| HN Mirror

Y	Hacker News new \| ask \| show \| jobs

by revscat 4349 days ago

> Contrary to what many HN hipsters seems to believe, PHP is quite a capable language, and HHVM / Hack is really pushing things forward.

This attitude really frustrates me. I'm a developer with over 20 years of experience. I don't use PHP because (a) I have had poor experiences with it in the past, (b) I am enjoying my current stack (Java8/Clojure/Groovy), and (c) would go with stacks like RoR over PHP if I had to choose, simply because I've had good experiences with Rails.

You're implication that this has something to do with trendiness is frankly insulting.

5 comments

wdewind 4349 days ago

Not parent, but if you make those (completely reasonable) points when you criticize PHP he's not talking about you when he says "HN Hipsters." He's talking about the "What kind of idiot uses php?" crowd, which unfortunately hangs out here too much, and frankly doesn't understand which parts of php actually are good or bad because their entire opinion is based off blog posts not experience.

I don't think you're one of those.

hamburglar 4349 days ago

Agree. PHP started itself out with the handicap of a lot of shitty misfeatures, and now that they've beaten it into a state that it's possible (though in no way encouraged) to write decent code in it, anybody who doesn't put on a "PHP: It's not that bad!" party hat gets called a hater.

I'm afraid they're going to have to show me reasons it's actually superior to other languages before I'm going to jump on the train. This "it's less broken than it's ever been" stuff isn't going to cut it.

One thing that makes me chuckle every time I decide to give PHP a fair glance again is "<?php" at the beginning of all the source files. It's hilarious to me that with all the well understood best practices about separation of logic and presentation, people are still seriously using a language where you have to use a little signal to the compiler that means "ok, here's where the HTML stops and the code begins!" I assume at this point it's a vestigial tail, but it's just one irritating reminder that this language was originally designed for half-ass hacks.

astrange 4349 days ago

So, if your PHP programs don't embed HTML in ?><?, and you use a framework with its own URL routing instead of multiple files, and your framework has plugin autoloading and initialization on every page request… why are you using PHP?

hamburglar 4349 days ago

In case that was not a rhetorical question: I'm not using PHP.

Gigablah 4348 days ago

> a fair glance

If you're going to harp on the most unbelievably trivial things, no, you never intended to give it a fair glance.

Daishiman 4348 days ago

That, by itself, is not trivial.

Compounded with a hundred small little annoyances, it makes the code comparatively unpleaseant.

Gigablah 4348 days ago

<!doctype html>

birkbork 4349 days ago

Sorry if i offended you. I really did not try to imply this has to do with trendiness, but it was a frustrated outbreak from my end. I've seen way too many poisonous hater comments against everything PHP here since I started visiting.

I myself use (besides PHP) C#, Javascript, Python, and recently revisited C++ to check out C++11 (I am thrilled). I have been working developing in mainly PHP since 1999 so I have seen most of it's ugly sides.

This thread however was about PHP, not wether Java is good or bad.

vorg 4349 days ago

> I am enjoying my current stack (Java8/Clojure/Groovy)

Not just trendiness, but also whether a spec exists, from which alternative implementations can be reliably built. Some language despots (e.g. Python's) have even had moritorium periods of no new features specifically to help other implementations catch up. The spec announcement is a step forward for PHP.

Your current stack is at widely varying extremes along the spec continuum:

* Java 8 is fully spec'd to intricate detail, and Java has implementations other than Oracle's. Anyone can build an implementation as long as they don't call it Java.

* Clojure is informally spec'd by the comments in the functions, and what little grammar there is is explained on the clojure.org website. Alternative implementations exist to varying degrees of compatibility, e.g. ClojureScript doesn't have native macros.

* Groovy has virtually no spec at all after 11 yrs. Despite it being spec-driven at first, its JSR was inactive for 7 yrs, then changed to dormant status 3 yrs ago. My personal experience is the Codehaus project management actively prevent other implementations being built.

DCKing 4349 days ago

I was untder the impression that a Java implementation that wants to call itself Java can actually call itself Java if it is made to pass specification test suites.

There is currently one major Java(-like) implementation that does not do that, and that is the variety that runs on Android. But there are plemty of other Javas that call themselves a Java.

needusername 4348 days ago

Right, you have to buy and pass the test suites (TCK).

The thing with Android is they are not close passing the test suites (AFAIK Harmony was close but Android is only a fraction of Harmony).

Compare what Android implements: http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html And what they would have to implement: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/ Of course the difference is even bigger for newer Java Versions (NIO.2, Date Time API, Fork-Join, …).

In addition I believe the linking semantics in Dalvik are slightly than in Java, eg. slf4j needs a special version to not fail during dex translation.

I'm not sure whether there is actually an official Java implementation that does not have a license of the implementation from Sun/Oracle or uses OpenJDK. If not they would have to reimplement all of the classes including AWT/Swing. Azul for example does have a license for Zing. I'm not sure if IBM already builds on OpenJDK.

Dewie 4349 days ago

Meanwhile, that user presumably has the impressive track record of 2 days of posting on HN, making him/her a true expert on the HN crowd.

jasonlotito 4348 days ago

2522 days here. He's pretty much spot on. You, however, with your trivial sub-500 day membership, don't understand why calling out such things are immature and not welcomed here on HN.

Seriously, calling people out merely for their account age? Really? You really think that's a valued contribution? I mean, your comment amounts to nothing more than a weakly flung insult.

Dewie 4348 days ago

Really? Seriously!? Really? You're hard-hitting reply makes me feel filled with shame. I repent!

Pacabel 4349 days ago

Don't assume that just because an account is new that the person behind the account hasn't been reading the site for years.

Dewie 4348 days ago

That's why I said "presumably", and only referring to posting on HN, specifically (i.e. could have had previous accounts).

This is very subjective, but I find people who (again, presumably) haven't been involved in a community who all of a sudden start right off the mark by posting in that community with a phrases like "HN hipsters", to be rude.

dubcanada 4348 days ago

Alright, I'll say it then. I've had an account for 1300~ days, 3 times as long as you and I've been reading for longer then that.

HN hipsters dislike PHP.

eropple 4348 days ago

So do scarred ex-PHP-developers.

Divining which is which from posts is a dicey proposition.

Dewie 4348 days ago

It is not a matter of what was said, it's a matter of the fact that it was said by a (presumably!) newcomer.

I'm not a web-developer (or whatever you would classify PHP as), so I don't feel hit with the remark.

Pacabel 4348 days ago

I don't think it was an attempt to be rude.

"Hipster" is a term commonly used to describe those who advocate so-called "Web 2.0" technologies like Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, HTML5, NoSQL, and so on. These people openly admit that they dislike the previous generation of web development technologies built around languages/platforms like Perl, PHP, and Java.

There are many of those people here, so it makes sense to refer to them collectively, especially given their typical stance toward PHP. Asking them to revisit their current state of PHP is a reasonable enough request.

Now, "hipster" is also often used as a derogatory term, too. It's quite understandable, after dealing with some of those kind of people. But I don't think it was used in that sense in the earlier comment.

Dewie 4348 days ago

I've only seen "hipster" being used in a derogatory way on the Internet. But maybe this is some more HN-specific way that I haven't seen/before, which shows that I'm too inexperienced on here. :}