PHP Sucks: So What?

http://ilikekillnerds.com/2012/05/php-sucks-so-what/

by DigitalSea • 14 years ago

30 19 14 years ago

VMG• 14 years ago

PHP is cheap to host, cheap to find decently priced & skilled programmers and quick to code in if you know what you’re doing and at the end of the day what does your client truly care about;

If that statement is correct (I don't know), it is an argument to not do PHP professionally if you are concerned about income. Better target a market with a lower suppy.

Xylakant• 14 years ago

From my experience neither is true.

> PHP is cheap to host

This used to be true in some respects. Free webhosts often offered PHP as the only scripting language but the offers were often severely limited in which extensions were available and in other respects. Deploying a moderately complex application often was work for a day [1] - which translates to at least two years of paid hosting on a decent hoster. Ruby on the contrary used to require specialized hosting or a dedicated server. With the rise of heroku, this point became moot.

> cheap to find decently priced & skilled programmers

The lesson I took from being technical lead for a 50+ dev team is that it's easy to find cheap php developers, but they often turn out to be Net Negative Programmers. Decent PHP programmers take decent salaries (just as decent ruby/python/java programmers) and - as every decent programmer - are quite well capable of picking up other languages in a short amount of time. If you're just doing "standard websites" cheap developers might be just what you need though (you could go for cheap rails developers as well, they exist).

> quick to code in if you know what you’re doing

There were times when I considered myself a skilled php programmer, but compared to what I can churn out in ruby, php flat out looses. There are too many beartraps and tarpits that you can step in, borked php configurations or stupid bugs ruining your whole day [2].

[1] figuring out how the borked configuration influenced the application, finding workarounds, ... [2] I recall this one costing me hours and hours of head-scratching https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=40691 (I love the "This is intended behavior" comment)

jerf2• 14 years ago

"It doesn't matter if X sucks" is a rephrasing of "It doesn't matter if Y is excellent." If it doesn't matter if a language sucks or is excellent, than what exactly does the word sucks in "PHP sucks" refer to?

It's a logical sleight of hand, but logic doesn't tolerate that. You may be willing to pay the downside cost, but that doesn't mean the downside cost doesn't matter or doesn't exist. There's no way around the fact that language quality matters.

And I for one don't have too much trouble finding non-PHP web work. I doubt I'm alone.

muyuu• 14 years ago

sleight of hand

jerf2• 14 years ago

Aye.

twiceaday• 14 years ago

So give me karma.

Argorak• 14 years ago

I don't like "my tool sucks, but clients care about the result". If architects thought that, we'd still be living in huts. Improving your tool improves the result. Clients are also not the only benchmark: mostly, they just want a faster horse.

Either PHP doesn't suck because it does the job better then others in certain areas (which I'd happily admit). Or it sucks and should be replaced. Everything else is a programmers Stockholm Syndrome.

100982• 14 years ago

> While you all bitch and moan about how bad PHP... I’ll be making easy money and stealing your clients.

Someone tell this guy to stop embarrassing himself, seriously.

lucian1900• 14 years ago

So, use something less shit.

Python and Ruby are exactly as easy to host and arguably easier to find skilled programmers for.