenerud• 14 years ago

The problem is that lack of exposure causes myopia. If all you've ever used is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.

Every time I've switched languages there has been a transitional period where I've bemoaned the lack of X in the new language, and later wondered how I ever got by without Y, which lets me do in 10 minutes what took 4 hours and hundreds of lines before. Each new language or technology is a new tool in my toolbox, which allows me to make an informed decision when choosing how to build a product.

So if you've only ever used one programming language, then yes, I'm going to take your opinion with a mountain of salt.

kelnos2• 14 years ago

You don't need to try all (or any) programming languages in the world in order to like a single language.

No, but you appear woefully unqualified to put forth any kind of opinion as to why the language you like is a good language if you have no frame of reference.

I know Python, and I really like Python and think it is awesome.

Sure, but you have no basis to make a comparison. You just happened to luck out; Python is a great language. PHP is... not.

henrikschroder• 14 years ago

There was a fantastic infographic a while ago here which showed a curve of the different stages a programmer goes through when learning a new language. Basically there's an initial euphoria when it feels like the new language is the best in the world because of the things it can do, that is later followed by boredom and despair when the novelty is gone and the warts are starting to bother you, and when you come out the other end, when you can see the good and the bad of a langauge, then you're a good programmer.

It's ok to have a favourite language, it's ok to love your favourite language and sing its praises, but if you can't point out the flaws of it, you're not a good programmer. Your opinion won't be taken seriously. You don't have the experience of working with it long enough to be bitten by the warts, and you don't have the breadth of working with other languages to know what you're missing.

michaelkscott• 14 years ago

It looks you misunderstood the whole post. The OP clearly noted that "PHP sucks" and can't do many things other languages can. But despite this, he says he likes the language.

And his reason is because of its ease of use and the fact that it works. That to me sounds nothing like "PHP is awesome." Sorry to put it this way, but it looked like you put words in his mouth.

api• 14 years ago

The secret to PHP's success is simple. I've never seen anyone point it out.

It just works.

If you have a web server configured to run PHP, then it's ridiculously simple to get a page to execute. Just put a .php file on the site and it runs. Done.

You don't have to jigger a bunch of components, dink around with a bunch of Tomcat or Ruby on Rails or proxy or other annoying settings. Most other web execution environments have a bunch of Rube Goldberg machine components you have to plug together to get them to work. It also performs very well and supports a lot of things.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

Isn't not programming at all even easier? You don't have to get money, find a computer to buy, buy a computer, install an OS, buy an Internet connection, install a web browser, learn to browse the web, learn about how hosting works, find a host, get money to buy a hosting account, learn about apache, install apache, learn about php, install php, learn about text editors, install a text editor, learn php, write PHP, learn about scp, install scp, scp file to server. By the time you've become that proficient with all that stuff, apt-get install libcatalyst-perl on your desktop sounds about as easy as finding a host that supports PHP.

It's not like PHP solves any of the real problems, like how to manage upstream changes, how to automate releases, how to rollback database schemas after a bad release, and so on. The reason why nobody ever talks about those things is because everyone handles them with downtime and swearing. That's not software engineering. That's fail.

furyofantares• 14 years ago

Not programming at all is easier, yes. Not programming is also much more popular than programming in PHP.

Edit: To be a bit less snarky here, you are arguing that the sunk costs of learning to use a computer justify more effort spent in getting a web site running just because the effort already sunk dwarfs the additional effort required. But in fact not only is that cost sunk but once I've learned to use a computer my time and energy is suddenly more valuable.

sbandyopadhyay4• 14 years ago

False dichotomy. You can do some things quickly in PHP (vs other languages), and some things in life and in programming need to be done quickly.

There's a place for doing things fast, and a place for doing things right. You're wrong to assume everything requires the latter.

Lazare6• 14 years ago

True. A lot of webhosts are configured such that you can drop some PHP files into a directory via ftp, and it'll "just work". Which is nice. But...

...that's not really inherent in PHP. You can configure Python to be just as easy, and some webhosts do this. Node is pretty much always this easy. Django and Rails can also be this easy (if you've ever used Webfaction, you'll know what I'm talking about).

And, on the flip side, if you want to install configure PHP yourself, it's actually not that easy. It's trivial to get a PHP page to execute given a web server configured to make it trivial (but, again, that's true for almost any language), but configuring the web server isn't trivial.

maratd5• 14 years ago

> And, on the flip side, if you want to install configure PHP yourself, it's actually not that easy.

http://www.lifelinux.com/how-to-install-nginx-and-php-fpm-on...

Looks pretty easy to me.

Then again, I compile my own version of Apache with FastCGI and PHP-FPM all the time.

CJefferson3• 14 years ago

PHP's hello world, for transmitting back to the user, is:

<?php Print "Hello, World"; ?>

I can wrap that in a little HTML, to get valid return to the user.

I don't know what Node.js's hello world looks like. From google it looks like the following. This is a heck of a lot more things to understand.

// Load the http module to create an http server. var http = require('http');

// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World to all requests. var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) { response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"}); response.end("Hello World\n"); });

// Listen on port 8000, IP defaults to 127.0.0.1 server.listen(8000);

// Put a friendly message on the terminal console.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/);

brendano3• 14 years ago

...that's not really inherent in PHP. You can configure Python to be just as easy, and some webhosts do this...

It's very rare to find webhosts that configure Python, Ruby, Node or the rest to be as easy as "upload a file, click reload."

One reason is the wonderful statelessness of mod_php's execution model: it forks a new process for every request, and destroys it at the end. It's inherently a much more stable environment than the competitors -- you can't save anything inside the interpreter for future requests. This makes server administration easy, and probably shared hosting easier to manage.

alanh2• 14 years ago

> I’ve never seen anyone point it out.

Really?

The easy of deploying a single-purpose script / hello world is always trotted out as the reason PHP ever became popular.

Yes, even in yesterday’s big item “PHP: A Fractal of Bad Design.”

MartinCron3• 14 years ago

I've seen people point it out before and I think it makes perfect sense for explaining its popularity.

I also think it's a micro-optimization for the wrong thing. It's like buying a car based solely on how close the dealership is to your house. You only have to do the initial setup once (by definition) but you have to live with the consequences of your environment of choice every single day for the rest of the project.

I'll go to a crappy coffee shop if it's the only one around, I'm willing to go very far out of my way to get to the car dealership that has the right thing for me.

sbandyopadhyay4• 14 years ago

People trade up cars all the time -- when you can afford to, that is.

fleitz• 14 years ago

PHP is just an example of worse is better (whose key is simplicity of implementation), because PHP is easy to get started with things get built in it. Then you have a lifetime of maintenance hacking around all the bad decisions at the start because of it.

Comparing the rails app config system to PHP.INI, ini_set, .htaccess and the million other ways to configure PHP and considering the app config system to be a rube goldberg machine is really unjustified, the very configuration of PHP itself pretty much non-deterministic.

http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

josegonzalez3• 14 years ago

Don't use all those ways of configuring PHP. php.ini works just fine, and if you truly need a different configuration for a specific application, a bootstrap file will serve to override the php.ini where necessary. Done.

derefr• 14 years ago

True, I suppose: if PHP were invented today, I imagine the pitch would be something like "it's the Dropbox of web applications: you just put files in a directory and they run."

(...on that note, I just realized how useful it would be if Dropbox's Public folder executed PHP.)

emperorcezar• 14 years ago

Yes, it just works. That's also where there are thousands of poorly written sites out there that chug down sql injections like they were going out of style.

PHP is a reasonable templating language. That's what it should be used for.

If you use a framework, you're golden, but at that point you could be using any language.

sbarre• 14 years ago

If [language of your choice] was as popular as PHP you can bet that there would be thousands of poorly written sites in that language out there too.

aneth• 14 years ago

Life is filled with simple, easy, cheap, popular paths that lead to ruin. PHPs initial simplicity does not make it a good choice.

Looking for happiness? Heroine "just works".

Hungry and poor? Eating McDonald's three meals a day is cheap and easy.

kamaal2• 14 years ago

Exactly that is why both Heroine and McDonald's sell.

It might sound scary. But in reality 'merit' is not the only motivating factor for adoption of anything.

sgerrand2• 14 years ago

A large number of people have previously pointed this out. You're selling the virtues of mod_php, rather than PHP itself.

As other have pointed out in this thread, you can easily configure a web server to behave like that for files in other languages like Perl or Python.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

but the difference is that you don't have to configure a web server to act like that for PHP, because (almost) all of them come that way.

slurgfest3• 14 years ago

When there are so many cases where it fails, mysteriously and/or silently, you really cannot say it "just works".

fffggg• 14 years ago

This is truer than you know, but for the wrong reasons.

I worked tech support for a shell provider in the 90s and I helped a LOT of users work through the mechanics of setting up a cgi-bin. One of the most difficult concepts for users without a technical background was file permissions -- specifically the execute bit.

I believe PHP's ease of use primarily stems from what most would consider a security vulnerability: mod_php instructs apache to execute code from php files without the execute bit set. This is inherently the same sort of issue behind email worms on Windows -- exec handlers which pass code to an interpreter without honoring the lack of execute permissions.

It's a terrible idea, and also widely popular. I have personally seen users switch from Perl to PHP purely because they could not figure out how to set the execute bit in their Windows FTP program.

The rest is inertia, as far as I'm concerned.

rpeden• 14 years ago

Every time one of these arguments pops up, I'm reminded of this:

http://i.imgur.com/pG3q7.jpg

Different people will end up enjoying different tools. I started web development with Ruby and Rails, but find that I really enjoy PHP. Then again, I don't have to maintain anyone else's crappy code. I find that when I write clean, well tested PHP, it really isn't frustrating or painful.

If you prefer something else, that's great! Use it. I guess these types of debates aren't exactly unique to this industry though. When I used to lurk around automotive message boards when I was younger, I recall some pretty epic flamewars among Chevy/Dodge/Ford/etc. fans. Everyone loved their favourite, and were certain that the others were clunky pieces of crap. Sounds a lot like programming language flamewars... :)

bitwize• 14 years ago

I really love that they used that famous photo of Andrew "Alynna \"Pookie\" Trypnotk" Beaudoin for the C as seen by PHP fanboys cell of the table.

Oddly enough, that man's programming preferences are even more hilarious: he likes to do his web development in the scripting language for his favorite furry MUCK. I'm not even kidding; he bolted it onto a Web server somehow and actually did paid contract work in this language. And since he was the only one who knew how to use it, it meant job security. Up to a point. After he got fired, he was also the only one who knew about the back door he snuck into their MUCK-based application server.

Mofo was Dennis Nedry in a dirty fox fursuit. Or not, as the picture shows.

chaostheory3• 14 years ago

I agree. Like religion, unless someone tries to force it on me I tend not to care as much.

jwbrown77• 14 years ago

I think the PHP documentation is the major thing not mentioned here for the non-programmer layman (like me, who uses PHP).

Need to know how to use in_array?

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.in-array.php

Not only is there a quick reference on the top, but clear, concise, and diverse examples on how to use it if you don't want to spend time thinking about how to work the arguments.

Maybe the expert programmer doesn't really care about these qualities, because javadoc is "easy" to them, but it doesn't compare to this for me.

P.S. As someone who has dabbled with Ruby, Python, etc. I do acknowledge they are vastly superior languages in many respects.

chromatic• 14 years ago

If you're glad that PHP.net exists because you can always look up the order of needle and haystack, you'll love a language where the order of needle and haystack is always consistent.

seldo2• 14 years ago

I loved the original post about PHP's fractal awfulness, but this sums up my feelings about it: I like it anyway. His point about PHP being shared-nothing by default is a good one: this is indeed a big part of the admirable scalability of web apps written in PHP (Facebook, anyone?).

The one point I'd disagree with is his assertion that PHP doesn't have a templating language. Of course it doesn't: PHP is a templating language. That's what it was written to be. Many of the uglier things you have to do in PHP are related to the fact that what the language always wants to do, by default, is spit out a web page.

If what you want to do with your software is output web pages, then PHP is the best call. If you want to do basically anything else, pick another language. But at web applications, PHP just can't be beat.

wpietri3• 14 years ago

I'm glad you like it, but the "shared-nothing" line is outrageous bunk. Commonly repeated bunk, so I don't blame you, but it's still bunk.

Pretty much every PHP app in the world shares a database. So you've shifted your scaling problems from an area that programmers understand and control to a 1-MLOC mystery.

I bring this up because I have a few friends who make their living saving the asses of PHP programmers who buy the notion that PHP is magically easy to scale. I hear a lot of horror stories from them about the absurd sums of money spent cleaning up the messes.

I do agree that PHP is fine for doing basic web apps. But I don't know anybody doing anything serious with PHP that only uses PHP, because serious web apps eventually need more than you can do in that language. PHP's "shared-nothing" scaling just means that when the going gets tough, some language other than PHP will be doing the work.

seldo2• 14 years ago

You're right that the back-end often gets ported to some other language when a PHP app is scaled-up; this goes with my point that when you move away from spitting out web pages, another language is a better choice.

I'm not sure your point about a database is valid; Python and Ruby and Perl apps are all using a shared database (or newer k-v store) as well.

ircmaxell2• 14 years ago

> Pretty much every PHP app in the world shares a database. So you've shifted your scaling problems from an area that programmers understand and control to a 1-MLOC mystery.

True, however in my experience it's pretty easy to scale the database layer. One beefy DB server can easily handle 2 or 3 front end servers with even mild caching. If you get aggressive in the caching strategy, one DB server can handle up to 10 front end boxes. And if you need to scale beyond that, replication is a well understood paradigm (sure, not by normal app developers, but there's plenty of resources out there).

> I bring this up because I have a few friends who make their living saving the asses of PHP programmers who buy the notion that PHP is magically easy to scale.

I never said that it was magically able to scale. I said that the language is easy to scale. What you do with it is on you. So if you're writing garbage code, you're going to get garbage scalability...

100985• 14 years ago

If I have learned anything during my 3-4 years of experience as a software dev it is that

a) All languages, frameworks and technologies are bad and ugly, each in many of their own horrible ways

b) Nobody has any fracking idea what they're doing (mostly)

c) Your best bet is to find something that does not hurt you as bad as other stuff and stick with it. If you enjoy php, that fine (of course it's completely beyond me how it is possible to enjoy it, but its not the point).

On a side note, after having spent most of my time programming in high-level languages, I wonder how things are down there in bare-metal-programming land. I've grown tired of web development and I wonder what it's like programming in an environment that does not have poorly designed, inconsistent frameworks and leaky abstractions, only registers, memory and pins :) Too bad it's probably too late for me to get started there.

cageface2• 14 years ago

I strongly disagree with A-C but I would encourage you to try some native development if you're curious. HTML5 is the PHP of UI stacks and it's tremendously refreshing to work instead in a well-designed stack like Cocoa Touch or even Android.

100985• 14 years ago

Actually I have done a fair amount of native development and I mean C++ stuff, not mobile apps (android/iphone development is actually high-level compared to that). I was really talking about going down even deeper than that, to the level where there is nothing between your code and the machine. I try to educate myself on the subject by reading books and occasionally coding something in my spare time, but it's obvious that my current skill-set does not even remotely comply with the requirements for that type of job.

antirez• 14 years ago

I think many like PHP because an inconsistent language full of design flaws is in many contexts better (in a less is more sense) than a good language that is backed by a complex web framework and library system that contains too many complexities, versioning issues, is slow by default or hard to tune, and so forth.

With PHP people have something that just works, reasonably, and given that an interpreter lives the lifespan of a "page view" making big errors is non trivial.

So PHP is not a good language, but many other languages should learn something from PHP. The problem is that the community backing this better dynamic languages, such as Python and Ruby, still for some (IMHO obscure) reason aren't shipping something that is PHP-alike, but just with a better base language (without trying to add tons of abstraction layers).

I no longer use PHP because after years of using better languages (I like Ruby as a "practical language") it's too hard to return back to PHP, but I often find myself fighting with the useless complexities and layers of abstractions that Ruby contains "by default". Not in the language or the implementation itself, that is good enough IHMO, but in the tons of gems around and in the integration with the web "side".

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

PHP sucks, but it will get better over time. Maybe they'll try to do a big leap like Python 2 to Python 3, which would be great.

I'm not a big fan, but I like the fact the developers seem to be trying to improve it.

andrewflnr3• 14 years ago

It shouldn't be that hard to configure some other language to fill the ridiculously-easy-to-use niche that PHP fills. I vote for Lua, personally, though almost anything would do.

Embed in HTML, wire stdout to the web page. Add a couple functions for "first class HTTP support". Write an Apache module. You could probably make it even easier to deploy than PHP, with the benefit of a nicer language. Obviously I'm oversimplifying, but it's mainly glue code. Seems like the hardest part is getting it deployed on the $5/month hosts.

Is there some obvious reason it hasn't been done? Did they already and nobody cared? If I didn't already have a massive project backlog I might take a shot at it. It seems like a good opportunity for someone to make a difference.

Edit: Crud, they already took the name mod_lua: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/mod/mod_lua.html

freshhawk• 14 years ago

> No Debugger - PHP has xdebug which works quite > well as an interactive debugger

Good god, what debuggers have you been using that makes PHP and xdebug seem like it "works quite well".

calloc• 14 years ago

I really dislike it when someone posts something controversial so a couple hours later someone posts the opposite based on their experience.

This doesn't add anything useful, post it as a link on the original thread. It is just a bunch of noise cluttering up the frontpage of HN!

robomartin• 14 years ago

Had we waited for the development of ideal programming tools for the web, the Internet would still be struggling to get off the ground. By making the best of what we have and by continually evolving better solutions we've been able to create something that has, quite literally, changed the world.

Let's keep that in mind. The goal and the end-result isn't a monument to superb software engineering. What we create are experiences for, mostly, non-tech users. How the sausage is made almost isn't important (as long as it doesn't kill you). It's easy to get lost in the pursuit for technical excellence and ignore the realities of building a business.

The fact that Facebook is built on PHP should pretty much tell the story and put a lid on these endless arguments: You use whatever tools you have available at the time to create a good user experience. People don't pay for your choice of programming language. In fact, they couldn't care less.

That's not to say that the tech world should not strive to be on a path of continual improvement and technical evolution. Not at all. I guess what I am trying to say at one level is "quit griping and get back to building a product, nothing else matters".

That said: What might be a likely improved successor to PHP? By this I mean, a language that can gain wide adoption while dealing with a number of the issues of PHP (and other languages) and has a high likelihood of being deployed as far and wide as PHP is today.

MichaelGG• 14 years ago

And the fact that great books were written by hand or by typewriter should put a lid on any arguments about text editors, word processors, keyboard layouts, and so on, right?

blindhippo• 14 years ago

If all the bitchy python/ruby purists out there want to build a successor to PHP, here is the roadmap: 1) make it as simple to setup a development environment as it is to install MAMP (this is somewhat done - but still hella confusing with both Ruby and Python) 2) start a web host that can offer rails/python hosting as simple AND as CHEAP as shared hosting (6$ per month or less) 3) build the Wordpress/Drupal of Rails/Django 4) make it simple for designers and "site builders" to hack the language. This includes former flash addicts.

Until then, all this anti-PHP hate just seems... pointless. As you said, we create experiences for users who ultimately don't care what is beneath the hood as long as it works and doesn't blow up.

There are a lot of PHP systems out there and there is a lot of money to be made as a developer who focuses on PHP. It may not be the prettiest language, but I know why I focus on it - it makes me money. I use other tech (rails, ObjC), but PHP is my bread and butter - and if you do it right, PHP really isn't that bad.

The only time I've seen PHP apps blow up is when they are past due for re-development anyways - a symptom that is not unique to PHP. Anyone who's seen Rails spaghetti knows what I mean.

briandear2• 14 years ago

Rails hosting: git push heroku master.

Pretty damned simple. And cheap, for the level of hosting you get for $6 per month, Heroku is free.

As far as Rails spaghetti, if you're using TDD, then it's easy to fix things if new code breaks old code.

slurgfest3• 14 years ago

I have no interest whatsoever in building a successor to PHP. Why would I?

What you are pitching is not a language, it is a deploy interface provided by a server. But does everyone agree that PHP has the best possible deploy model? Not at all.

I am happier with languages other than PHP. I gather you are not. That is fine, you use PHP and I won't. There is absolutely no necessity for other languages to ape PHP in an attempt to capture the attention of people who prefer PHP anyway.

conner_bw2• 14 years ago

Hating on PHP because it has too many functions is like hating on Chinese because, instead of 26 letters that you can combine to write anything, functional literacy requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters and that's just sloppy language design!

Also, why not just call them an API to procedures written in C and realize that none of us scripters are coding in anything.

I code in Lua.

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

It is very interesting how, often when one haphazardly produces a language for a particular purpose, one winds with a language which both "sucks" and is orders of magnitude better for that particular purpose than any other language. Arguable examples include Php, Matlab, shell-script and many others.

I'm creating an ad-hoc language right that also has this quality. I cringe as I shoe-horn one or another crude extensions into it and then step back and realize that for its particular purpose, it would be harder to do that much better.

evilvoidhamster• 14 years ago

I have written, maintained and worked on gigantic PHP codebases, mainly in the realm of ecommerce (not that train wreck, magento). I have a lovehate relationship with the language, and my pet peeve is that it is so easy, we get the lowest ability developers who never take time to learn the theory or any other technologies. Having said that... If it wasn't for the LAMP infrastructure, the ease and speed of development, these codebases could not have been developed.

I think the standard libraries could do with an update, to add the consistency they deserve, and do update them to use modern features. The community for PHP is reaching a point of maturity that it has not seen before (look at composer, PSR-0, symfony2 and ZF2). I think this maturity is making the community a good place right now. I'm not leaving it anytime soon.

Take away PHP, watch the major sites of the Internet disappear. Where would we be with no Wikipedia?

aaronsung• 14 years ago

I love PHP too, I can't agree more for the 'just work' point, besides unicode isn't built in. (It 's really a pain for far east users like me)

kemo• 14 years ago

Yes, PHP can suck in many ways. Yes, everything else seems to be more elegant. And yes, newbies don't care. They just want it to work, no matter how. They don't care about creating servers (node) or including something they know nothing about (sinatra). Heck, they might do it with PHP as well, if they knew how to (Kohana?). But they don't and they never will.

On the other side, put good developers on a PHP project and you will get a good product, regardless of the haystack position and possibility to suppress errors (etc. etc. etc.). The fact that there is so much spaghetti PHP out there doesn't make it impossible to write good code with it. And that matters a lot.

zippie• 14 years ago

The OP says PHP doesn't have XSS filtering but that is simply not true:

http://www.php.net/filter

bphogan• 14 years ago

PHP is one of the languages I believe every web developer needs to know reasonably well. It's not my go-to language though and I don't much care for it. Let me explain.

My feelings on PHP are much the same as my feelings towards JavaScript - most of the code I've encountered in the wild was cobbled together by designers who knew nothing about programming and a lot about how to cut and paste scripts together. I find myself blaming the languages for the mess people left me.

But occasionally, much like JavaScript, I'll encounter some PHP code that was truly written by a master - someone who really knows how to use the language effectively, who doesn't intermix SQL, HTML, PHP, and JavaScript in the same 1000 line index.php page. Well-constructed code, designed with purpose.

I suppose that's the same with any language, isn't it?

PHP, like JavaScript, is everywhere, and if you solve other people's problems for a living, I think you need to know it reasonably well. At least well enough not to make it worse than the last developer.

logansbro• 14 years ago

Used to know it just enough to 'deal with it' when there was something that needed to be fixed. Recently I started working for a place that has a few large PHP sites and projects and really dove in. Overall, I'd agree that when you see great PHP it can be nice and impressive. I don't think I'd want to do it 9 hours a day though.

davidjbeveridge• 14 years ago

Amen. I started my development career with PHP, and the cacophony of intermingled responsibilities and languages in most PHP scripts is deafening. It wasn't until I learned how to apply good OO design to PHP that I enjoyed using it. That being said, I still don't work with PHP unless I have to. I still don't like its mixed naming scheme for string/array functions or its clunky hash/array syntax. At least the object support is reasonable.

wazoox• 14 years ago

This debate is always the same rehash of ye olde time story as recounted in "The rise of Worse is better"[1].

That's why we had Unix boxes instead of LISP machines, that's why we had PCs running MS-DOS and not Amigas, why we later had PCs running NT instead of SGI Octanes, and nowadays people have PCs running windows7 rather than elegant iMacs.

"Cheap and easy, quick and dirty, and get the job done" is a perfect description of PHP and the very reason for its success.

[1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

PHP Sucks But I Like It

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