I’ve recently posted some of my thoughts on PHP. If you enjoy the topic, here is an excellent post over at Coding Horror, which reminds why PHP sucks so badly and also why it will stick around for some time to come.
More on PHP
Posted in All, Programming on May 21st, 2008 · 7 Comments
Tags: languages, PHP, Programming
7 responses so far ↓
1
Timur Asaliev
// May 29, 2008 at 7:53 am
I don’t want to get into a long-”bottom” discussion about PHP vs *Insert Whatever You Want Here* but that article seems to be a little biased.
:-/
2
Leonid Mamchenkov
// May 29, 2008 at 9:04 am
most Holy War discussions are biased one way or the other.
Can you be a bit more specific in regard to what seemed biased to you?
3
Timur Asaliev
// May 31, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Well some of the authors comments were based on (and only) argument (is it an argument?) that “PHP sucks”. Even though he does bring up a couple of valid issues with PHP, I cannot agree that PHP “sucks”.
PHP’s OOP is much better with PHP5 now (lets forget PHP4’s attempt) and with PHP6 coming out things will get even better.
4
Leonid Mamchenkov
// May 31, 2008 at 5:01 pm
it’s not just “php sucks”, but “php sucks when compared to other programming languages”. Yes, PHP5’s OO model is better than PHP4’s. But it still sucks. Have you tried any other?
As for me personally, I hate that PHP has 4 gadzillion functions with different naming conventions and different return values all over the place. It’s impossible to program the language without having a manual nearby. Then, I miss hashes and sort(). Everything else I can get used to over time.
What PHP does better than Perl is packaging. You either have PHP installed or you don’t. There aren’t that many options on how you can have it installed, and even then you can pretty much control it on the per project level. With Perl, “there is more than one way to do it”, which means that those people who care enough will have it exactly the way they want. Everyone else will drop out and use something else.
5
Timur Asaliev
// May 31, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Leonid, on a multiple occasions Alex has been trying to make me try out Perl, which I did (after a couple of years…). It seems great but I’m still not much into it, due to lack of motivation and time to study further (it’ll come back, I know myself).
> “php sucks when compared to other programming languages”
Well, comparing it to VB by the author wasn’t a good idea, I should say.
A quote by the author
“The only conclusion I can draw is that building a compelling application is far more important than choice of language. While PHP wouldn’t be my choice, and if pressed, I might argue that it should never be the choice for any rational human being sitting in front of a computer, I can’t argue with the results.”
I agree that “a compelling application is far more important than choice of language” but saying that PHP “should never be the choice for any rational human being sitting in front of a computer” is not rational because the author himself agrees that some top websites we all use are built on PHP.
6
Leonid Mamchenkov
// Jun 1, 2008 at 11:05 am
Firstly, the question of whether VB is really a programming language is still out there in the open.
Secondly, all those sites written in PHP would have probably be much better if implemented in another programming language.
However, there is this point that good programmers can write beautiful software in any programming language, while the bad ones can use any programming language to write crap. With this I agree.
7
Timur Asaliev
// Jun 1, 2008 at 12:20 pm
To conclude I’ll say that every opinion matters
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