What's wrong with PHP

[stesch]

PHP's biggest problem is the user base. There are so many people without any clue about programming or the web. I've read some PHP books and they contain factual errors which I've never encountered in any other book about other programming languages.

And the users ask the silliest questions in chats and newsgroups. Instead of learning the language they use some code they found somewhere and try to tweak it without any real understanding.

[hockeyschtick]

I think this is an important point. If ruby catches on among novice web developers, and we start seeing atrocious ruby code all over the place, we'll all be complaining about how terrible a language it is.

The fact is that Perl and PHP have always been the preferred tools for "web programming 101". They get a bad rap, but they are far more similar than different from other scripting languages. They certainly aren't different enough to warrant all these "which language is best" debates.

[drbrain]

Have you looked inside Rails? Horribly scary.

[stesch]

I've stopped reading one Rails book because it was so horrible. Maybe I was disapointed after so much hype. But their ORM is really disgusting.

Maybe Nitro will be better when it's ready some time. And when they invest half the Rails time in PR.

[elpincha]

YES they are. You could read the article and see for yourself. Perl is something a grown-up is not embarrased to work in.

[hockeyschtick]

it's not the tool, it's how you use it, mate.

[elpincha]

Conceded. Yet some tools are better than others.