I have been using PHP professionally for 7 years now and I absolutely love it. The community grew up from the old days when I started playing with it (almost 15 years ago). There are incredible pieces of software built with it, and nowadays the language is unrecognisable from the state it was in when it gained the bad reputation. i think Symfony 4 is a wonderful framework and it allows us to use PHP to build things that most would think it's impossible in the language of spaghetti code.<p>Yes, there are still a lot o people out there that hack some very questionable code together in PHP but we shouldn't dismiss it like this. I've tried multiple languages (C#, Java, javascript) and I have to say PHP is my favourite so far (you guys can comment on this as much as you like, I still like it a lot).<p>It's disheartening to hear that in a hackathon people got "bullied" for using a programming language. You would never pick upon a mechanic for using a screwdriver instead of a chisel or something similar, as long as he can achieve the same thing.<p>Also, I can't help to notice a trend of ..."brogramming", where if you don't use the newest and coolest tech you're treated as an outcast, bullied and made fun of; it's quite sad if you ask me.
I always made fun of php. No reason, I've never truly worked with it in depth and I'm also not the best JS dev. I never attacked a person for writing php I just mocked php itself. Even so, this made me feel bad and I'm going to change my attitude. Nobody should feel bad for doing something they enjoy. <3
In my experience people making fun of technology X (for all X) only reveal their own lack of understanding of not only X but their own tools too. Every tool has its own advantages and disadvantages.<p>Fanatics of any kind always remind of this fragment of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:<p>> You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
So it's a thread in which people criticize tribalist behavior by engaging in their own tribalist behavior.<p>Sounds ironic, I say from my self-satisfied position of detached superiority.
I feel like the kind of people that go to a hackathon are the kinds of people that are looking for some sort of in-group/out-group dynamic, and programming language choice is the easiest way to decide who is in and who is out. When they get older they'll realize it's not worth the effort.
In my personal experience, people use PHP because it is the only thing that they were taught. NOT because they have considered options and have consciously decided to settle on PHP.
Nothing's wrong with the good old PHP. In fact, it reminds me of my 2012 comment[0]. The website[1] proclaiming PHP as "most likely to be a fad" is, of course, long gone by now[2], while PHP thrives.<p>-- the old comment --<p>Particularly ironic is PHP ranking high for ``This language is likely to be a passing fad''. Given its 17 years of history and recent the recent progress with versions 5.3 and newer... whoever voted on this position either wasn't aware of PHP's actual situation and outlook, or was just being thinking wishful.<p>> Why does almost everyone know the language?<p>If anything, it is that almost everyone can dabble in PHP and ^C^V some code. IMHO real knowledge of PHP and its ecosystem seem to be quite rare -- judging by reading some published code, which was as generic and un-PHP as possible, and by [many clueless] comments [posted on] the official docs.<p>-- the old comment --<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4929143" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4929143</a>
[1] <a href="http://hammerprinciple.com:80/therighttool/items/php" rel="nofollow">http://hammerprinciple.com:80/therighttool/items/php</a>
[2] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170913184701/http://hammerprinciple.com:80/therighttool/items/php" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20170913184701/http://hammerprin...</a>
PHP is great platform for prototyping, even better if you're experienced. I actually used PHP a lot for general purpose scripting and code generation because it was so easy and fast. Now I'm at node-land (I had no issues with PHP I just needed something with concurrency and PHP didn't have it at the time) for a few years but I still have great memories.<p>Do what you want (and what makes you most productive) and don't care about others :-)<p>BTW: What I especially love about PHP is its documentation, or sort of integrated stackoverflow. I can't remember any other platform having "recipes" integrated directly in the documentation (which in my opinion, is brilliant idea)
Isn't the whole point of a hackathon meant to be getting something quick and dirty up and running in limited time?<p>I think using PHP warrants extra points for style.
This is quite an interesting way of thinking. I saw somewhere that from the different thinks that you can be a snob about, one of them is a programming snob. Thinking that when you use one programming language, framework you are way superior than others. (I'm not saying that languages don't have superiority over each other).<p>But I think this is the same mindset that makes people think that they need to use ML to solve every problem, when actually you can solve it without it just fine. As has been discussed in an earlier post.
The best programming language is the one which can get the job done. PHP is a well established backend stack and in no way inferior to the latest sexy stacks
I guess I've made fun of php in the past, due to having felt pain in using it at a project, but I don't think even I would be a big enough jerk to do it to someone I didn't know in the a public space.
PHP started out as a personal project, not with some grand design to be one of the most used languages powering websites. So yes, there were things about the language that were objectively bad, and it'll never be completely on par with a language that was truly designed from the ground up, but so what?<p>Your knowledge and the requirements of the job should dictate the tools you use - not what's hot. If it works, scales to the extent you need it to, and can be secured, then great!
It's basically gets to the point that you either get your shit done, or you don't. I've seen a handful super smart developers starting to code in the newly Xish language, and don't getting to the finish line, either in time or at all. So, you should be proud of yourself for delivering MVP in a hackathon, assuming that that's what you did. When people make fun of you you should tell them to shut the fuck up. Again, as long as it works it can be written in pascal, cobol, assembly or asp native. When you grow up and get to deal with exponential growth, it will be your "rich's worries" to rewrite the code in the newly not mocked Xish lang.
Well, a hackathon's goal (and a life's goal, if you think about it) is to get things done. Just beat them at that. With any thing you might like and enjoy.<p>It's not because everyone gets crazy about those new Nike shoes that you should wear them too, just enjoy running.
Slack was built with PHP. And here's the article from Slack engineering <a href="https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329" rel="nofollow">https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329</a><p>I guess building quicker is more important than building better, especially in hackathons or in startups where you are testing the product-market-fit. That means, one can use whatever language/tool they are most productive with. Of course, if you are lucky and if you gain momentum, then you will have the resources to re-engineer it with the right language/tool.
Matthew 7:5, "You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye."<p>These particular people truly do lack self-awareness, to criticise PHP as JS users.
I have been cleaning up after horrible PHP programmers for years. It is a good living. I do internally debate whether MySQL is a worse choice than PHP, but it's moot because they are almost always found together in the wild.
People's allegiances are tribal, and this kind of juvenile gatekeeping is probably only prevalent among teenagers and young college students.<p>I've never identified with a particular technology so strongly as to feel attacked when its flaws are pointed out, and vice versa, I have never felt the need to attack anyone personally based on the technologies they use. Some might be better for some tasks but not others, and that's the only thing that matters.<p>Experience shows that people who lack broad knowledge of several programming languages tend to identify as "language X developers" instead of developers as such. This enhances tribalism and creates pointless language wars. Any time somebody says that some particular language is the best choice for everything, or some other language is never the best choice for anything, they're just inexperienced and are trying to mask it with fake confidence. Except for Java of course, it's the worst.
PHP until version 5 was not great. PHP jokes and hate are always been lingering around. Part of the reason is that PHP started as a hack and that Rasmus, the "inventor" of PHP, has always been a bad frontman. You can read some of his quotes here: <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf</a> Almost every person that is a good SW engineer and like to code has problem with that philosophy.<p>The truth is that today PHP is a pretty good language. CakePHP, Laravel and Symphony have been pretty good frameworks from a SW engineering point of view. I haven't written PHP code in the last 5 years but I miss the development experience. Everything is by default stateless. Accessing a page always starts from a blank state. You edit and save a file and you can reload instantly the page with the new code. Of course "re-execute everything" can become quite expensive at runtime...<p>In general I think the modern PHP is hated without a reason. Its bad rep will be hard to overcome.