[maratd]

Some of us need a language to hold our hand. Some of us don't. Some of us enjoy the freedom of coding the way we want to code, without a language shoving some perceived notion of correctness down our throat.

> Except that building a "properly written PHP app" is way harder than in almost every other language in widespread use.

This makes no sense. PHP doesn't force you to do things the right way, but it doesn't force you to do things the wrong way either. It just doesn't force you either way.

Those of us who know what we're doing can make intelligent decisions ... and those of us who can't, shouldn't be writing in PHP.

[FuzzyDunlop]

No one can make an intelligent decision until they know what an intelligent decision is. And everyone starts off at the beginning when they're picking up a new language (or want to start learning).

To be dismissive of those who 'don't know what they're doing' doesn't necessarily help make those intelligent decisions better known and easier to understand, or why they're the intelligent decisions in the first place.

[maratd]

> No one can make an intelligent decision until they know what an intelligent decision is.

Yup.

> And everyone starts off at the beginning when they're picking up a new language (or want to start learning).

Yup. PHP is a terrible language to be your first. Its loose nature, which allows an expert to sculpt beautiful code, is a noose upon which to hang oneself as a novice. Before I started on PHP (more than a decade ago), I already knew BASIC, C, and Java. Contrary to popular opinion, PHP is not a starter language, even though it is very easy to start.

[FuzzyDunlop]

Can't disagree with any of that (other than that I don't think PHP is necessarily conducive to creating truly beautiful code). I think it goes the other way too: starting off with PHP doesn't give you a good idea of what other programming languages are like, and you'll find many things you grow accustomed to (or rely on) turned upside-down.

Maybe it's like learning to break the rules before you even know what they are?

* although to counter that, you can do some crazy things with it if you know how to. I abstracted Drupal's path finding method (drupal_get_path) into a magic static class. It's probably got a performance hit but it's bloody nice to look at:

    Module::module_name('css', 'example.css');
    // vs.
    drupal_add_css(drupal_get_path('module, 'module_name').'/css/'.$file_name);