[recursivedoubts]

FTA: "I claim that PHP’s simpler “think; edit; reload the page” cycle makes developers more productive.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I prefer statically-typed languages w/ a bit of local inference (I end up in java usually, but C# got it right) and I consistently see people in my world underestimate the edit/reload workflow. Even a small compilation step is enough to break flow and make development a chore, once you've worked that way.

As a side note: java not allowing signature changes and requiring a whole server restart is absolutely awful. It didn't have to be this way: the DCEVM[1] was presented at the 2009 JVM Language Summit[2], by Thomas Wuerthinger. He patiently demonstrated and explained how his work allowed for hot swap of arbitrary class changes, while the Sun guys sitting in the audience told him that what he was demonstrating was impossible. We ended up using the DCEVM for a long time, but as of right now I'm back to restarting my server when I make breaking changes. It's a funny world.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] - This is a modern fork of the project: https://dcevm.github.io/

[2] - http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/Hotswap

[apeace]

It’s hard for me to relate, because I just don’t see “edit; reload” as being that important.

I think the difference is I write tests. I usually code everything while writing/running tests. Then it always works the first time I run it, so there’s no need for “edit; reload”.

[munk-a]

I really like working in PHP but I'd actually agree that edit;reload is a virtue of the language (in the environment everyone normally assumes it's running in) that is losing value.

This virtue was incredibly valuable to me when I was throwing a website together with ducttape and bubble gum and it was the only way (that I knew of) to be able to clearly and quickly see the results of my changes. With tests in the picture I think it loses a lot of that value - it still has some since nobody likes writing front-end tests but most of your code changes should be "proven" by some level of automated test coverage.

[recursivedoubts]

Oh, you were asking about benefits that you can easily relate to.

Well, in that case then you'd be in a much better position to answer than I am.

[pavel_lishin]

> I think the difference is I write tests. I usually code everything while writing/running tests. Then it always works the first time I run it, so there’s no need for “edit; reload”.

I write tests, too. I guess I'm not as good of a software developer - because just as my code has bugs and unexpected edge cases, so do my tests, and they don't catch every mistake I made, since I'm the one making them.