[fmw]

PHP doesn't attract smart people that want to use it for fun in the same way that Java doesn't. Sure, the HipHop work that engineers at Facebook are responsible for must be fun to hack on and the same goes for some of the things that are happening at Google and Twitter with Java, but the base of the PHP community is working on mediocre crap. Beyond these exceptions that prove the rule I can't imagine any good hackers using PHP for fun. Some might write PHP code as a day job, but will play with more enjoyable languages at night. Most just give up on the language entirely and move on to greener pastures.

It is clear why hackers get frustrated with the language. It is inconsistent and extremely tricky if you want to write secure code. The core developers are mostly concerned with endless discussions about adding buzzword compliant features that don't add any real value (Zend seems to be obsessed with being a poor man's Java so they can sell their ecosystem to "the enterprise"). Also, the community is pretty mediocre with an awful noise vs signal ratio.

So if hackers don't use PHP, who does? Clearly, PHP is very successful with people that want to tweak open source applications like Wordpress and aspiring developers or non-technical people that want something accessible that runs everywhere. Also, PHP developers tend to be cheap labor. There are plenty of them around, including in low cost outsourcing centers, that will charge you a lot less than more competent developers would. So it seems ideal to non-technical businesses looking for a cheap way to add some dynamic features to their website. Thankfully for PHP this group is a lot larger than the hacker community, so the language won't go away any time soon. Especially if you consider the fact that a lot of hackers learn their trade by writing little PHP scripts and customizing open source applications like Wordpress before moving on to something more interesting (I have to admit PHP was my first web scripting language too, back in 2000, but I quickly moved on to Python and now Clojure).

Is this disruption waiting to happen? I don't know. In fact, PHP seems to be trending downwards[0] as the generation that picked up the language before frameworks like Rails and Django were available is switching to the current languages du jour. If anything, it is not the language that is causing disruption, but applications like Wordpress that are easily accessible to non-technical people. However, hosted/SaaS alternatives like Posterous seem to be disrupting the whole idea of non-technical people installing Wordpress (at least I hope so[1]).

[0]: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

[1]: The main reason I might sound bitter about PHP is having to extinguish fires caused by idiots who write insecure PHP scripts or install open source scripts without bothering to periodically apply security fixes to counter the constant streams of exploits in said open source code while being responsible for some virtual hosting servers several years ago.

[bad_user]

I think "hacker" is an overused term. There are really good hackers out there for which tools are chosen based on suitability for the tasks themselves, and if for example cheap hosting is what you're looking for, then PHP is one of the best options.

     PHP developers tend to be cheap labor

I also hate the term "X developer". I never labeled myself as a Python-developer, or a Java-developer -- I'm just a developer that happened to learn whatever was necessary.

Good developers are getting properly paid, regardless of the tools they put on their resume. Tiobe is also an extremely poor reference for language popularity, btw.

That said, last time I used PHP was 5 years ago simply because it isn't suited for the kind of work I do. Now I work with Python a lot, and with Ruby on the side -- because Python has mature libraries for visualization / parsing / data-mining, it has bindings for every meaningful C library under the sun, and because Python can be made to scale painlessly by means of non-blocking I/O or other tricks (as it's really mature in that regard).

I also like Ruby because its community is something to marvel at -- I never seen so much (focused) activity / cooperation and so much work done in so little time.

That's the problem with PHP -- technically, it's just an Apache plugin, done as a quick hack, reflecting in the available libraries / the community's culture, and there's no way it can escape it.

To make a bad joke -- you can pull PHP out of Apache, but you can't pull Apache out of PHP.

[fmw]

You make a lot of valid points. I totally agree with you on the (lack of) validity of the Tiobe rankings. However, it is my impression that PHP's popularity seems to be stagnating. I remember noticing a decrease for PHP in another language popularity benchmark recently, but couldn't find that reference anymore. It is really hard to measure language popularity objectively, but as a response to a parent poster claiming PHP is imminently disruptive my opinion remains that language popularity metrics don't support a sudden increase in popularity. If PHP would be on the verge of disrupting something those metrics should be noticeably going up.

An interesting metric would be Google Trends[0], which shows a steady decline in search volume for "PHP" while the graph is a lot flatter for e.g. Python[1]. I don't think the number of Github projects for PHP is a great metric, because I think the Github community isn't representative of the typical PHP user, whereas it is virtually part of the DNA of e.g. Rubyists.

You're right to say that plenty of good hackers use PHP, but not because they think its a fun language to work with. You make a point out of PHP being the right tool for the job in certain scenarios, but in my experience it seldom is. Others have already made the point that cheap hosting isn't exclusive to PHP (consider e.g. cheap virtual/cloud hosting like AWS and Heroko). I can imagine using PHP for quick <10 line hacks when convenient[2] or to maintain legacy code and customize open source applications like Wordpress. Rewriting every line of code in existence using the popular language du jour simply isn't realistic. However, that doesn't make PHP the right tool for the job for fresh, non-trivial projects.

You're also right that good developers who happen to write PHP tend to get paid well. My point, however, is that there is a lot of cheap labor available that is able to write PHP (most of whom aren't good developers). This makes it a great fit for those customers that like to pay minimum wage for software development.

I understand your frustration about people bashing PHP, because in a way it is a silly example of elitism in this community to look down on PHP and its community. However, while I at least try to remain somewhat reasonable about it, my tone in regard to PHP is based on a long list of negative experiences that are presumably shared by a lot of people on HN.

[0]: http://www.google.com/trends?q=php

[1]: http://www.google.com/trends?q=python

[2]: In fact, I recently wrote a

    <?php print_r($_POST); ?>

deployed on my Macbook's Apache server to quickly test some Clojure code making HTTP POST requests.

[6ren]

It's arguable that PHP has already disrupted webapps (though I'm not sure what went before - ie. what was disrupted - because PHP was a fairly early tech), in that so many companies use it, including those big successful ones mentioned (facebook, youtube etc even CD Baby). It could even be on the decline these days, if people start to outgrow it as they acquire more skill, and there is no supply of additional low skilled adopters to fuel its growth. If so, the only option for PHP is to move upmarket.

The next step seems to be to disrupt Java enterprise webapps. Although that may not be exciting to a mainstream programmer, it would still be a disruption, and typical of how disruptions move upmarket, tier by tier.

fmw and bad_user have noted many important aspects of PHP, but I was really just thinking of its core idea: templates. PHP didn't originate them (eg bash does it echo hello $name; C has printf; etc), but it's taken it to the logical extreme of a program being a template, and it's the most popular embodiment (I think coldfusion and others did it too, but less successfully).

I think templates are a great idea, because they are simple and concrete. Abstraction and other meta features are powerful; but if the job doesn't need them, they only obscure what you are trying to do.

While surprisingly versatile (e.g. TXL does language translation with them), templates are limited as a general programming concept - and so PHP is probably similarly limited, perhaps to just the web (maybe it could expand to desktop applications, since they increasing use HTML for UIs - though deskapps are seemly being disrupted themselves by webapps). But it's hard to seriously entertain a fps in PHP; a compiler (though consider TXL...); a VM; a RDB; mathematica; pagerank implementation; numerical simulation; an OS.

Meanwhile, the template "technology" is accessible from other languages: python, ruby, java etc all have a broad choice of templating engines for webpage generation. So it is arguable that the technology of templating has been co-opted by the mainstream - although, PHP remains the simplest one. When the job is simplest enough, it seems PHP will win, simply because it can do the job, and it is accessible to more people.

BTW: the factors others have mentioned are also important (low cost hosting, labour etc) - though some of them can be traced to the simplicity and concreteness of templates (which made webapp creation possible for people with less skill).

I have to admit, I am a huge fan of template "technology". I think it is a brilliantly insightful and simplifying idea. They can also be seen as productions in a CFG.

[eropple]

> To make a bad joke -- you can pull PHP out of Apache, but you can't pull Apache out of PHP.

That's completely silly. Every setup I have right now is Nginx and php-fpm, neither of which have any relation to Apache or, indeed, any relationship to any other aside from communication to php-fpm via FastCGI.

These generalizations are really funny, because they demonstrate a lot of the misconceptions about PHP and its community.

[bad_user]

I feel like I should reply with something; but there's not much to reply; your post says it all :)

[eropple]

I dunno, it'd be pretty hard not to call Fabian Potencier a smart guy who uses PHP for fun. I can think of half a dozen people offhand who I know personally who use it for fun, too.

All generalizations are worth precisely nothing, including this one.