[vog]

I fully agree that for a new project, you shouldn't use PHP for any other reason than the ubiquitous hosting.

However, for existing projects and/or existing teams there might be another reason to stick with PHP: As a common denominator across all team members.

[jtreminio]

Or because I really enjoy using it, I'm comfortable in it, and my products work?

Blanket statements like yours reek of elitism and have no real value behind them, other than "this language sucks you should use this one".

[ralfn]

Not all quality aspects of language design are subjective. Even its authors fully emphasize that this is not how they would intenionally design a language, but PHP just kind of grew from a template system and very practical requirements.

There are many reasons to pick/use PHP, indispite its (lack of proper) language design. Easy to find extremly cheap programmers. Easy and cheap to host. Good and fast c based libraries.

But in no reality is its language design considered competitive by any one except by uneducated hobbyists.

[jtreminio]

Define competitive? I didn't realize all languages were in a competition to be... what? The best?

I write in PHP not because it is my hobby, but because I know it very well and it makes me a lot of money. The companies I work for use PHP because they can find many talented developers. Using a proper framework, being very strict about unit testing, and following other best practices makes our codebase a joy to work with.

I'm sorry if you feel this isn't possible with PHP, but my point of elitism still stands. Who cares if PHP isn't "competitive", whatever that means? It works, we can create applications that are used by thousands of people a day to do important things (online education in my case), and most of all it brings in money.

[neilk]

You're right, that with proper vigilance, PHP is a very productive tool. No one is criticizing you for correctly perceiving the business value there.

I used PHP professionally for almost four years, at places like Flickr and Wikipedia. It definitely packs a lot of power - it's fast at what it does, has every library you probably want built in already or available with a little config. And, out of the box, it matches the request-response loop in web programming much more simply than most languages do.

Unfortunately, even with these good qualities, PHP just has a lot of misdesign in it. It's not elitism to point this out.

Just look carefully at your own practices and you'll see that a lot of what you do is defending yourself against bad practices that PHP is subtly (or unsubtly) trying to impose on you. It's telling that PHP is a template language, but in order to achieve useful results, you really have to use another template language on top of it, like Smarty or Symfony or whatever the cool thing is these days. And even so, to this day, Rasmus thinks that such frameworks are misguided, and that real programmers should just use the built-in templating of PHP (i.e. embedding blocks of code in HTML) and nothing else. How anyone can work for over 15 years on the web and still think this is beyond me.

For most of its existence PHP's only guiding principle was expediency and one-off hacks. That's how you get a 'feature' where you can inject evil values into the script just by parsing CGI arguments. Or, the ability to just ignore errors by prepending an at sign. This is almost NEVER a good idea, and introducing a feature like that means that in any large project you never can be sure what's really going on, without actually looking for all instances of this all the time.

And what kind of language makes a keyword like 'array()'? PHP is a supposedly dynamic language, but it almost goes out of its way to make manipulating complex data structures difficult. Compare to Perl and Python, which make deep data structures easy and also easy to transform and manipulate. Instead PHP has insecure, hacky misfeatures like variable variable names. This is something that beginner programmers often want, until they learn about actual data structures.

I have a feeling you may not be all that familiar with other languages, or for that matter, PHP. There are experts who choose PHP, but they acknowledge these difficulties.

[maratd]

A thoughtful critique of PHP. Good. Here's the thing, for those of us who use PHP on a daily basis, we are all well aware of all of this.

I have almost 100K lines of PHP code and only one of them spits out HTML. That would be the line that fetches the initial HTML template which is static and spits it out. After that, everything is XHR and web sockets. The DOM is manipulated directly by client-side JavaScript.

Why use PHP? Libraries to use any database I can imagine. Existing libraries for any API I can imagine. Language maturity. Familiarity and similarity to C.

I know the mines and I stay away. On top of that, those maintaining the language are aware of them too and they are slowly deprecating them.

> PHP is a supposedly dynamic language, but it almost goes out of its way to make manipulating complex data structures difficult.

Why would you use complex data structures in PHP? If you did, why try to manipulate them?

PHP is a language that is made for the web. On the web, anything that is computation heavy, like data manipulation, should be done on the client's side. Not that JavaScript is much better at data structures and manipulation, but at least it probably has a monster of a CPU and a boatload of RAM to smooth things over.

[maratd]

Even more relevant for professional use is platform ubiquity. PHP is simply more widespread. That has real value! If you encounter a problem, someone else ran into it as well. If it's a legitimate error in PHP, it'll get fixed and will get attention. On other platforms? Yours may be the sole voice on the issue. Nobody will listen. Been there, done that. No thanks.

[lobo_tuerto]

Non sequitur.

"PHP is simply more widespread. That has real value!"

"If you encounter a problem, someone else ran into it as well."

So you imply you can't be the first anymore to run into a new problem with PHP?

"If it's a legitimate error in PHP, it'll get fixed and will get attention."

If you find a legitimate error in the implementation of _any_ language it'll get fixed and will get attention. Unless it's abandoned, or no longer mantained.

"On other platforms? Yours may be the sole voice on the issue. Nobody will listen."

This is just non-sense.

[dreamdu5t]

> If it's a legitimate error in PHP, it'll get fixed and will get attention.

Have you filed a bug for PHP? str_getcsv and parse_ini are both still broken.

[ralfn]

@jtreminio

I did not claim one cannot run succesfull projects in PHP. I stated the exact opposite. And im doing that again now, in the hope your reading is just suddenly improved.

PHP has a legacy. It started off as a template language, and slowly got more and more control structures. So, its an accidental programming language.

Language are not competitive, but language design features sure are. Nobody with the actual skillset to design and implement a programming language would consider, for example, merging vectors and dictionaries into some kind of mutated frankenarray.

This does not make the language unusable. And language design features are not the most crucial arguments to pick one language over the other in the short term. But they are, for a community and industry in the long term.

To my surprise, i read in this thread that PHP now finally has a cyclic garbage collector. That's a good example of a competitive language design feature, which utility is not in any way subjective. A large range of algorithms and design patterns couldn't be implemented efficiently or effectively without this particular feature.

And its too easy to cry "elitism" every time somebody points this out.

[ralfn]

>>Nobody with the actual skillset to design and implement a programming language would consider, for example, merging vectors and dictionaries into some kind of mutated frankenarray.

>Actually, JavaScript and Lua have merged vectors and Dictionaries.

I'm not sure about Lua, but in the case of Javascript, it's not entirely true. Arrays are objects, yes, but objects are not arrays.

So, unless you are extending the build-in array type, objects do not behave as arrays. They are not recognized as arrays, and more importantly, no modern javascript engine actually implements arrays as hashes.

For example {}.length has no value. It does not have a length of zero, it does not have a length at all. Visa versa, when looking at an object-map as a 'map', you'll get the array entries, as well as the length property, and the push and pop methods.

It's orthogonal. Imagine a javascript engine having no special implementation for an Array. We could implement it on top of the object-map. So, an array does not behave as a map, its implemented in a map. There's a clear distinction.

But the parallels with PHP are interesting. Both languages were not designed with the intent of large applications, but with the intent of adding a small piece of isolated logic to what is mostly a template. Both languages have had a lot of flack for their early design choices as well. People are still upset how Javascript handles casting (which is similar to how PHP handles it), and they are still upset how Javascript handles scoping (which is again similar to how PHP handles it).

Where the languages start differing, is that Javascript is much more reflective, which allows one to fix many language flaws in library or framework code, to suit different use-cases like the development of large scale projects. (just consider the hundreds of class-based systems implemented in Javascript)

But even for Javascript, the same logic applies. Considering the role and purpose it has now, the language design would have been different, if it was not for backwards compatibility.

And there as well, people are trying to figure out ways to make it radically better. Dart comes to mind. Compiling other languages into javascript. (coffeescript, gwt, etc.)

And even arguments in favor of Node.js are all based on the assumption that we are stuck with Javascript in the browser.

And just as with PHP, the original authors themselves, make no secret that their language design wasn't optimized or optimal for how we are using it now.

[stcredzero]

Nobody with the actual skillset to design and implement a programming language would consider, for example, merging vectors and dictionaries into some kind of mutated frankenarray.

Actually, JavaScript and Lua have merged vectors and Dictionaries.

[notJim]

> Nobody with the actual skillset to design and implement a programming language would consider, for example, merging vectors and dictionaries into some kind of mutated frankenarray.

Why is this bad?

[ralfn]

Well, answer me this:

Whats the order of complexity of adding an element in the middle of "an array" in PHP?

So, it's bad, because it makes it very confusing, what the exact implementation is. If you can't tell how much slower your algorithm that calculates something from an 'frankenarray' gets, when the array gets bigger, you have a problem.

That's one problem. The other problem is with language itself. When we call something an array, which isn't actually an array (an array being a very specific implementation of a vector) people get confused.

Imagine how you would feel if PHP used the word 'variable' to mean function and the word 'function' to mean variable.

So, a hash and an array are not just semantically different (that they refer to a completely different ADT's), but they are also completely distinct implementations of those ADT's.

Now, this is not a problem, when you are using PHP as it was originally intended. To add a small bit of logic to a template that mostly uses fast, well written c functions in it's built-in library.

But people are abusing PHP to write large scale libraries and frameworks. Many riddled with security issues, and unpredictable performance bottlenecks, because the language wasn't designed to actually allow you to write well defined algorithms.

Now, we've seen workarounds for these problems. Facebook wrote a PHP to C compiler, and moved all crucial algorithms to C. You can use unit-testing to supplement the lack of any usable type information, and to combat the automatic casting that PHP does (which creates all kinds of bugs in edge cases, that is hard to track or test against). You can use profiling to track performance issues, and fix code that interacts with frankenarrays, in a sort of trail-and-error kind of way.

People once wrote all their code in ASM. Discipline can make all the difference. But highly skilled disciplined, well educated professionals aren't the target audience of PHP.

All this required discipline can be justified on practical grounds. PHP programmers are generally paid the worst (or as an employer would call, are the cheapest). Hosting is cheap. And for many use-cases you can just drop in ready to go code (Wordpress, Drupal, Joombla, etc.) and just skin it.

So, i'm not saying picking PHP is a bad financial choice for a company. If you don't take on difficult projects, and don't intent to hire highly skilled coders, it can be cheap and productive.

But that doesn't make the language any better..

[notJim]

It's interesting that I asked a simple technical question, and rather than just answering it, you threw in a slew of insults and opinions about PHP and PHP programmers. Why do you have such strong feelings about PHP and PHP programmers so much? How long did you actually use PHP, and which companies did you work for that used it?

It's not your assertion that PHP is a crappy language that I disagree with. I fully agree there. Where I disagree with you is in your assessment that a) there aren't many skilled programmers who use PHP, and c) language features of PHP make it very difficult or impossible to write well-designed software.

As to your assertion that PHP is only good for simple projects employing low-skilled developers, tell that to the various PHP startups paying top dollar for skilled PHP developers.

PHP arrays are actually ordered hash tables. This information is readily available. If you really need a real array, there is SplArray.

> Now, we've seen workarounds for these problems. Facebook wrote a PHP to C compiler, and moved all crucial algorithms to C.

At the scale of Facebook, nobody uses scripting languages, so I doubt this is purely because of PHP. This would be like me telling you to not to use RoR because Twitter switched to Scala (people said this, but those people are stupid and I'm not among them.) Twitter and Facebook have problems you and I are unlikely to have.

> You can use unit-testing to supplement the lack of any usable type information, and to combat the automatic casting that PHP does (which creates all kinds of bugs in edge cases, that is hard to track or test against). You can use profiling to track performance issues, and fix code that interacts with frankenarrays, in a sort of trail-and-error kind of way.

PHP's type system is crazy, that is absolutely true. But it's not as hard to work around or as frequently a problem as you're suggesting, at least in my experience. JavaScript is another language that has a crazy-ish type system, but it doesn't get the hate that PHP does.

I have never had a case where PHP's arrays caused performance problems, but that's probably because I've also never written an application that didn't interact with some kind of back-end store like a database that was inevitable slower. I've done a fair amount of work to make apps faster, and the big wins were always in fixing bad data access or caching patterns and algorithms. I imagine that there would be a point when I need to worry about not using PHP arrays, but I guess I haven't hit it. And again, if/when I do, there's always SplArray.

> But people are abusing PHP to write large scale libraries and frameworks. Many riddled with security issues, and unpredictable performance bottlenecks, because the language wasn't designed to actually allow you to write well defined algorithms.

There are some really shitty PHP projects. I suspect a big part of that is that they took off before there was the widespread knowledge of best-practices we have now. (I'm assuming you're thinking of wordpress, drupal and joomla.) I've worked with Wordpress a bit, unfortunately, and the main reason it's so damned slow is because the queries are badly written, and the data access and caching patterns are awful. PHP's arrays never crossed my mind as a bottleneck, because they don't even show up in my profiling tools.

For what it's worth, I used to see a lot of people's code because the company I worked for required code samples when we were interviewing people. I saw a lot of really shitty RoR code, and I do not blame that on the language or the framework.

[wvenable]

> But people are abusing PHP to write large scale libraries and frameworks. Many riddled with security issues, and unpredictable performance bottlenecks, because the language wasn't designed to actually allow you to write well defined algorithms.

I mostly agree with your post but you've gone way over the top on this statement. PHP is pretty analogous to the majority of languages in terms of syntax, structure, and capability. Frameworks written in PHP are no more likely to have security issues or unpredictable performance bottlenecks than any other language. Certainly nothing prevents you from writing well defined algorithms.

PHP's "arrays" are both vectors and hash tables at the same time. I agree that there is no reason to combine those concepts (although I love ordered hash tables). But ultimately there isn't much harm in it; it's just an extreme example of typelessness.

[ma2rten]

As someone who worked for a major European social network written in PHP, I can say with full confidence that PHP's syntax and it's standard libraries are objectively worse than those of other languages (as in inconsistent and less productive).

That being said there definitively good frameworks out there for PHP and having good libraries is much more important than the syntax of the language, so becoming familiar enough with another language until you are as productive as with PHP might not be worth the effort for you.

[nolok]

"As someone who made his own opinion on the subject, I can objectively say that my opinion is the right one"

Seriously ...

It doesn't matter which language is "objectively better as a programming language", just use whatever you enjoy the most. If it's PHP, then have fun coding in it rather that use something else because some people on the internet think you should. There are tons of very successful project in PHP, including giant ones, because at some point you stop circlejerking and start coding.

Just make sure you know what else exists out there and try other things here and there to discover new languages and other ways to do things, but that's a general programming rule, not something limited to php.

[ma2rten]

I don't even know why I am having this discussion:

To me the concept of a fun programming language does not make sense. Programming languages, frameworks, etc are tools and they suited for certain task. If you use the right tool for the right task programming is fun. PHP, however, is not the most productive tools for any (reasonably complex) task. This is just a fact. If you want to challenge that fact, give a concrete counter-example.

However, like I said before you can still be productive in PHP. I am still doing occasional programming in PHP and I don't hate it. I just wouldn't use it for a new project.

[billpatrianakos]

Amen to that. The minute someone utters PHP someone else inevitably goes out of their way to let you know it sucks even if it's not at all relevant to anything you're talking about like in this case.

Guess what? Every language, framework, technique, theory, etc. sucks because someone else thinks theirs is better. "Oh youre a JavaScript person? Eww, action script is better, yours sucks. Like C++? Gross! ISO C is far superior! Using Rails? Well I feel sorry for you because Sinatra is faster and less bloated". Point is, no matter what your platform, stack, or combination of technology choices are someone will inevitably rant about how it sucks then get a blog post about it on the front page of HN.

Seriously, enough with the crusades and religious fervor over your development choices. Let's compare apples to apples and be constructive in our criticisms. Instead of looking at nodephp and balking because it's in PHP how about criticizing it based on its merits. What are the goals? Does it achieve those goals? Are there similar projects that do it better? What are the use cases for this? This thread started that way and is now devolving into another religious dispute.

Comparing it to nodejs is fair if you take into account that it's best used by those with hosting restrictions or people who are just partial to PHP and those who want to use it with large existing projects. It's not fair to throw out general "PHP sucks" arguments. That's not relevant. Sucky or not, does this software work and is it useful? Yeah.

[ma2rten]

it's best used by those with hosting restrictions or people who are just partial to PHP and those who want to use it with large existing projects.

We were talking about if PHP is the right language to use if there is legacy code and hosting does not plays a role.

[billpatrianakos]

Further up the line ubiquitous hosting was mentioned. Even so, it's still yet another way to judge its usefulness.

[fsniper]

I wish I could up vote twice. No thrice, no 4 times..

[lobo_tuerto]

This is not a blank statement:

http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...

Previous discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3820431

[notJim]

S/he's not denying that PHP is a crappy language. He's saying that he's comfortable building successful in PHP.

You're saying “Don't use PHP, it sucks.” He's saying, “I don't care, it lets me turn code into money and that's all I want.”

[notJim]

> I fully agree that for a new project, you shouldn't use PHP for any other reason than the ubiquitous hosting.

Here's another scenario where I could imagine using PHP. Suppose I'm starting a company, and I'm starting it solo. I've been using PHP successfully for many years, and I know it and the environment (Apache, etc.) really well. I know what libraries are good, what libraries are not good, I have a framework that I like, and that I know how to set up to my liking. By the way, I'm really excited about this company.

Now, PHP is pretty awful as a programming language. I really don't like it. But the reality is, I am going be dramatically more efficient with it. If I were to use Rails, it would take me at the very least a week or two to really be able to use it without checking documentation constantly, and it would probably take me months to be at a proficiency where I was totally comfortable with it, and the environment it lives in, and figured out which libraries to use with it and so on.

During those months, when I should be focussing on building my business, talking to customers, getting feedback, learning more about marketing, I am instead dealing with the friction of learning a new programming environment. If I had stuck with PHP, all I have to do is sit at a terminal and let the code flow out of my fingertips. All of my actual thinking could go into the important stuff.

I don't deny that PHP is pretty terrible as a programing language. I do however deny that there are no reasons to use it for a new project.

[Edootjuh]

I hadn't thought of that. You also made me realize that existing modules written in PHP can be reused this way.