[rickmb]

Nobody with any relevant industry experience would overstate the important of language design.

I've used many languages in my 25+ years in software development, and I've seen very little relation between language and either overall quality or simply getting stuff done.

I have however observed a strong negative relationship between that and people bitching about their and other people's tools.

[ralfn]

I think it's just a matter of where you are on the curve.

Basing a new project on Node.JS may be premature and not a wise choice. You may be too much ahead of the curve, and up to the point where more traditional tools provide a much more pragmatic advantage mostly related to their ecosystem.

But nobody is writing their new website in C or ASM, or think that that is any more productive than using a more modern tool.

So, there is a movement, and that movement itself is towards better language design. The question is, where on the wave, should you be.

To argue, that any innovation in language ever, was always for the worst, is something reality and likely your own preferences directly contradict.

>I have however observed a strong negative relationship between that and people bitching about their and other people's tools.

I'm not trying to bitch. I'm not trying to argue that if all you want is a blog, that PHP is not one of the more pragmatical (get it done) approaches.

But that's not what this Node.PHP is targetting for. It's PHP rearing it's head again, at the tip of the wave. And when that happens, shouldn't we all just come out and say 'burn it to the ground?'

[fsniper]

But that's not what this Node.PHP is targetting for. It's PHP rearing it's head again, at the tip of the wave. And when that happens, shouldn't we all just come out and say 'burn it to the ground?'

But why? What harm does it give you to have another incarnation of PHP? Does a kitten die if someone writes any loc with php?

If so why don't you go after Facebook and damn their hard work on HipHop? Why do so many engineers still work on PHP at Zend? please let it go.

You may not like it. If so *you can just stop using it".

This is some kind of saying:

"I don't like latin, so why on earth people still writing books on it? Why even they teach it at schools? Why do doctors still practice and learn it somehow? Just let it go die?"

[ralfn]

Which ecosystems actually get the love, impacts us all. That's why people are always so invested when it comes to topics like this: they are literally, financially, emotionally, technically invested in their choice. And if some other solutions gets more popular, their investement will loose it's worth.

>You may not like it. If so *you can just stop using it".

Or, you know, start a conversation, and maybe see, if I can convice other people, to also not like it. (or to have them convince me otherwise).

>"I don't like latin, so why on earth people still writing books on it? Why even they teach it at schools? Why do doctors still practice and learn it somehow? Just let it go die?"

Great example! I fully agree, that it in the long term it would be beneficial to just drop latin all together and perhaps standarize on a more accessible language. It would be cheaper for everyone. More funds to spend on actual usefull research, more time to actually spend studying the relevant and challenging aspects of that field.

It matters what an industry standarizes on. It matters what technologies are popular and which are not. And yes, we vote with our actual choice. We vote with our wallet. But it's not a bad idea to have these kind of discussion as a community.

It's too easy to just dismiss people as 'go use something else if you dont like it', because our field is very much a non-zero sum game.

[fsniper]

Physicians use Latin for a reason. I believe they do not like to use it either. But they can not leave it back. It would mean throwing away hundreds of years study away.

In Turkey there is a hot topic about it. In 1928 with the order of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk we transitioned to use Latin alphabet instead of Arabic alphabet. It lead us to easier to reading and writing. And we got combined with European sciences and literature. But this caused a hole in our literature, science and in some more majors. We can't read any Arabic alphabet work nowadays. And this means hundreds and thousands of years of literature, physics and many more kinds of works are forgotten.

[tferris]

> Basing a new project on Node.JS may be premature and not a wise choice.

Maybe one year ago but now Node.js is mature: The feature development ended, npm is close to perfection and surpasses package managers of other languages. The ecosystem is rich and and important modules are very mature.

Node offers tons of innovative stuff at low costs like no other setup, to say it's premature and not a wise choice doesn't sound very informed.

[radiac]

The rather unique problem that PHP has is that it is almost as if it was designed with the primary goal of encouraging the programmer to shoot themselves in the foot.

Most PHP good practices revolve around defending yourself from language features, whereas Python good practices (for example) are mostly about making sure your code is readable and easy for someone else to follow.

Ultimately people will pick the language they have most experience with, but that's not always going to be the language best suited for the task.