[dgivney]

> The issue isn’t what can be done in PHP, it's what PHP encourages by default:

Lets break this done.

> global state,

PHP is stateless.

> poor encapsulation,

Encapsulation in PHP is mostly consistent with Java.

> inconsistent APIs,

PHP is written in C and an original design decision by those C programmers was to make the APIs consistent with libc.

> and difficult-to-enforce discipline.

Its very easy to enforce. All modern projects would run tools like Pint, Phpcs & Phpcbf to enforce their code standards and preferred style in their CI Pipeline.

[hnlmorg]

> PHP is written in C and an original design decision by those C programmers was to make the APIs consistent with libc.

Old PHP did have some pretty inconsistent naming conventions (or lack of). Which is what I think the GP was referring to.

I’ve not written any PHP in quite a few years but I’ve read that there’s been a concerted effort to address those inconsistencies and the old complaint is now just a relic of a bygone era.

One thing I have learned over the several decades that I’ve been writing software is that literally every language could have a book written about its problems. People often seem to forget that language design is a constant battle of tradeoffs. And because their preferred languages naturally align with their tradeoff preferences, they don’t even realise that their own preferences are deeply flawed for a great many type of scenarios too.

So it really disappoints me when people subscribe to language tribes like it’s their religion.

[pmarreck]

> literally every language could have a book written about its problems

OK, Elixir's been out for quite a few years now and is used by thousands of people at this point. Find me the "elixir sucks" webpage, which is super easy to find for Go, Python, PHP, Node, Java, and all the rest. And while I'm not a parentheses guy, find the the "Racket Sucks" page while you're at it... The only one I can find, https://www.brinckerhoff.org/blog/2016/04/25/racket-sucks-do..., is a satirical page implying that it will ruin all other languages for you lol. (Hmmm, maybe I should give it another go!)

In short, it is NOT true that all languages are created equal... otherwise everyone would be coding in Assembly, or its close cousin, Brainfuck. ;)

[hnlmorg]

You’re making a strawman argument from a pretty high proverbial horse there ;)

First off: I never said all languages are made equal. Literally the opposite: I said all languages make trade offs.

The fact that languages make trade offs means they’re not equal but rather they’re targeting different requirements.

You referenced Assembly but actually some problems are easier to solve in assembly. In those instances you’ll sprinkle your ASM inside your higher level language like C, Rust, Go, whatever rather than trying to hit everything with the same hammer.

In fact inlining foreign code is a common design pattern in most general purpose languages, eg Python supports CFFI (calling C FFI) for when you reach the limits of what can be done effectively in native Python.

As for Brainfuck, the point of that language is to create an esoteric Turing complete language with the fewest tokens. Readability was very deliberately a tradeoff. So BF is another example of my point.

More generally speaking: a lot of this stuff does just boil down to personal productivity and preferences. Because different people’s brains are wired differently and different people need to solve different types of problems.

You accidentally proved this point when you said “I’m not a parentheses guy” before commenting on Racket.

This is the real crux of language debates. Where you say “PHP sucks” what you actually mean is “I prefer other languages because I solve different problems that aren’t as well suited to PHP”

But being rational like this is hard because bro-programmers love to mock people who aren’t part of their tribe. (This dumb tribalism is probably my biggest pet peeve in tech. People really need to learn to grow the fuck up).

[pmarreck]

Great points all, admittedly!

I think I'm scarred by having churned too many man-hours supporting spagetti ASP code and Ruby "magic" behavior.