[marklgr]

To me, it's a so-so language, with some bad parts, some ok. On the plus side, it's easy to pick up, and it gets the job done for many projects. Perhaps it's a bit like the Ikea of programming languages, if you will--no the best of furniture for sure, but when you need a table and some chairs with little efforts, it's nice to have, and they're not horrendous unless you couldn't build them correctly.

[rplnt]

I like the IKEA parallel as IKEA is cheap. So was php (to host), hence the popularity I guess. And as a result of that, there are lots of developers.. and many equals cheap. And the vicious circle continues. Doesn't make it a good language :)

(To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck)

[jacquesm]

> To be honest, I like IKEA, and I don't think it suck

Ikea sucks. Quite a bit of the furniture is just painted cardboard, the quality is absolutely horrible. It looks ok but 'under the hood' it is terrible. It is throwaway furniture, the very opposite of sustainable.

[untog]

Weird, I've been using my IKEA bed, wardrobe and drawers for many years now and they're fine. Maybe I'm just happy to make do with convenience - like many PHP developers.

[jacquesm]

The intersection of the sets 'Ikea furniture owners', 'People that think Ikea furniture is low quality' and 'PHP programmers' isn't empty.

[rplnt]

It's interesting how a discussion can end, seriously, what a quote :)

[rplnt]

Cardboard furniture is great for moving. And for some pieces of furniture is perfectly OK (if you can stand the massive look).

They do "regular" furniture as well, not sure about its quality though.

[jacquesm]

> Cardboard furniture is great for moving.

It isn't because moving implies taking stuff apart and putting it back together again. As you'll find after your move screws won't catch any more, some of your furniture will have been compressed (holes in table surfaces? WTF?, yes this actually happened to me less than 3 months ago). Surface finish is 1/10th of a mm so it'll scratch super easy.

That's their 'regular' furniture, I'm not sure if they have anything better either. Ikea put a whole raft of companies out of business with cheap and good stuff, once they achieved market dominance they dropped the quality they are selling to something horrific.

[rplnt]

My "cardboard" furniture has solid blocks where screws go. Not wood, but some sort of plywood or something.

I have an ikea bed and rack that is made from wood. Lots of their furniture is regular wood. The cheap ones usually untreated.

[jacquesm]

It's called MDF. You can think of it as high density cardboard, it's mostly wood fibers and resin.

[sneak]

Bad analogy; competent people put lots of time and effort into designing IKEA furniture.