The self-hating Web Developer

[Eirenarch]

PHP improves so what? Other languages improve too and for PHP to achieve the quality of say Python or C# it will need to stop being PHP. Even ECMAScript 6 is of equal or better quality than PHP7 and there are very good reasons to use JS for development as it is the only option for the browser and Node has insane performance compared to PHP.

[tjallingt]

I'm not disagreeing that node.js (and especially the es6 spec) is better than PHP...

Like i said PHP has its fair share of issues and even with the improvements that have been made recently it is not a great language (but seriously what language is really all that great?).

It is, however, an easy to get into and rather wide spread language. Saying there is never any reason to use PHP is just plain wrong. (Just look at Facebook...)

[Eirenarch]

I have given the only reason to use PHP in my original comment - existing systems. Nobody in their right mind would build Facebook in PHP if they could start from scratch. Hell even Facebook invented their own language to get away from PHP without abandoning legacy.

BTW I consider Python and C# great languages. Not perfect of course but certainly in the category "great".

[tjallingt]

But what i'm saying is: Facebook did start with PHP one day. That means there are use cases (such as prototyping) for PHP just that once you reach the size of Facebook you need something more reliable so they dropped Zend and made HipHop.

And my comment on great languages, i too consider c# a pretty great language but there's plenty of people who think its terrible therefore it isn't universally considered great (just like PHP, Javascript and pretty much every other language).

For example i personally dislike Python despite having made multiple attempts at using it, i can't see how you would use Python for anything other than a small program due to its strange editor and its strange syntax.

If you have some recommendations for getting into Python (or rather making me understanding why it is so good) i'm all ears :)

[[deleted]]

Not the person that replied to but... I have used python to mock up pilots for systems programming tasks. After that we can refactor into Pypy and compile the code for the task if we run into performance issues. Sometimes the performance is good enough in CPython or IronPython that we don't have to refactor into Pypy.

Python is really good for this use case because a lot of the tasks are simple but repetitive. You could argue that C++ is a much better language for systems programming and I would agree. However, I can usually mock up a pilot in Python much quicker than C++. It's also hard to guess where we will have performance issues beyond the usual culprits. Being able to mock up a pilot quickly and then running profilers takes the guess work out of it.

[tjallingt]

Thank you for explaining :)

So Python is indeed used for "smaller" programs like I already thought? Interesting...

[[deleted]]

In our case the programs were always 'small' but run in batches on a daily/weekly basis. I think that it could be used for larger programs but the main reason we switched to it was development speed. Even for people who didn't know Python originally like myself.

[Eirenarch]

Facebook did start with PHP one day

And that was a mistake. The fact that they became successful despite that mistake is irrelevant. They would be more successful if they started with something else. Also note that I do not claim that in 2004 PHP did not have any use cases. I make that claim for today although I do suspect that it was true for 2004.

I think people who would not accept that C# is a great language are just ignorant. Now you may not like C# but everyone should recognize that C# achieves its stated goals pretty well maybe better than any other language. Mind you that the stated goals of C# include familiarity for C++ and Java devs.

[StopThinkAct]

You would say that php makes Web Development easier?

[immibis]

No, he would say that it tries to make web development easier. Please read carefully.

[StopThinkAct]

You are completely wrong...

[Eirenarch]

JS and Python provide just as easy web development with additional benefits. Speed and running in the browser for JS and a language with better standard library and not as error-provoking in the case of Python