There has never ever been a good reason to touch PHP (aka Perl for Halfwitted/Hopeless/Harebrained Programmerwannabes). Anyone still using it today is an absolute total retard. Pretty much any scripting language (Python, Ruby, even Lua) is better. But real programmers use statically-typed native languages like Rust, Nim (my favorite), D, Crystal, etc.
PHP is less productive at "getting shit done" than Ruby or Python, and also uglier and more tedious to read, while offering no benefits of any kind. Some programmers would even add languages like Go, Nim, D, Haskell, C#, Java, etc to the "more productive than PHP" list as well, and those languages improve performance significantly.
Maybe if you develop in those languages and don't have the same experience with php, but php is fast, not only dwvelopment time but actual performance. I am a node dev, wuth an affinity for go, but php has its place and dollar for dollar many times php is the rught choice for a company.
I haven’t used php. I’ve heard bad things. But at the end of the day, I agree that language or framework flame wars are stupid. Readability and performance are ultimately what’s important. And both are highly context dependent; devs that use a language find that language easier to read than other languages, and performance depends on how the machine you’re using is configured, what you’re doing, load, etc. The syntax and performance of a language are just contributing factors in a much larger equation about general readability and performance if your app.
I’m not sure when php would make sense for a greenfield project, though. Django, flask, rails, express... they all seem more approachable, more popular and have better ecosystems than any sort of php framework. But maybe I’m in a bubble.
You are in a bubble. Keep in mind php has been around a long time. I was a php developer for many years, now I moved on to node.. but sometimes you need it done fast and cheap, this is where php currently excels. medium scalability and performance, quick, cheap development time. It still has a place.
Agreed. I'll write kernels in C or C++ and if I need interactivity, testing, debugging, etc I'll embed a forth DSL. It's not necessarily about whether it's static or dynamic, but about whether you can break out a slow as fuck Edit-Compile-Run cycle, especially for stuff that is easier physically observed than reasoned about.
I didn't say there weren't. There's shell scripting, scriptable engines (ex. games), query languages, 4GLs for business logic, template languages, etc. But PHP was specifically designed for dynamic server-side code, which needs to be scalable and secure.
PHP sucks to an insane degree but it had a massive adoption advantage in the late 90s and early 00s among web hosting providers finding it easy to install. While the legions shitting on it have grown a lot of the momentum from that early advantage persists to the present.
12 comments
0 u/1person10voats 27 Aug 2019 23:56
"diversity-oriented devs" This is why we can't have stable software.
0 u/libman [OP] 28 Aug 2019 00:07
There has never ever been a good reason to touch PHP (aka Perl for Halfwitted/Hopeless/Harebrained Programmerwannabes). Anyone still using it today is an absolute total retard. Pretty much any scripting language (Python, Ruby, even Lua) is better. But real programmers use statically-typed native languages like Rust, Nim (my favorite), D, Crystal, etc.
0 u/glennvtx 28 Aug 2019 00:40
php gets shit done, it isn't pretty and doesn't even try to be. Want that shit done yesterday? php. Want that shit done right? well...
0 u/libman [OP] 28 Aug 2019 18:12
PHP is less productive at "getting shit done" than Ruby or Python, and also uglier and more tedious to read, while offering no benefits of any kind. Some programmers would even add languages like Go, Nim, D, Haskell, C#, Java, etc to the "more productive than PHP" list as well, and those languages improve performance significantly.
0 u/glennvtx 28 Aug 2019 18:42
Maybe if you develop in those languages and don't have the same experience with php, but php is fast, not only dwvelopment time but actual performance. I am a node dev, wuth an affinity for go, but php has its place and dollar for dollar many times php is the rught choice for a company.
0 u/Dupinstein 28 Aug 2019 21:34
Your inability to spell is not helping your case.
I haven’t used php. I’ve heard bad things. But at the end of the day, I agree that language or framework flame wars are stupid. Readability and performance are ultimately what’s important. And both are highly context dependent; devs that use a language find that language easier to read than other languages, and performance depends on how the machine you’re using is configured, what you’re doing, load, etc. The syntax and performance of a language are just contributing factors in a much larger equation about general readability and performance if your app.
I’m not sure when php would make sense for a greenfield project, though. Django, flask, rails, express... they all seem more approachable, more popular and have better ecosystems than any sort of php framework. But maybe I’m in a bubble.
0 u/glennvtx 29 Aug 2019 13:46
You are in a bubble. Keep in mind php has been around a long time. I was a php developer for many years, now I moved on to node.. but sometimes you need it done fast and cheap, this is where php currently excels. medium scalability and performance, quick, cheap development time. It still has a place.
0 u/speedisavirus 28 Aug 2019 01:32
With you until the last sentence. There are definitely tasks dynamic languages are far better for
0 u/ELS_BrigadeWarning 28 Aug 2019 14:34
Agreed. I'll write kernels in C or C++ and if I need interactivity, testing, debugging, etc I'll embed a forth DSL. It's not necessarily about whether it's static or dynamic, but about whether you can break out a slow as fuck Edit-Compile-Run cycle, especially for stuff that is easier physically observed than reasoned about.
0 u/libman [OP] 28 Aug 2019 18:14
I didn't say there weren't. There's shell scripting, scriptable engines (ex. games), query languages, 4GLs for business logic, template languages, etc. But PHP was specifically designed for dynamic server-side code, which needs to be scalable and secure.
0 u/psimonster 28 Aug 2019 18:22
PHP sucks to an insane degree but it had a massive adoption advantage in the late 90s and early 00s among web hosting providers finding it easy to install. While the legions shitting on it have grown a lot of the momentum from that early advantage persists to the present.
0 u/scared_yung_father 28 Aug 2019 03:04
If you think that's bad, you should peak into a popular JS library community.