[guccimane]

> If this one thing that annoys me on HN it's the pervasive anti-PHP snobbery.

If there's one thing that annoys me on programmer forums in general, it's that pointing out PHP's giant flaws is conflated with snobbery. Design matters, and that is not the same thing as saying it's impossible to build anything good with PHP.

[smsm42]

Pointing out "giant" flaws which don't really matter and can't be fixed for 1000th time is very useful for... remind me please, what exactly purpose?

[nicholas_tuzzio]

Convincing people to stop using such a flawed language when there are so many viable (and in nearly all ways preferable) alternatives.

[smsm42]

Obviously, since millions of people are using it it is preferable for them. Of course, this is only because they are too stupid to agree with you and have the exactly the same criteria and preferences that you have. It can't be that intelligent people can disagree with you on what is important and what is not in a language. It's clearly either you didn't explain it to them or they're too stupid to understand. Let's write another "PHP sucks" article, that will do it.

[jtc331]

It's just that the people who disagree generally aren't really programmars, they're designers turned quasi-web-developers. The community does them a disservice by pointing them at a giant pile of crap and saying "Go use this. You'll be fine."

[smsm42]

People who disagree are "programmars" just fine. They just know how to use proper tools for the job given, instead of ranting because they're too lazy to read the manual, like author of the post.

[yusefnapora]

Did the author give you the impression that he was "too lazy to read the manual?" I got almost the exact opposite impression, that he had read the documentation to the point of exhaustion and found it severely lacking.

[mmj48]

> It can't be that intelligent people can disagree with you on what is important and what is not in a language.

This is quite harsh sarcasm, but if it isn't true for the GP, it's true for so many people. Well said.

[fadzlan]

I'd like to know how much of his massive complaint "don't really matter".

Programming language critic come up every now and then in HN, this is nothing new. If you got a point, why not refute it?

Are you saying language design don't matter and not worth discussing?

[guccimane]

Oh, you mean as opposed to the usefulness of calling people snobs because they understand that PHP is terribly designed? Fuck outta here.

[smsm42]

There are a lot of snobs out there. It is a sad fact, regardless of that article. PHP snobbery is hugely widespread and 99.9% of people disparaging PHP are completely ignorant in PHP and don't bother to spend a minute even on reading the PHP manual - which answers 99% of things they complain about as being hard to understand (and try using Python without reading any manuals at all - see how far you go). I'm not saying PHP is perfect - it is not. I am saying if you take time to write a long article about PHP deficiencies while refusing to take 10 seconds to look up a thing in the docs - it doesn't look good.

PHP has some wrong design decisions, however many of them don't really matter (like function called strpos instead of str_pos - really, that's your problem?). Some do, and people are welcome to propose solutions for them. People also welcome to write rants about "PHP sucks, nobody should use it, anybody who uses it is an idiot" but they shouldn't expect this will be taken seriously.

[anthonyb]

> if you take time to write a long article about PHP deficiencies while refusing to take 10 seconds to look up a thing in the docs - it doesn't look good.

When did the original article ever suggest that? I got the impression that he had looked it up in the docs, and found the docs seriously broken. That fits my recollection of PHP's docs - there are a lot of them, but they often don't tell you what you need to know, so you have to go trawl through the comments. Of course, most of the code in the comments is crap, full of errors, has security holes or all three.

> function called strpos instead of str_pos - really, that's your problem?

Yes, that's a problem. Ditto for arguments in random order. It means that it's much harder to remember the function without having the docs open in another window.

"PHP sucks, nobody should use it, anybody who uses it is an idiot"? Sounds about right. I know people who are security consultants, who've worked with PHP for years and years - I even know a guy who works at Wordpress. None of them think that you should be using PHP...

[maratd]

You don't like it? Don't use it. You're the kind of asshole that'll walk up to somebody in McDonalds and tell them that the food they're eating isn't healthy. You know what? Mind your own business.

[rictic]

No, this is more like writing a long, well reasoned, extensively researched article with the thesis "McDonalds food is unhealthy". It is a public good.

No one in this comment section is saying to you "stop using php on this project you're doing because it's badly designed". No one is in your business.

[jtc331]

The thing is we need to stop advising people to use it in the first place. That's what we're advocating.

That is, we're not telling people to stop after they've gone into McDonalds, we're decrying the fact that so-called health experts are telling people that McDonalds is actually just fine for you. That's a better analogy.

[maratd]

> The thing is we need to stop advising people to use it in the first place. That's what we're advocating.

Who are you to advocate that? Or to advocate anything?

I despise people who presume to know what's in the best interest of others. You only know what's in your best interest. You have no idea what is good for anyone else.

You want to share your experience? Great. Do it when it's asked for. Nobody asked for a hit piece on PHP.

> we're decrying the fact that so-called health experts are telling people that McDonalds is actually just fine for you.

Exactly which maven and luminary of computer science has advocated the use of PHP?

That is outright nonsense. At no point has that happened. PHP grew organically, without a single endorsement.

[reinhardt]

"I despise people who presume to know what's in the best interest of others. You only know what's in your best interest. You have no idea what is good for anyone else."

Wow. Are you seriously advocating the equivalent of moral relativism in programming? You have no idea if, say, Brainfuck is good for anyone else?

[jtc331]

"Exactly which maven and luminary of computer science has advocated the use of PHP?"

I didn't say that they were luminaries per se. Programmers telling non-programmers that PHP is OK for them is what I'm referring to. That would match the analogy--someone who's studying health science telling someone who hasn't studied health science that McDonalds is perfectly healthy.

Programmers need to stop telling non-programmers that it's perfectly OK to use PHP. Frankly, they need to be blunt that programming is hard. That you either have to willing to put in the investment or don't do it at all. This soft runway into developing applications is exactly the reason why so much poor software exists in the common market.