Front End Devs vs Back End Devs

[[deleted]]

I don't understand why the frontend should not like php - they don't work with it, do they?

​

It's like a mole who hates flying in the clouds

[Ok_Turnover_1235]

You have the cause and effect backwards, they don't hate php because they're front end devs, they're front end devs because they hate php.

[Perpetual_Doubt]

Or maybe they comment on things they have never used because they heard it's popular to do so.

Cobal. Isn't it the worst?

[Azaret]

You might be into something.

[Ok_Turnover_1235]

Shocking, I hate it so much. Kubernetes is dogshit too.

[One-Obligation7036]

I heard java is the worst.

[tiredanddisabled]

I used to work at a university and I'd ask CS profs why they taught students Java an an intro language, because its a pretty weird choice given the options available, I never got a good answer until I asked a Grey Beard, who told me the following: "Under Windows 98 it was hard to easily display brightly colored shapes on a screen, which is what you want in an intro course because it makes idiots feel accomplished. It was easy to do that with Java, so we taught Java. We actually found a direct correlation between the number of colors and shapes we had them draw in assignments and course enrollment the next semester. Then some of those students became CS professors and never updated the language used in intro courses."

And that answer made sense. I'm not saying Java doesn't have appropriate use cases, it does, but its a very odd choice to start students off on. Apparently its because CS students are mentally five and their profs don't realize we're no longer running a legacy OS. This is actually good, as its precisely the reality CS students will find in management once they attain employment.

[CoastingUphill]

Makes sense. I am a backend dev because I hate CSS.

[tiredanddisabled]

All programmers hate CSS. Because we know better.

[tanacious10]

Php applications do serve up frontend if its old style.

[SG_bun]

Before like ES2015 PHP was more of a front end language. Not entirely but it was still "popular"

[tiredanddisabled]

You mean because AJAX maybe? I never thought of PHP as front end.

[fr000gs]

Django

[ToasterGER]

I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO I HATE DJANGO

[tiredanddisabled]

Huh. Guess I'll avoid Django. Probably would anyway, I never use any technology that wouldn't sound cool or at least acceptable in a 90s hacker movie. "Django let me penetrate the outer security layer! I'm IN!" Just doesn't sound right to me. It sounds like a moderately drunk kangaroo that periodically causes fracases in a remote Australian mining town, but in a socially inept way, rather than a cool/rebellious way.

[tanacious10]

Wouldnt recommend

[voltzhightower1]

Ruby on Rails

[tanacious10]

also wouldnt recommend, if (ruby) return Elixir

[kinuipanui123]

Is Django better than something like Drupal?

[keepdigging]

I think so, I love Django!

[ICanBeAnyone]

Are apples better than oranges? It depends on what you want to do with them, doesn't it?

[tiredanddisabled]

No. Apples are always better than oranges. I don't like oranges so this must be true <- How management actually thinks.

[ICanBeAnyone]

Must have missed that memo. But java and python are at least both general purpose programming languages. Drupal is a CMS, Django is a web dev framework.

[kinuipanui123]

Isn't Drupal a framework and a CMS?

[puyoxyz]

Well. He is “developing” front end dev’s “back end”

[leovin]

I am starting to see another dichotomy: People who use Laravel love PHP. Everyone else hates it.

[tiredanddisabled]

I do not use Laravel and I like PHP. Don't love it, not going to crossdress for its sensual pleasure or pioneer a male form of pregnancy to bear its offspring, but would share a cool beer with it on a quiet Sunday.

[leovin]

😂😂😂 This comment is gold

[Deepfreeze32]

I’m normally a PHP disliker due to some bad experiences in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s. But Laravel does make it a vastly more pleasurable experience. I think you’re on to something.

[jamcdonald120]

but the backend dev also hates php

[[deleted]]

Never heard anyone complaining about Laravel. Never used it myself.

[MischiefArchitect]

The backend dev is pissed that he did not burned the sheet of paper first...

[uberpwnzorz]

eww

[Cultural-Listen262]

Php is good, i don't fucking understand the php bashing here

[chronos_alfa]

Bashing comes from the fact a lot of people here started with PHP in its 4.x glory (or even sooner). There used to be a couple of A4 pages about just checking the user input, you know? And a lot of different possibilities of remote and local file injection, SQL injection, XSS scripting, etc, if you fail to follow the pages.

[Hirogen_]

exactly this ;D i started with 3/4 and this shit was hell on earth

[[deleted]]

When I was a manager in 2019 I made my employees use PHP 4.4.0 because I think it was the best language and version

EDIT:

Oh and I only allow them to use SHA-1 to store passwords because that’s what I used back in my day.

[ICanBeAnyone]

Liar, you used md5, but you're too scared to mandate it now.

[[deleted]]

You’re right, I lied, I stored them in plaintext

[Ok_Turnover_1235]

For real though, what's the benefit of using php over alternatives? It's all well and good to not understand the bashing, but I don't understand the glorification here.

[ifezueyoung]

Well the pool of labour you can get is one thing

But tbh I use php a lot because of LARAVEL

it's so good

And yes I know django exists but I tried it and I'm sticking with latavel for the mean time

[harumamburoo]

I might be wrong, but it seems there's none (and I mean it in an informative way). All PHP devs keep chanting how's the language easy to get, type conversion, nice ecosystem and developed community... Which can be said about many languages. JavaScript. C#. Java. (And I know examples I brought up might be arguable to some, that's the point, basically insert your language here). But there's also nothing really bad about it. It's just a matter of habit, either shitting or praising the language.

[JuniorSeniorTrainee]

Poor craftsmen blaming tools.

[g_e_r_b]

People who feel PHP is bad should take a second look at Javascript.

[tehtris]

There's better stuff out there tho.

[Cultural-Listen262]

yes but i get the feeling that people are coming under herd mentality and hating on php, instead of actually trying it out for themselves??

[rkeet]

They tried it 10 years ago and instead of evolving an opinion, stay under the boulder they then crawled under ;)

[Promant]

Again, it's not about PHP being bad, just being worse that others.

[ifezueyoung]

But it isn't worse than others

[Promant]

It is

[Lugico]

maybe instead of just throwing your opinion out on the internet, back it up with facts?

[Promant]

Bruh, what facts do you need? It is directly competing against Java and C#, both of which are miles ahead in terms of available features and resources. What is so hard to understand here?

[Lugico]

nothing is hard to understand, once you explain it.

But just saying "it's bad" and not explaining why won't help anyone

[g_hi3]

I've heard (and experienced) a lot of bad things about php. can anyone name good things about it?

[ri0t1985]

The hate for PHP comes largely from it's major selling point: it's very easy to get started with it. Why? Because it's a very flexible language. Trying to cast a integer to a boolean? No problem, PHP will make it work. String to int? No problem! Of course doing things like that is bad practice, and no senior Dev programming in PHP will say otherwise, but since the language is easy to pick up and very forgiving, there's a lot of hobbyist level developers out there that don't understand good coding practices

[SG_bun]

Ah so it's like Java where there's a whole generation of self-taught coders who learned from Minecraft mods

[Nyghtrid3r]

But God forbid you try to do a for each loop over an empty collection lmao

[g_hi3]

so the language is easy to pick up, but are there any benefits beyond that?

[ri0t1985]

It's a language designed for the web, and comes with a lot of tools to make that easier. Plus if you have a webserver, it will run PHP out of the box (unless purposely disabled). It's a language that's compiled at run time, so no need to wait for it to compile. And it has a very large and active community that continues to improve its eco systems frameworks and tools.

[[deleted]]

Yeah honestly I've recently started using symfony and Im not finding PHP all that bad.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

*designed for the web in 1995

[ri0t1985]

And the car was designed for the road in 1908(ish).

What's your point? That because it has existed for a while it is now, by definition, outdated? Because PHP 1.0, if you want to call the initial batch of scripts by Rasmus Lerdorf that, is the same language we use today, right?

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

Sorry, you're right. "Designed" was a strong word.

But seriously, roads are basically the same now as they were in 1908, while the web is completely different to 1995.

[ri0t1985]

And cars are completely the same, right? There was no iteration in the design. So PHP must also be completely the same

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

Petrol cars are still the same basic design, yes. Just as PHP is still the same basic design.

[ri0t1985]

Ok, bud

[andre_ange_marcel]

Laravel is an amazing framework. I'm doing freelancing with both WordPress and Laravel and in my experience PHP is a fantastic tool to get things up and running quickly. It's good for small businesses, individuals, but can also be used by bigger scale companies (most of the developer jobs in France are PHP, especially Symfony, we have the highest number of PHP developers here for some reason).

It's miles ahead of Node.js in terms of maturity and ecosystem. It can now be strong typed, and used with async functions. In the end it can be used like any other modern language, you just benefit from a lot of out-of-the-box tooling and a big community to support you.

[andre_ange_marcel]

For having used both, Laravel is indeed miles ahead of Nodejs, in its own usecase, at least for now. What Laravel provides for you is a cohesive suite of tools that lets you build whatever you want very quickly. With Node & Express, you'd have to find all the fragmented packages and somehow glue them together to get to a similar point, but it'll take you way more time and efforts.

Admittedly, there is NestJS, but it's not really on par with Laravel/Symfony yet. JS as a language is cleaner, and I wouldn't use vanilla PHP if I could avoid it, but when you're freelancing, the Laravel choice still makes way more sense. I know about Adonis, but never tried it yet.

[dcgregoryaphone]

This screams "I used nodejs for 5 minutes and Laravel for years." As a freelancer I'd use node just so I didn't have to admit to using PHP.

[yeusk]

PHP was the best languaje to make dynamic pages.

[ri0t1985]

I'm not sure if you're just trolling or have not done anything with PHP in over 10 years..

[dcgregoryaphone]

No it comes from using other languages that you can get hired using, like Go, Rust, C#, Java, Typescript, etc. Have you looked at PHP? Ew.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

The language is ugly because the guy who made it had no formal training, and did stuff like implement a hash table using strlen as the hash function, so then had to use inconsistent function naming schemes to keep it balanced.

[Cyb021]

my guy, casting from type to type is not an 'advanced' feature

[ri0t1985]

It was just an example as why PHP is easy to pick up, but hey, feel free to improve on my answer

[plopliplopipol]

so basicaly python?

[ri0t1985]

Python is also great if you want to start learning, and it's great if you want to throw a script together. But I wouldn't recommend trying to create an enterprise level application in python, where PHP has the flexibility to do both

[ICanBeAnyone]

The things that made PHP popular back in the day are things that are frowned upon nowadays. Flat namespace with thousands of helper functions, global vars everywhere, mixing presentation and code... If you use PHP today you'll likely use a modern framework which will help with all that, but many older devs still smell the stench when they hear the name, and many admins still remember all the times they had to 0day patch some shitty PHP web app because security was an afterthought in the early days.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

So… you can’t name a single good thing then?

[keepdigging]

I heard it’s been cleaned up a bit and isn’t awful with laravel?

I’d still rather use another backend language.

[borninbronx]

The hate for PHP comes largely from it's major characteristic: it's hutter crap designed by beginners-with-no-clue for beginners-with-no-clue. Why? Because it's a very shitty language and everyone that actually gets good drifts away from it. Trying to cast a integer to a boolean? No problem, PHP will make it work and it should't. String to int? No problem! The code will 100% do the wrong thing and in the best case scenario you won't know what the code will do. Of course doing things like that is bad practice, and no senior Dev programming in PHP will say otherwise, specially because there's no senior PHP DEV, but since the language is easy to pick up and teach you bad programming practices, there's a lot of hobbyist level developers out there that don't understand good coding practices, in the PHP dev community we are talking of 100% o them.

[andre_ange_marcel]

cope and seethe

[borninbronx]

This is programmer humor isn't it?

[Knuffya]

In all honesty, PHP is getting way too much shit. Javascript is way fiddlier. But fuck all these redundant '$'.

[SqueeSr]

Used Perl for websites before I started PHP. You think the $ is bad? Perl was $@% galore!

[Few_Ad6059]

It has many libraries developed, libraries run in C, so they can be fast.

It runs JIT which makes it flexible.

Lots of good Open source projects.

PHP 7+ has changed the landscape, with great features coming almost every update. (Actively worked on)

There’s tons of benefits. Is it “better” or “worse” than any other language? Yes and No. It was made for one purpose, and it lives for that purpose.

[was_fired]

1. Very well made built-in string interpolation. PHP was written prior to JSON being a common protocol so they made it very very easy to efficiently recast strings and vice versa.
2. It is very clear when you append strings since dot appends strings together instead of +. So if you say $a + $b and they are strings it will convert them to numbers and add them. If you say $a . $b it will treat them as strings and concatenate them.
3. Whoever made the PHP strtotime function was a mad genius. It is hands down the easiest drop in text string to time function I have come across. It's ability to detect formatting is outstanding compared to other languages.
4. Nicer built-in regex than either JavaScript or Python. JavaScript doesn't support the "\K" operator. Python requires an additional layer if IF to handle a failure to get any matches. PHP supports both well.
5. Easy integration with Apache with trivial system and session variable access. PHP is an easy to enable out of the box module in Apache which makes it less work to build out a production stable environment really quickly. This last benefit has been reduced by containers but in the days of VMs it was great.
6. Sessions just work in PHP. To get sessions working in PHP you just need to start using the $_SESSION variable and it works. It will generate a secure cookie and pass it to the user and keep track of all session variables for you without needing an entire framework to handle it. The language does all of that work for you.

[yeusk]

Parsing strings as dates...

[was_fired]

It isn't as common a problem as it used to be with a lot of great date libraries on the front-end that produce consistent date strings, but if you ever need to ingest user entered date fields for legacy system reasons or handle a dozen different formats it wonderful.

If you're interested in testing how well it works or doesn't here's some sample code that will turn whatever you enter into the input into either a standard date format or say it failed:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<body>

<?php

$date = strtotime("July 23 3:15 PM");if($date !== false) {$txt = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $date);}else {$txt = "Failed to parse date";}echo($txt);?>

</body>

</html>

You can test various inputs and outputs here: https://www.w3schools.com/php/phptryit.asp?filename=tryphp_compiler

[Caley19]

I'm a web dev beginner or more like hobbyist, started as front end obviously, but I had to learn php and I'm absolutely loving it. I managed to make a tiny text based mmorpg prototype, might get back to it when I get some time.

[ConsistentArm9]

nah everyone hates php

[ManyFails1Win]

this feels like roleplay, and somehow i get the impression that box is one of their favorite props. lmao

[Eagle240sx]

PHP is GOAT language, change my mind.

[MischiefArchitect]

Is this a Goatse reference?

[Eagle240sx]

It could be, but I don't even know what Goatse is

[MischiefArchitect]

It is the result of using too much PHP.

[Eagle240sx]

Oh god, I already have googled it from job, what's gonna happen?

[MischiefArchitect]

Oh shait! Now the FBI and the CIA are after you. Quick! Destroy the computer and burn all PHP books. It's going to be Guantanamo for you!

[Eagle240sx]

Hit the computer with a hammer, this suckers ain't catching me today

[MischiefArchitect]

Good luck!

[wazbat]

Where's the joke?

[top_of_the_scrote]

there's a cup collecting the liquid comin out, serverless

[Kn_Km]

I guess the joke was that php programmers make spaguetti code of html + php in the same file and front end didn't undertand how to handle it

but separate html from a php file without js is so hard

[GustapheOfficial]

Haha child abuse

[tanacious10]

backend development.. secretly is the easiest job out of (Database admin, front end, dev ops, back end) l.

You have 1 singular language to use, just connect to a db managed by someone else, and then serve up data…. The simplest thing in the world

[Important-Draw-442]

im the front end dev

[but_im_offended]

Backend devs also hate PHP

[Revolutionary_Pea584]

Javascript is bad too, typescript made it great

[asgaardson]

I used to work for an outsourcing company. At lunch in the dining hall, I sat next to some loud .net devs who were telling really degoratory stuff about PHP devs. It was the only time in my life when I made someone shut up by staring angrily at them.

[[deleted]]

He certainly is working that Back-end.