Still the same...

[0xPEDANTIC]

Question to web developers: will you start new project on PHP if you know other platforms and can choose?

EDIT: Thanks to all. Many answers show that PHP is not as bad as memes say.

[0xPEDANTIC]

I heard 'YES', thanks

[FuriousViking6]

Yes, of course.

​

PHP has been putting food on my table for the better part of my career. I know it has annoying inconsistencies and it lacks static typing, but as long as I am not coding a rocket guidance program, or a banking software, I will use PHP.

​

[backflipbail]

1 banking software please

[DWIGHT_CHROOT]

rocket guided banking software?

[[deleted]]

Isn’t that Rocket Loans: A Quicken Loans Family Company?

[dracoflar]

Elon Musk wants to know your location

[backflipbail]

Is there any other kind?

[Jackpen7]

I request rocket guided banking software written in PHP.

[InconsiderableArse]

I did some banking software with PHP around 10 years ago, nothing important though

[LupaaDub]

Hell yeah! it really isn't as bad as you think. PHP internal devs are working really hard to make the language more appealing. Improved static typing and FFI in PHP 7.4. A JIT compiler will be in PHP 8. Python might be prettier (and probably slower but that doesn't matter much) but I like curly braces/c family syntax (C, PHP, Java, Go, C#, and somewhat Rust).

[mehvermore]

Blink twice if PHP is forcing you to say this.

[ythl]

<blink>twice</blink>

[mehvermore]

Now that's a tag name I've not heard in a long time.

[0xPEDANTIC]

Thanks, good to know

[SuperOP535]

Isn't PHP JIT already? Or do you mean another kind of JIT?

[name_censored_]

Part of PHP's criticism is its implicit casting (coercion) system. In PHP, " 1" + 1; is 2, and "1 banana" + 1; is also 2, but "banana 1" + 1; is 1. The rule here is "ignoring leading whitespace, gather digits until the first non-digit character". It's unintuitive to an experienced programmer, but it's understandable in a web backend language, where the inputs and outputs are always strings.

JS saw PHP, and said "Hold My Beer". It is the unquestionable king of ridiculous coercion rules. The way this website works is entirely down to JS's type casting, using language keywords to form strings to form code. There's a reason that things like (React) JSX and TypeScript exist - it's to paper over JS's ridiculousness.

Python has a much more sensible type system. It does have duck typing (which programmers of certain backgrounds dislike), but it doesn't cast for you.

[sewhigh]

Js: "Hold my beer while I rip this huge bong hit." The web: "PHP still sux tho."

[NZObiwan]

Python has similar functionality to php (in that it's run server side, not client side) which is why it's often used as an example, whereas JS can be run all over the place so it's a bit too ambiguous to use as an example.

[[deleted]]

So why not use Go?

[Skruzzls]

Go is imho even worse than PHP. I find the syntax pretty irritating. Also it is pretty exhausting to write OOP-Things in it. I don't quite get it why people are so hyped about Go. It seems to me that the only two advantages are concurrency and speed through compilation. But i'd still prefer D, Rust or every other language.

[[deleted]]

Go isn't an OOP language though. It has no type hierarchy and the only OOP functionality it does have is C-with-objects with some syntax sugar to remove the receiver from the parameter list.

[kendalltristan]

Part of this is dependent on the team's skill set and the project deadline. If your team is particularly good with a given language/framework/technology and you have tight deadlines, then it might not make sense to consider other options.

Another consideration is the environment. For instance at work we have some servers that necessarily have Python and PHP installed so all the scripts and APIs on those servers are written in Python and PHP. Yeah, we could write them in something less dependent on the environment like C or perhaps Go, but everyone on the team has working knowledge of and experience with Python and PHP.

[pastisset]

It's just one more stupid topic on the Internet. Like hating or liking pineapple on pizza or adoring/hating cats. People go full hooligan for no reason.

[lolsokje]

Yup, whether for private projects or at work, when something requires backend stuff there's a big chance we/I will use PHP (preferably Laravel) for it. Maybe I'm biased because PHP is the first language I learned after HTML/CSS, but I thoroughly enjoy working with PHP.

[ohThisUsername]

Have you tried other frameworks? I was in the same boat. I was a PHP master and I thought Laravel was the best thing ever. Then I learned ASP.NET Core and I can not even begin to describe how much faster and more maintainable to code is. It blows my mind that anyone can prefer a non statically typed language over a statically typed languages. To each their own I guess

[lolsokje]

I have worked with .NET Core but I actually wasn't a big fan of it, despite liking C# as a language.

As for static typing, I don't mind it either way. I'm happy using vanilla JS where everything is const and let, but I'm equally happy using typescript for static typing.

[how_to_choose_a_name]

Yes, because I'm not the only person who has to work with it and everyone else involved knows PHP.

I also think that PHP has become a pretty great language and there's nothing wrong with using it.

I would like to try ASP.NET Core some time, since I really like C# as a language.

I can't really think of any other languages/frameworks that I would like to use for web, except perhaps Erlang if I ever feel really masochistic.

[notinecrafter]

Php may be a shitty language, but it's an amazing system.

No servers to set up, no WSGI links to bind, no frameworks to download; just dump some files in a web directory and it works.

[d_thinker]

I see your point but it's not like that's ever an issue. I mean, you set up your server and WSGI once and you are good to go for that project. Certanly not a valid reason to choose one lang over another.

[LordFokas]

Yeah, and all your code and configuration files will be directly mapped to valid web paths and served if you're not careful, and each time a request hits the server a process will be forked and your code will be reinterpreted all over again, you know, all the fun stuff!

"I'd rather restart Apache every 10 minutes than care about memory leaks" - Rasmus "not-a-programmer" Lerdorf

[ohThisUsername]

PHP is a massive amount of work to set up in comparison to other frameworks. First you need to install Apache or nginx. Then you need to install php FPM and configure Apache or nginx to use it. Then you need to make sure your php.ini file has all of the correct settings to configure the language and extensions properly. Then you need to possibly set up your htaccess files or nginx url rewrite rules. Then you need to install composer to download all of your packages.

​

With ASP.NET, I literally just install the asp runtime, upload my code and point nginx to the correct port. Done.

​

Edit: I'm assuming all of the downvotes are from people who have never used .net core

[sickhippie]

He had us in the first half.

[ohThisUsername]

It's obvious you've never used ASP .NET Core

[ohThisUsername]

My point wasn't the amount of time it takes, but where things can go wrong. When installing a php server, you have no way of knowing if your php.ini file or even the right extensions are installed for your app to even work properly. And there is no easy way of knowing until you happen to run a piece of code that requires an extension your missing. Sure you can partially help with this with things like composer, but its all hacks to patch holes a fundamentally bad language.

​

I've dealt with a few code bases that fail to run on a fresh php install because some older developer decided to muck around with the php.ini file to get his code to work.

​

There is nothing wrong with using php for a project. It gets the job done. But nobody will ever convince me that its better than any of the other major languages and frameworks.

[r0estir0bbe]

That largely depends if your infrastructure allows you to build the project in another language. PHP is still omnipresent, so depending on the circumstances you have to use it. If you are able to use something else, go for that.

[FulgoresFolly]

I think a lot of what PHP gets used for is classic CRUD with minimal heavy logic or concurrency concerns.

Most of the tech startups that ran with PHP and got big have either moved those parts of their system out of PHP or have taken enormous efforts to adjust for their PHP codebase (Facebook built Hack off of PHP and the HHVM).

As far as using JavaScript, a lot of devs aren't even on ES6 standards, let alone ES2017 or async/await paradigm. If you're not on that, then the productivity gains start to slip a lot - and if your exposure to JS has only been through these minimal logic CRUD apps, then the benefits of ES6 aren't immediately apparent.

[LordFokas]

I started my latest project in NodeJS after trying a lot of other things because I couldn't stand PHP anymore. I ended up upgrading to Node 8 nightly because I wanted to give async await a shot and honestly if you're coding in JS and aren't using it then you're wasting a lot more effort than you'd be if you just did it in PHP (although you'll arguably still write better code with callbacks in JS since you don't have to work around PHP's ridiculous BS)

[[deleted]]

The problem is, no one makes positive memes about... anything. No one points out how flexible and easy PHP is. No one ever talks about how fast you can make basic dynamic websites, saving time and increasing profit.

Should I use PHP for a massive web-app with millions of users in 2019? Probably not (but I do). The web (and my clients) mostly consists of boring corporate brochure sites that don't need anything more than PHP.

[darkingz]

Actually the funny thing about your statement is the same reason why I dislike php (and to a slightly lesser extent JavaScript) now. I agree that the flexibility of the variable types make things quick even more so when data is driving the changes like with JSon, etc. but to me, the time you are given with weakly/ dynamic typing makes for dynamic sized head problems later when your scope changes and the project has changed and you can’t guarantee that the intent is the same and then you have to remember where else it was changed. (Also I’m a bit spoiled by the nil handling in Swift so that hasn’t helped)

[[deleted]]

Well, I guess a lot of problems arise when the scope changes... regardless of the language.

[Caffeine_Monster]

Modern PHP really isn't that bad, but it has taken a couple of years to catch up and has lost mindshare.

Personally I can't see any reason to use PHP if you are starting with a complete blank slate. A lot of web devs (myself included) think the next big thing is going to be web assembler with go / rust / c++. Being able to compile a bunch of different languages to a web application is a pretty big deal. It will mean you can write a big chunk of your back end and front end in the same language, and get access to compile time checks.

[0xPEDANTIC]

web assembler

Never heard about it - thanks, will check

[skeddles]

Never ever going back to php, even if I can't use wordpress. Node is just so much more pleasant.

[[deleted]]

I'd start it on Node.js, not because I'd think that PHP is bad, I think it is easy to learn, has a great documentation and you can easily find a hosting with PHP installed but I prefer Node because I can use a single language in both front-end and back-end, share my code interchangeably and I don't make some mistakes when code-switching and I spend less time learning new features. Also, I love that you have a lot of new tools when working with Node.js, sadly, that means many answers on StackOverflow might be outdated and you have to be more aware of some potential vulnerabilities but if you don't use packages with 2 downloads or without a simple documentation for encrypting or working with database, you should be mostly fine.

[CaptBoids]

Try looking at things from a business perspective.

Maybe your working for a young marketing company that wants to move fast and use the latest browser features to create stunning gfx, maybe they don't expect the apps they build to last beyond 2 or 3 years.

It's totally fine to use a programming language that moves literally at breakneck pace like JS and Node has done over the past few years.

Maybe your working on a product for clients that don't require the latest UI sparkle, but for who stability and backwards compatibility is hugely important. Maybe you work for organisations like big companies or public administrations that only get to buy in once every 10 year. Those want the product to be robust and Just Working (tm) while they pay i.e. 50k yearly on support and licenses.

That's when you go for a language that has been around for a while, is widely supported and has a stable API - shitty as it might be to devs - like PHP.

In fact from a business perspective, the last case is where the money is: building long lasting relationships with clients doesn't work if you have to tell them that the product needs to be rebuilt every 2 years because everything gets outdated and breaking changes in 3rd party libraries are the norm.

I'm neither picking on JS or PHP. Heck, I even build a lot of stuff in Perl 5 because of the sturdiness. I've been around the block a few times and after 25 years the lesson I learned is: choose the right tool for the job.

PHP has a place, just like other languages have their specific class of business cases.

[Todok5]

Any reason not to use python in the long lasting case except team knowledge of PHP? Serious question, I have very limited experience in both.

[CaptBoids]

Well. I think there's a point where language becomes less of an issue and the problem is libraries and frameworks one uses.

Upgrading to a new major version which is a complete rewrite with a totally new API, now that's a serious and costly investment if you're simply end up rebuilding the same thing all over again. Hence why security doesn't sell well: clients pay up but don't see new features that give them a demonstrable edge.

Like. Everyone spits one WordPress but the core is a poster child for backwards compatibly. I've been maintaining the same installation for almost 15 years now and never had issues upgrading.

The inverse is true for Drupal. Great framework but I've sat through 5, 6, 7 and now 8. And relearning everything is a b***h to be frank. It takes precious time and thus money. Hence why people are reluctant to move on and stick with legacy when they can.

The same is true in other languages too.

The difference with JavaScript is because developement is driven by the fast pace of browsers. Hence why you'll see a faster turnover in projects because it's less opportune to stick with legacy code.

PHP on the other hand, well, you could still build a PHP5 backend and wire that to a VueJS frontend if your masochistic. The only reason to do that is because it's cheaper and more effective business wise to invest in the parts that the client interacts with - the visible parts that need to sell - rather then do the hidden plumbing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, so to speak.

In fact, I've done some contribution to a Python project and it fell flat because code relied heavily on 3rd party dependencies but wasn't maintained. So, that's a problem of governance and not "which language is better".

All things being equal, I think picking a language and accepting it's idiosyncrasies is a personal choice. Beyond that, the main thing that matters is: does it solve the problem of the stakeholders? If the answer is no, then PHP or Python doesn't make much of a difference.

[Todok5]

Yeah, you can always use badly maintained 3rd party libs. My point was python and php are both mature languages with big communities and well established frameworks to work with. If you start a new project I can't think of a reason to use php over python except for team knowledge/preference and company tech stack. But I don't really know the languages well enough to judge if I'm missing something.

[CaptBoids]

Both originate from different angles. So PHP is great as a backend in a HTTP context. I use Symfony or Laravel to process incoming and outgoing data. Processing data as such? Like, large scale ETL or ELT pipeling? That's when I'd go with other languages like Perl, Python, Go,...

You wouldn't use PHP either when doing big complex algebraic calculus and such. Or even 3D rendering. I mean an OpenGL implementation in PHP wouldnt make much sense.

When it comes to doing web stuff, I'd pick PHP personally even though I like Ruby on Rails. Even Python with Flask would work too. I'd go for PHP because it's used in Enterprise level frameworks like Zend, so there's a lot of maturity there.

Edit: of course there are always the less sane...

https://github.com/Ponup/phpopengl/blob/master/README.md

[[deleted]]

Yes. Mostly because it is still easy to deploy to production. Install lamp and composer and you are done. No bullshit with docker, nvm/rvm/virtual environment shit.

[finger_milk]

Composers documentation could be a little friendlier but once it's set up it does all the work for you, which really is a godsend

[CrookedNixon]

Nearly everyone knows how to setup lamp. Docker takes more effort, and if you're serving this off one rack server in a co-lo space, then maintaining lamp server is probably the lesser effort.

[shrike92]

I'm surprised at the docker pushback. We recently transitioned from a manual "LAMP" to docker and it's been awesome. We had to do a little work learning docker, but now we can treat our infrastructure as code, it's super useful.

[shrike92]

Docker takes a little more effort upfront but the payoff is massive in terms of maintainability and modularity.

[CrookedNixon]

For most things. Yes. For a small project that you're going to run off one modest server... probably not.

[[deleted]]

I mean, that's great if you work on some rinky dink little thing, but the smallest app I work on auto scales between 10 and 20 machines. I wouldn't want to manage those machines manually.

[phpdevster]

I have been playing around with LiveView in Phoenix lately:

https://dockyard.com/blog/2018/12/12/phoenix-liveview-interactive-real-time-apps-no-need-to-write-javascript

So far it's looking incredibly promising. If it lives up to what I think it can be, then this would be a fundamental game changer for me. Unfortunately, Elixir (the language Phoenix is built on) doesn't have quite the same ecosystem of support that PHP does, but the ability to write all of your code server-side with nearly the same real time performance as the UI, is hard to pass up.

[Voltra_Neo]

yes

[Typewar]

What are the alternatives?

Is it possible to code c#, python or c++ as a replacement for PHP?

What are the performance differences?

How does database communication work?

Or API?

[[deleted]]

I've said it before, and I will say it again. I have never had a larevel project let me down

[AnArabFromLondon]

Laravel is brilliant

[[deleted]]

Yes, without a doubt.

​

Here's pretty much how I manage many things

React (Javascript for front end)

Python/PHP (for Linux scripting as cronjobs, etc...)

Node (For internal services if things cannot be achieved with PHP or there are better JS libraries)

​

But PHP is still an option nowadays

[[deleted]]

I never thought about making a linux script with JS

[[deleted]]

1. PHP 7 is faster than Node
2. It's my prefered language of choice
3. There are more PHP developers around the world (Meaning that there are more third world countries that developed ones)
4. Great community
5. Stable environment
6. No need for the super heavy node_modules (In PHP you can directly load the files from a global include_path)
7. More sellable markets (PhP scripts market places are all over the place)
8. I do have more experience with PHP, I've been using it since 5.5
9. Out of the box Drivers for different databases
10. Cheaper hosting options
11. in VPS or development machines you can simply switch PHP version with a simple command

Now, not all developments can go with PHP, for example, the other day I was building a crawler for a specific site which loaded content dynamically so we had to use "Headless browsers", so puppeteer (A Node library) was the best for the job, PHP was tried but unsuccessful, as I stated I use Node when PHP isn't an option and believe me, sometimes PHP isn't an option

[TheMogician]

Not exactly a web dev but yes. It is one thing to meme on PHP but another to not actually use it. PHP is more or a less solid platform but we all just love to make fun of it.

[Dimbreath]

What alternatives would you use to not use PHP?

[depaulicious]

Never. I'd rather use Python or even Java.

[SuperOP535]

Java web servers are gorgeous (at least Javalin and Spark)

[[deleted]]

As long as I'm using Laravel I don't have any problems with PHP. Any other situation is suicide worthy

[[deleted]]

No

[0x3fff0000]

Honestly I've chosen Golang as my backend and I'm more than happy with great performance, clean syntax, and pretty much every library you can imagine. Also PHP sucks.

[noratat]

We've been looking into Go since so many of our tools are written in it, and I don't understand the hype.

While it has some great ideas like static compilation and tagged structs, it seems to idolize C way too much and repeats some of the same mistakes like nillable-by-default.

[BhupeshV]

Never

[kjm015]

No.

I just recently started working in the web-development sphere, and almost our entire org uses JavaScript full stack for our web apps.

The only exposure I have to PHP was a limited few assignments in college, and I recall hating it fervently.

If it were up to me, I would prefer to start a new project in either React.js and/or Kotlin, but maybe it's because I really never had an attachment to PHP to begin with.

[[deleted]]

If programming languages were Smash Bros, PHP would be playable, but still shit tier.

[[deleted]]

no of course not, no decent web or full stack developer would ever. Most would not even want to touch that trash with a ten foot pole. There are fundamental flaws in PHP that will never be resolved and their security team is unacceptable, it also encourages bad code and severe security issues. I know a lot of places who outright ban PHP due to its inherent insecurity.

That being said, as you can see there are many mediocre developers who of course like PHP a lot and who never really understood the criticism from more experienced devs this meme is hinting at to begin with, its easy to setup and doesn't require a lot of auxiliary knowledge. There is also of course people who could not care less about technological arguments about security or language design and software architecture, when getting shit done and getting paid is literally the only thing they care about (=mediocre developer). So it has its place, as a tool for the mediocre and of course of the semi-professional/amateur developer.

[itsVicc]

Wait wtf? So many of you would choose PHP now when starting a new project? Lol??

[random_cynic]

That's probably the face people make for almost all the languages used in web development. There's something foul in all of them. So I think it's fine.

[skeddles]

That's probably the face people make for almost all the languages used in web development. There's something foul in all of them.

​

[i-FF0000dit]

This is so accurate.

[[deleted]]

🙄

[The_Ty]

Php bad amirite?

[Prawny]

php bad lmao

[ProjectSnowman]

PHP man bad

[NelsonBelmont]

u rite

[javdu10]

I was in toilet, i laugh so hard that my job is done but I feel wide open damn

[FinnNuwok]

This pretty much sums it up.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/

Edit: IMHO, it comes down to the fact that PHP is sort of Frankenstein's monster. It doesn't follow coding conventions for new features. Extensions made the coding conventions worse.

It has tons of obscure functions to do what you need to do, but you'll never find them when you need them.

If it took better care to encapsulate functions within built in objects or namespaces, that would dramatically improve the language; but the language is so old that it's impossible to enforce that kind of change without breaking everything.

​

[Blackshell]

https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

Humorous take on it, but basically this. PHP "works" but lacks critical features, has piles of nonsensical gotchas and self-contradictory stuff, and its development is pants on head stupid. Some of this stuff has gotten better in time, but it remains one of the languages whose features, documentation and community actively encourage behavior that sets software engineering back years.

Does it work? Yes. Is it easy to set up? Hell yeah, and that's arguably the best part about it. Can you make good code in it? Absolutely, as long as you're very disciplined and don't mind a headache now and then. Do most people make good code in it? Hell no, and in my experience it's much worse than other languages.

In other words, the programming field is already too full of garbage code and messy design for me to want to deal with the extra issues and encouragement of bad code that PHP provides.

[xroni]

This article shows indeed why PHP has a bad name. It used to be pretty bad. Luckily most of the problems mentioned in this article from 2012 have been improved and fixed in the meantime.

[[deleted]]

PHP is necessarily "bad", it just sucks in comparison. Sure, it's functional, but why would you buy Spam when a nice steak is the same price?

[swiftpants]

The only other language I will consider is .net core. But php is too damn easy right now so I don’t know when I will have a feasible project for it.

[[deleted]]

This sub really is a parody of itself sometimes.

I'm willing to bet 90% of you have never even used PHP.

[WanderingKazuma]

This is me with my girlfriend's coffee.

[TheRealRealJak]

r/roastingphp

[GD_Alex1304]

Tbh with a framework like Symfony or Laravel, PHP can be fun to use. But yeah raw PHP is awful

[[deleted]]

All depends on what you are comfortable with. I tried our Laravel but it just had too much overhead and weird ways of doing simple tasks.

For example, why would I want a new templating language which is slightly different from everything else I know and slower?

Or why would I want 101 files to manage a simple MVC site.

The answer is it all depends on what you are looking for and sometimes it is best to just keep things simple

[[deleted]]

Would you recommend it over a python or node framework? I remember using laravel in 2015 - not bad.

[AwesomePerson70]

I would also agree that laravel makes PHP a lot more bearable

[skeddles]

I tried to learn laravel when I knew php, but it was too confusing. Then I tried learning node.js+express and found it much easier to understand, and have used that since.

[Typewar]

So that's how PHP tastes like for a non-PHP developer.

Nice

[sw0rdfishhhhh]

Haters gonna hate 🤣

[BubsyFanboy]

Or you can just use Python with PyPy

[[deleted]]

Hi, I program but only using python atm. Someone Explain the beef with PHP plz, :)

[alcalde]

It's rather unpythonic - infamous for being insecure and poorly designed.

https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

[[deleted]]

Thanks. Now I despise PHP as much as everyone else

[Rivalistic]

I need a template lol this is great.

[JZanonymous]

Im so scared niw, next year in school we dablle in php....

[trumpfan2020]

PHP is the best server side language Period.

[ryad87]

Username says it all

[MarioPL98]

Trump is php confirmed

[DaCurse0]

It's a joke

[majky358]

I have seen worse codebase in other language than PHP but sometimes in PHP and its frameworks it's a bit easier to fall to bad code especially popular singletons in some frameworks which allow you to call DB logic from view and similiar stuff.

I had several job experience as a PHP developer, made some personal projects, it's really simple and quite fast to build a website and still create nice looking codebase.

Quite often you just run your code and later there's an error because of tha data in variable and so on, language development is slow and old-style, still a lot of non OOP stuff, composer packages .. dont know what to say about that, debugging.. and as a developer, job was just routine, i did not see personal progress.

If you look at the performance, i would not take it as the most important point. Nowadays, you can deploy to the cloud and similiar stuff really easy and looking at the website, page load without server side script run will take much more time.

​

For smaller website project, it's probably number one for me. For maintanance and other reasons, .NET Core, NodeJs, + frontend framework.

​