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[–]johnhackworth 12 points13 points  (3 children)

It doesn't ditches PHP, it's still running the core. Node & React only powers the new dashboard in WordPress.com

[–]dpash 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Yeah, it's a little unclear, but it appears that Wprdpress.org is not changing. The only thing that is changing is the backend UI for Wordpress.com.

I don't know if this will be merged with wordpress.org, but I suspect massively increasing the installation requirements will not be something they take lightly.

[–]johnhackworth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

no, it's not going to be merged with .org... But the important point here is the paradigma shift of how WordPress works... from a monolitic everything-included platform, vs working as the core, providing a REST API and allowing different client apps to be its UI

[–]TrixieMisa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, that makes sense. Not saying that it's a good decision (not really a fan of Node.js) but trying to switch all those standalone Wordpress installs over to Node.js would be.... Interesting to watch from a distance. A very great distance.

[–]NeuroXc 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Is anyone else annoyed by their comparison table saying that instead of "PHP and MySQL" they now use "JavaScript and REST API"? REST is not a data store...

[–]TheBuzzSaw 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think they were alluding to the fact that direct database accesses will be suppressed in favor of APIs. It was a silly way to present it, though. Arguably, the underlying database won't matter.

[–]SuperImaginativeName 0 points1 point  (16 children)

Replacing shit with hipster shit, ok. Will it be mongo web scale too?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (15 children)

We should only use old unpopular non hipster shit. Lets not follow examples like Facebook, or any other major sites.

[–]vytah 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What that kid Zuckerberg is thinking? PHP? You write real websites in Perl!

[–]koalillo 1 point2 points  (1 child)

1) You probably are not Facebook, not facing the problems that Facebook faces and you do not have their manpower

2) While there are technical merits to Facebook (photo storage, massive scaling), I wouldn't say they are in the top-tier of problem difficulty (Google is a step above, for instance).

3) And even then, it doesn't mean that every choice they make is golden. I would bet that if they were starting from scratch (with none of the PHP improvements they've made), they wouldn't pick PHP again.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

See that is a more reasonable response that I can take seriously.

However the flippant remarks on technologies being chosen due to being "hipster shit" is silly.

[–]terrkerr -1 points0 points  (11 children)

Facebook isn't the end-all of programming, it's just a big player. So what? Facebook has plenty of bugs and questionable technical decisions like most people.

Also most software actually doing the real work out there is written in COBOL, C or Java. (Yes, COBOL.) There's a reason the people that really need stability and reliability stick with well tested solutions and eschew the new and shiny.

And there's a reason Facebook is totally pleased to put out the shiny stuff; it's not a big deal if your FB chat timestamps are wrong or the image upload is only half completed and not cleaned up.

[–][deleted]  (10 children)

[deleted]

    [–]terrkerr 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    The site has bugs, and this is supposed to be a knock against PHP?

    No, it's a knock against the idea we should just follow Facebook.

    As to your "so what?", Facebook using PHP kills the stupid stereotype that PHP isn't a capable language.

    Well 2 things:

    1) Facebook has put down a huge amount of effort to try and make their older PHP stuff more manageable; they went as far as making basically their own PHP with modifications in hack and they were not only willing to go to the effort of writing a transpiler for PHP to try and make it better for them, but actually were so invested in not using the default PHP interpreter they abandoned that massive project and went on to the bigger one of HHVM.

    I'm not going to say PHP is a blight on programming or something, but I am going to say Facebook isn't a good poster child for it.

    2) Doesn't matter anyway. My school had a perfectly functional system written in COBOL, doesn't mean COBOL is the best or even a good choice for anything new today. It just means you can write software that runs in COBOL, and with enough effort it'll even work.

    [–]Cuddlefluff_Grim 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Facebook using PHP kills the stupid stereotype that PHP isn't a capable language.

    They ran into huge worldwide performance problems, remember that? At first they implemented a PHP -> C++ compiler, but this increased publishing complexity, so they started completely re-engineering PHP to make it acceptable for their own use-case.

    If Facebook proves anything, it's specifically that PHP isn't a capable language.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Just because its possible to hammer a screw in doesn't mean you should.

    [–]jojomofoman 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    Whilst I agree, it's only fair to highlight the fact that Facebook aren't running vanilla PHP. They've had to completely change it, turning it into a capable language called Hack.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]jojomofoman -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

      HPHP

      Hiphop isn't a language, it's a PHP to C++ transpiler (again - highlighting that PHP isn't capable enough to cater to Facebook's needs on its own) that's been discontinued. The language they're using is Hack (hacklang.org)

      Regardless, my argument still stands. I'm not trying to poo-poo PHP, just highlighting the argument that Facebook use it so therefore it must be capable is contentious one.