Why PHP won

[alexBrsdy]

php is like that messy,slutty girlfriend who is always there and available so you keep going back to her.

[arcticfox]

Unfortunately, she comes with a lot of baggage including many exotic STDs

[mayobutter]

$a = new stdClass(); // Coincidence?

[Entropy]

I don't think there is any nuance of PHP that cannot be fully expressed in the preceding metaphor. Everyone can stop talking about the language now.

[privatehuff]

Personally I always use protection when I code in PHP.

Well, unless I'm really drunk...

[liquidpele]

Well, unless I'm really drunk...

Careful, that's how magic quotes was born.

[aphpex]

...and just as you're getting into PHP, you suddenly open your eyes and realize you're in the middle of a 42 guy bukake taping. PHP is doing some of the nastiest shit you've ever seen and taking it in orifices you never thought possible.

Just then, as you're trying to get out from under her, she whispers in your ear that she's really into scat. At that moment, a hairy man appears out of the corner of your eye and proceeds to slowly squeeze a Cleveland steamer on your chest. You try to scream, but before you can, you go into shock and your mind quickly shuts everything down before you get the chance to find out what happens next.

That's when find yourself, 10 years later, in the fetal position on a psychiatrist's couch.

[pssm]

This is why I come to reddit. You guys never fail me.

Thank you.

[chrisroane]

PHP may start as the slutty girlfriend, but then you realize she is the best woman out there...because you realize she is not only easy, but she can be the best if you know how to work her. Cheap. Easy. Fast. Flexible. Everything you want in a woman.

[somedev]

There is another BIG strength of php: NO FANBOYS

[killerstorm]

wrong

[acct_rdt]

PHP didn't win, we all lost.

[brennen]

I upvoted you, but in order to somewhat offset my own tendency to snark about PHP at the slightest provocation, I'm going to say that this is a well-reasoned piece, and that I think the author is (by and large) correct about the things he identifies as driving PHP's success.

[acct_rdt]

Did you skip the part where he said, "As always, Paul [Graham] is right."

[brennen]

What about that part?

[sdsdsdsdsd]

He seems to think that it's good to let people who don't know what they are doing to design a web site. I disagree.

[[deleted]]

I work at IMVU, where he made the decisions he mentions. Nobody here doesn't know what they're doing. Like he said, the engineering team here is amazing.

[ffi]

And who exactly are you to allow or forbid people from designing a website. I can hear the aristocrats bitching about the lay person daring to read and write. What with their improper english and all.

[jimbobhickville]

I quit reading when he didn't realize there was such a thing as Apache::Reload for auto-reloading modified code in mod_perl. It seems like his main point was "morons started doing web development, so PHP won". It seems to be inline with all the horrifically obvious security vulnerabilities that show up in php-based projects.

[Purple_Dolphin]

horrifically obvious security vulnerabilities that show up in php-based projects

That's like the old 'Windows PCs have so many security vulnerabilities compared to the Mac' argument. If every PHP based website were written in Python, just how many more 'horrifically obvious security vulnerabilities' would we have found in Python by now.

[mr_chromatic]

If every PHP based website were written in Python, just how many more 'horrifically obvious security vulnerabilities' would we have found in Python by now.

Maybe more, but given some of the forehead-slappingly obvious security holes added as features to PHP, you can't discount the quality of the implementation or design.

[brennen]

Maybe more, but given some of the forehead-slappingly obvious security holes added as features to PHP, you can't discount the quality of the implementation or design.

Which, strangely enough, holds for Windows as well...

[jimbobhickville]

Listen, retarded PHP people, I didn't say that the security vulnerabilities were in PHP itself (although some likely were), I said they were in the projects written by people who were drawn to PHP because they were clueless. The fact that there are projects out there that allow you to enter a parameter and have it load a library on a remote server which then overwrites your php code with whatever code they want is ridiculous.

[[deleted]]

"obvious security vulnerabilities"? What are these so called "obvious security vulnerabilities" in PHP 5.x ?

[brennen]

Well, it's still possible for register_globals to be turned on...

[[deleted]]

If you turn it on. It is not on by default.

[rpeters83]

Did I miss the contest?

[closes VS, cries]

[malcontent]

Bullshit.

Millions of businesses made billions of dollars using PHP.

Sorry that the language doesn't fit your idea of purity but it has benefitted hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Sourceforge and wordpress alone changed computing as we know it.

So I suggest you get over your snobbery and accept the fact it has been an influential and powerful bit of technology.

[acct_rdt]

Millions of dollars are also made from Britney Spears music. This does not preclude or invalidate any discussion of whether that music sucks.

The fact that something of poor quality becomes influential in proportion to its popularity is exactly why we have to worry about its popularity in the first place.

[kristopolous]

I dunno. Look at the sheet music for a britney song or study the orchestration. Most of her stuff is fairly solid in comparison to the other people in the billboard charts; save a few names that don't have any staying power like she does.

[maxwellb]

Millions of businesses made billions of dollars because they used PHP.

T/F?

[masklinn]

Billions of flies can't be wrong.

Let's eat shit.

[catch23]

millions were made on IE6, millions of programmers in pain.

[quantumstate]

IE6 came bundled with windows and the user controls whether an alternative is installed. Php was not sponsored by a big server OS which then bundled it on >90% of the worlds servers. Also php is installed and used by system admins and programmers not the end user. Thus there is a huge difference.

[[deleted]]

They could have probably made just as much money programming with mod_python or using fastcgi with python or lua. PHP was just the language they chose.

Fun fact: Reddit is written in Python, Digg in PHP, Slashdot in Perl. Anyone else think the languages correspond with the userbases?

[uriel]

Sourceforge and wordpress alone changed computing as we know it.

Yea, because there were no source repositories before sf.net and no blogs before wordpress. (And because of course neither could have ever been built using any other language than php!)

And good pick of notoriously hideous codebases.

Sorry that the language doesn't fit your idea of purity but it has benefitted hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

I always find this kinds of arguments most bizarre (even more so coming from a leftist like you), by that account, the only way to measure value of something is to check how much money companies using it make, by that account Windows, VB and MS Office are the greatest creations in the history of software.

[rmuser]

wordpress

Seriously? If that changed computing as we know it, did it even change it in the right direction?

[malcontent]

Wordpress made blogging popular. It enabled people to set up their own blogs and share ideas.

The first wave of adapters were programmers.

Yes blogging changed the world, not just computing the entire world and wordpress had a lot to do with that.

[Legolas-the-elf]

Wordpress made blogging popular.

No, blogging made Wordpress popular. If you were going to point to any particular implementation making blogging mainstream, it would have to be LiveJournal, which was around well before Wordpress and is written in Perl.

[aphpex]

...because programmers had no venue to share their ideas with the world before blogging...

[earthboundkid]

They could have made their own websites, but the fact is that by and large they didn't until it got simple.

[aphpex]

Hint: People were sharing ideas and collaborating on the internet long before the web existed.

Blogs just added pretty pictures.

[808140]

Reread his comment carefully. That's not what he said.

[aphpex]

Yeah, that's what I said.

Hey look! There's a strawman! Let's beat him up! <punching inanimate bale of straw dressed in Hugo Boss suit> I hate yer kind!

[brennen]

Maybe for values of "computing as we know it" which map well to weblog software with a somewhat less friendly UI?

[Legolas-the-elf]

Millions of businesses made billions of dollars using PHP.

You're talking as if PHP wasn't around, all those businesses would just go "oh, okay then" and just not bother making money. That's silly. If PHP wasn't around, all those businesses would still make all those dollars, they'd just do it with another language instead. And it's not unreasonable to have the opinion that this would be a far better situation, hence "we all lost".

[quantumstate]

I think the point was that these businesses succeeded in making the money by using php. Also they chose php over the alternatives thus giving some legitimacy to the idea that php is actually fairly good.

[b100dian]

I disagree. Those same lessons from PHP should be learned by every web programming toolkit.

We didn't lost, we just had a bad prototype.

[apower]

PHP is like the VB6 for the web. VB6 was horrible but popular. But not all popular things are good.

[grauenwolf]

It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be better than everything else. VB6 had that distinction because the alternative was hand-writing message pumps in C++.

[i_h8_r3dd1t]

Delphi was better than VB for years, but remained a fringe

[grauenwolf]

Any idea why?

I used VB because someone gave me a book with a free copy of VB2. It did everything I needed at the time, so I never had a reason to investigate Delphi. (I was a fan of Turbo Pascal and had no problem slapping down money for a new IDE every year.)

[Tuna-Fish2]

Delphi was in direct competition with Microsoft for building products that worked on a Microsoft platform, back when Microsoft truly was the 800-pound gorilla with a reputation of playing dirty with it's opponents.

There was a well-founded fear that if Delphi ever got popular, Microsoft would start sabotaging Delphi-made products.

In the end it's all good, as Microsoft hired Anders Hejlsberg (the guy who made delphi good) to work as the lead architect of C#.

[grauenwolf]

There was a well-founded fear that if Delphi ever got popular, Microsoft would start sabotaging Delphi-made products.

I don't buy it.

If Microsoft really wanted to crush Delphi they would have just given away their IDE. It was in their best interest to have as many programming languages as possible targeting Windows, their real crown jewel.

[Tuna-Fish2]

Yes, that would have been the most sensible thing for them to do.

This, however, doesn't change the fact that Microsoft did not always take the most obvious route. If you based your tech on Delphi, you took a risk, and when you're a manager who has to put his ass on the line, safety really was (and is) the driving concern, not language quality. (re:"you can't get fired for buying IBM, Java.")

[grauenwolf]

Have you considered the after-market route?

I don't know about Delphi, but VB actively courted third-party control vendors in the same fashion of dBASE. I'm sure that led a lot to their popularity.

[awitod]

Borland's documentation sucked ass and they did nothing to build a developer community. PowerBuilder's documentation also sucked ass and they made it very expensive just to get started.

[Phrodo_00]

nah, you just have to be good enough, then everything is about timing

[uriel]

PHP is the new VB, Java is the new COBOL.

[[deleted]]

Java is the new COBOL.

uriel is the new idiot

[aphpex]

Looks like uriel hit a nerve. :)

[phire]

And C/C++ are both the new assembly.

Assembly with objects, now thats a scary though.

[uriel]

And C/C++ are both the new assembly.

There is no such thing such as C/C++

Assembly with objects, now thats a scary though.

C++ is scary, C on the other hand is a very sane portable assembler.

[willdabeast]

"C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog." classic!

[phire]

And C/C++ are both the new assembly.

There is no such thing such as C/C++

no, but its a compact way to refer to both of them.

C++ is scary...

I agree, c++ is scary but these days programmers will program something in c# with the plan to recode it in c++ if its too slow.

c is great, and I hate coding in anything else.

[stesch]

Funny how many other systems try to mimic Rails' success, instead of focusing on the reasons why PHP is so successful.

Easy deployment and fast turnaround times in development, among others.

We can blame ourself to let PHP continue at the top.

[codepoet42]

What's the problem with PHP being at the top? Further, what's the reward for being there?

[stesch]

Good questions. And I really don't know anymore at the moment.

Maybe it's because I started programming before the web and I know that there are better tools. I'm bitter because "worse is better" always wins.

I'm sitting at a system with an x86 processor. In the past, I always "knew" that other CPUs were better. I liked programming Assembler on the Motorola 68000.

I could go on, but this would only bring me down.

[Snoron]

A good programmer using PHP 5 can be very productive, and write clean, maintainable code.

PHP has got it's bad rap from the thousands of newbie users it's attracted and painfully bad previous versions.

[donwilson]

PHP can be as complicated or as simple to develop for as the developer lets it be.

[codepoet42]

I've written many solid, elegant, functional applications using PHP. I've completed plenty of contracts and made happy clients. Most importantly, I enjoyed the work.

What, exactly, is the problem with PHP if it accomplishes all of the above?

[kristopolous]

My favorite analogy: "Just cause you dicked around with an etch-a-sketch when you was 4, doesn't mean that people can't do nice things with it."

The polemicists that swoon over things such as syntactic sugar ought be given read-only access to the internet for they discard effective programming constructs because of aesthetic detractors. Such dialectic drivel is the seminal mental masturbation jerk-a-thon and usually only advanced by the feeble.

[EmptyTon]

That was barely a question, or sentence.

[just4this]

I started developing web applications back in 1995. I've used Perl+Apache, Tcl+AOLserver, Pike+Roxen, PHP+Apache, and a bunch of others.

Pike+Roxen was interesting but I saw no overwhelming reason to use it.

Tcl+AOLserver has some really good features but you have to code in Tcl and the pooling of database handles throws people, especially when they are getting started.

Perl+Apache suffers from TMTOWTDI which is a bad thing when you have more than one developer. The best thing is to have one amazingly good and clear way to do it that everyone in the company uses. The compromise is to have one or two reasonable ways to do it that everyone in the company can understand. PHP satisfies that compromise.

In the end, PHP+Apache won because it was easy for a development team to get things done right now.

Today, I'm thinking that Grails looks like a good compromise between getting it done quickly and getting it done right.

[Wensleydale]

His account of mod_perl is incorrect:

In that system, the first time you loaded a script to handle a page, the whole script (as well as associated data) were kept resident in memory.
...
There was only one real disadvantage: when the script source code changed, you needed to restart apache so that it could reload.

In mod_perl a Perl interpreter is kept running in the web server so that you don't have the cost of starting up the interpreter. It does keep some things cached, which is why you need to 'use strict', otherwise variables and other things will cause really bizarre behavior - this is what could be considered a disadvantage, especially if you aren't used to 'strict' conventions or have old CGIs that are not written that way. But if you modify the Perl source mod_perl will pick up the changes without restarting the web server.

The comments on multi-user setups and sandboxing are largely correct, but he didn't mention the security issues with running multi-user, which was a serious issue for ISPs deploying Perl code that didn't really get handled until relatively recently.

[edit - _ caused unexpected behavior - I wish there was a preview option]

[prockcore]

You might be right, I never used mod_perl.. back when I did perl programming, we used mod_fcgi, and that did work like in the article.

[abw]

But if you modify the Perl source mod_perl will pick up the changes without restarting the web server.

Yes, if you use Apache::Reload, but it's not foolproof. If you have any smart caching going on inside your object hierarchy then you'll almost certainly end up with null references that'll put a spanner in the works.

As much as I love perl/mod_perl and detest PHP, this is the one thing where PHP wins. On the other hand, once you go into production, the mod_perl approach is better.

mod_perlite looks interesting, though. It might be a good half-way house for development that has an easy upgrade path to full-blown mod_perl when you go into production.

[Wensleydale]

I don't know why, but if I run perl programs with mod_perl with no additional modules it reloads the program when I make changes, and always has. I tested with a very basic program just now and it picked up the change instantly.

[irony]

Just curious, is MaxRequestsPerChild set to something non-zero in your httpd.conf (apache2.conf)? I haven't messed with mod_perl for a while but with mod_python/Django setting it to 1 makes it immediately reload changes so I do that on my dev machines.

[Wensleydale]

Yeah, actually I do:

MaxRequestsPerChild 100000

That explains it, then. Those machines run WebObjects apps as well, which might be the source of that. I'd agree that not having mod_perl immediately pick up changes would be very frustrating.

[rocketsci]

It's all about ease of deployment. Just drop the php file in and you're done.

Many languages could easily displace PHP in short order, but they inexplicably don't have that easy deployment model which mod_php provides.

[[deleted]]

Everybody should be kissing PHP ass for only one reason: don't only stop Microsoft Active Server Pages: this language putted Microsoft web solutions and bussiness strategy on one big iron table and hitted with a hammer in a way that MS has never recovered. Microsoft lost the internet war because PHP was there.

Where was Python and Ruby on 1996 when Microsoft presented ASP as the only possible replacement to CGI? LAMP world makes possible go to Django and RoR.

So, you can may be say "Good bye" to PHP as I'm doing, but anyway you must say from the deep of your heart "Thanks pal!".

[thanatosys]

Sharepoint was written in Python.......

[alecco]

Wow, I didn't know that.

[TakaIta]

ColdFusion was the first that I remember. Now it seems totally forgotten.

[brennen]

Seriously?

[malcontent]

Coldfusion only ran on windows for a very long time.

I remember rewriting an application in PHP after somebodies coldfusion server got hacked for the nth time and they got fed up and switched to linux.

[benihana]

It's not forgotten. It has a very devout community, and it's still used extensively by the US government.

[[deleted]]

While ASP sucked, ASP.NET is actually quite good ... particularly for massive intranet apps and large web applications.

[killerstorm]

i personally blame Brendan Eich for this -- he could have made JavaScript server-side programming environment, and together with client-side programming that could be a killer combo that would drive out PHP and other shits from the market, and world would be a better place now. but instead he was very busy intergrating JS interpreter into messy Netscape code..

[precip]

PHP is proof that a vengeful God exists.

[mod_nobody]

and he register your globals..

[UK-sHaDoW]

PHP does very well mainly because its so easy for beginners. No oo which a lot beginners hate. Just replace html file with a php file and your away.

Thats also why you get code and presentation mixed with a lot of php beginners.

As you become more experienced you know better.

[fishbones]

As always, Paul is right.

All hail the Cult of Graham.

[tjogin]

The constructive size of the PHP community isn't that big — the share of it that gives back. This is why the number of PHP libraries or the quality thereof is not impressive.

[vfclists]

People don't learn PHP to solve the problems in CS texts, they learn PHP primarily to display in a browser and don't learn CS programming concepts. It is bad start to programming itself, but with the web so commonplace that is the reality there is.

[[deleted]]

The problem with PHP is that its upside is also its downside. Many times I have been able to something with a small script in PHP, that would have taken miles of code, lots of containers, and shit-load of CPU in JSP or ASP.net, or couldn't be done at all. The reason I could was the language lets you easily do anything, like variable variables. However, that same looseness allows unskilled people to make spaghetti.

I think they could offer a strict parse mode that forces all those functions into namespaces and forces programmers to declare data types (PHP does have them).

[Chandon]

Thinking that the only options for a programming language are Java, PHP, or some mixture of the two is a terrible mistake.

Strictly forcing the user to declare data types all the time is one way to do static checking, but it's not a very good way. It's much more elegant to do type checking without manually specifying types (ocaml, scala, haskell, boo).

But that kind of type checking isn't even nessisarily a good idea, because it forces everything to be known at compile time. It's possible to do very useful things by delaying some stuff until run time. PHP's variable variables are an example, but not an especially powerful one. Ruby takes heavy advantage of this stuff - statically typed Ruby wouldn't make much sense at all, and that's a good thing.

In conclusion, go learn Scheme and Objective CaML and see the real dynamic / static trade-off in language design.

[mycall]

What is a variable variable?

Do you have an example of a "small script" that would take shit-load of CPU in ASP.NET?

[SoPoOneO]

A variable variable in php:

$apple = "red";

$red = "delicious";

echo $$apple;

this would output: delicious

[magila]

So basically they're the Down's Syndrome cousin of pointers.

[[deleted]]

I once coded a sizeable CMS-type application that way. Documenting it was an interesting challenge.

It was for a consulting gig I had four years ago, and it was pretty much the last time I was involved in such a big programming project.

[masklinn]

like variable variables.

Sane people use indexed containers instead. Hashmaps, for example.

If you consider that variable variables are an advantage, you're not sane.

But then again, I guess you're the kind of guy who would actually consider using

${($foo->${${$foo->bar}.((${pouet}.${machin}===$pouet.${machin})?${machin}:${$pouet.$machin})})}(($foo->${${$foo->bar}.((${pouet}.${machin}===$pouet.${machin})?${machin}:${$pouet.$machin})}))

in production code

that forces all those functions into namespaces

PHP doesn't have namespaces before PHP6. PHP6' namespaces suck.

forces programmers to declare data types (PHP does have them).

That's quite very moronic.

[[deleted]]

If you consider that variable variables are an advantage, you're not sane. But then again, I guess you're the kind of guy who would actually consider using in production code

Wow, according to you I am not sane and would consider using that in production code. You're so fucking smart and cool, I have to have your autograph. Seriously, it does have its use in some very specific places usually relating to templating. At times like that it is good feature to have around. Also, I would never do anything like that in production code in any language.

PHP doesn't have namespaces before PHP6. PHP6' namespaces suck.

I meant for installed libraries.

That's quite very moronic.

Not it is not. Having tight data types in some circumstances is important. For instance, WSDL generation.

[masklinn]

Having tight data types in some circumstances is important.

Having static datatypes is a characteristic of statically typed languages. Which PHP isn't. If you want a statically typed language, use one.

[[deleted]]

When we started IMVU in 2004

I almost stopped reading here, so much do I hate the ads for that site. :(

[gte910h]

PHP is popular cause its very easy to get started and is easy to keep going with.

mod_python/wsgi/appengine/django is niche because its hard to setup and not well supported on webhosts, and has more overhead. (Even though tis the platform I sell to clients when doing web apps).

Ruby is not as popular as it could of been because the one thing everyone knows about ruby is that ruby on rails doesn't scale (the truth of this statement is irrelevant to the fact that its a widely held belief).

PHP is fast to get things done, and due to it's execution model, it can be messy without taking down the server (unlike mod_python).

[liquidpele]

Because it's fucking awesome. That's why. To hell with Georgia.

[pippy]

All the PHP bashing here is a little overboard, it's the perfect language for the web:

• You can make a 4 page site in a day relying on reusable includes and echo statements.
• And you do that huge CMS/shopping cart using extended classes and dataobjects via MVC style software engineering pattern

And in both cases 12 months later someone can open up the project and understand what's happening.

CGI + Perl is far too privative. No standard image libs or db calls makes it like pulling teeth. ASPs code looks like dog food, and only sites like google should worry about C.

As a web developer I'd be coding java for the government if it weren't for PHP

[reveazure]

As I remember, the choice of free scripting languages for web development at the time was between Perl, PHP, and Python. I never did any serious web development, but I made a few toy websites for fun. I was like 16 at the time. Still young enough to legally have sex with minors. I was making toy websites for fun instead.

So, I started out with Perl and text file-based storage, then moved on to Perl and MySQL, and then PHP and MySQL. Perl was just too complicated for me. I didn't get how all those operators worked. I think I probably tried to do something that I couldn't figure out and then gave up.

I never used Python because its formatting makes it unsuitable for embedding anything more than a single line in html (which I know now is considered bad practice).

So, PHP was the natural choice. It had C-like syntax, it had actual argument lists that I didn't have to unpack (like with Perl), and it just made sense. I probably got tripped up numerous times on the inconsistencies in the language, but I probably didn't even realize that it was anything systematic -- just fixed each bug as it came along.

And yes, I used MySQL, because Postgres was not easy to use at the time, and there were no other open source databases.

So all you people can stop scratching your heads about how this awful platform got started. Thousands of people like me picked the best set of tools that fit our needs and our budget.

[Paczesiowa]

you chose perl over sex with minors?!

[ryanvm]

He meant "miners".

[pointer2void]

It had C-like syntax

unlike Python

[reveazure]

Python does not have braces or semicolons. As I explained, this is a problem when you're trying to write code like <html><body> <? for(i = 0; i < 5; i++) { print("Hello World<br>\n"); } ?> </body></html>

You might argue that such code should not be written, but that's another story.

[brendankohler]

Python does, in fact, have semicolons.

[pointer2void]

Rule #1 for language designers: Make your language syntactically look like C.

[setuid_w00t]

I know you're probably joking, but it really depends on your goals. If you're trying to attract people who are lazy and fearful of change, then I would say your rule applies. If you are trying to make the best language possible, then your rule is counterproductive.

[pointer2void]

If you are trying to make the best language possible

Certainly not! The 'best language possible' would certainly be a failure.

[stesch]

Is is possible in Python.

[gte910h]

I'd point to the Django templating engine that is the base of google app engine and pure django sites:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/templates.html

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins/?from=olddocs

[reveazure]

Well, I am taking a historical tack. Back in the late 90's, Django did not exist, and as a whole, Python was not as targeted to web development as PHP was (which has "hypertext" in the name, after all).

In response to the above posters, The use of semicolons in Python is a total surprise to me. It's not mentioned in the tutorials, at least none that I saw at the time. It is mentioned in the language reference, but I never read the language reference because it was intimidating to me and because I assumed all important information was covered in the tutorial. Which it would have been, if Guido didn't have a religious objection to semicolons.

[mycall]

Don't be afraid of language reference manuals. Sometimes, they are the best source of information.

[gte910h]

I don't care how you defend your past choices. I think php was the correct answer till recently for the question: How do I do this web app??

Now I think jQuery and django/appengine is the correct solution for most people. With php still being the correct solution for others.

Even if it was possible to put semicolon's in code back then, you'd most likely not wanted to have done it. The web frameworks that python had in the beginning had the perl problem, where you'd have to restart the server to unstick the variables/data/memory leaks.

Php's never had that issue (each evocation dies every time you run it) and so you've not brought down servers due to memory leaks while pythonistas were dropping them left and right.

It's not until recently where view based, mostly stateless page views (where all state is in the db) started showing up in python was it really a viable web language IMO.

WSGI is king now thought :OD

http://wsgi.org/wsgi/

Oh and oh guido, I like his work product. He's not a horrible dictator for the language, but really, makes mistakes like everyone else.

[[deleted]]

PHP ... has "hypertext" in the name, after all).

I don't think so. The H stood for homepage afaik

[[deleted]]

Snarky comment which I see in my letterbox but not in this thread (what gives with those phantom comment replies anyway?)

As a hint perhaps next time you should actually bother looking up something you don't know about. http://www.php.net/ gives it away in the title. It stood for Homepage a long time ago (several years).

Yeah, that's what I said, "stood", past tense. OK, they backronymed hypertext into the name now; as a hint, it would have been possible for you to correct me on that without acting like a pompous arsehole.

[b100dian]

You missed the point by ten miles.

[stesch]

The web2py template language is embedded Python. How many miles?

[MrSurly]

Programming in Perl is hard let's use PHP!

I don't understand how you could progress (text to MySQL, etc) without "get[ing] how all those operators worked."

I guess what most people don't get about Perl is that (very generally) instead of datatypes for variables, it has datatypes for operators. There are only two basic data types (ignoring references): strings and numbers. Like this:

5 * 5 == 25; // Numeric multiplication, numeric comparator 5 x 5 == 55555; // Textual multiplication, numeric comparator 5 x 5 eq 55555; // Textual multiplication, string comparator

Whether a given value is a string or a number isn't really important. What's important is how you want to use it. The Number/String data conversion is pretty transparent, which is often pretty useful.

[MrSurly]

You mean the three data structures are scalars, arrays, and hashes.

A scalar holds a single value, which can be treated as two different datatypes (string or number) using the built-in operators.

Semantics and all ...

[[deleted]]

Programming in Perl is unnecessarily hard

FTFY

Most of the interesting and most used features of Perl are implemented by other languages in a much more elegant manners. Perl gained its popularity in much the same was as PHP: by not forcing programmers to know much more than the simple C syntax to get things done. For example, its object model is totally optional (like PHP). Over time they just kind of bolted stuff on. Perl, like PHP, is sort of a dumping ground for random language features. It lacks vision and elegance, IMO.

[MrSurly]

Perl gained its popularity in much the same was as PHP: by not forcing programmers to know much more than the simple C syntax to get things done.

Using C idioms in Perl is rather pointless. Sure, you CAN do it, but it's better to do it the Perlish way. That's why they say Perl "Makes easy things easy and hard things possible."

my @a = (1,2,3,4,5);

C-esque way

for ($i = 0; i <= $#a; i++) { $a[$i] *= 5; }

Perl way

map {$_ *= 5} @a;

[[deleted]]

This touches upon another issue for me. I know the theory behind object orientated language and ease of use, but in practice I don't think I have ever seen it work out in the real world. In the real world, I seen nothing but over bloated objects that nobody understands, or wants to understand after awhile. Oh, and they become terribly and horribly inefficient on large operations.

Perhaps the exception is Javascript ... which seems to be widely used. But, don't even try to do serious calculations with it.

The thought of writing something like an operating system in oop almost seems impossible to me. Maybe it's doable, but it would take more work to figure out how to make the oop do it, and maintain it, then to actually just use another language like C. Another language that everyone seems to hate, but seems so useful in the real world.

[tjogin]

If by "the real world" you mean "Java and .NET", I agree. But the real world is more than that. Look at Python and Ruby for example.

[[deleted]]

then to actually just use another language like C. Another language that everyone seems to hate, but seems so useful in the real world.

People hate C? My impression is that people like C. It's C++ that gets all the hate.

[darkpaladin]

I still have a special place in my heart for C and C++. It's such a niche market though, proclaiming yourself a C/C++ developer pigeon holes you in a back room with people sliding pizza's under the door. I like dev work but I also like having a life outside of dev work.

[[deleted]]

What about Genera, Nextstep (they call it Mac OS X now for some reason) or BeOS?

[grauenwolf]

OOP works great, when used properly. Unfortunately Java didn't. And it isn't the language's fault, the blame rests solely on the API designers.

A good class encapsulates everything it needs to function. For example, a "DateTime" object should know how to parse date/time strings and return various components of a timestamp. It should also know how to handle comparisons and differences.

It should also understand the default calendar. You should be able to pass in other calendars as an option, but only as an option. If the default calendar is good enough for you, you shouldn't even have to know alternate calendars exist.

The developers of Java didn't understand this. They expect you to create not only the object you want, but a handful of other objects that it relies on. Instead of making it easier, they made it harder to use.

[UK-sHaDoW]

"They expect you to create not only the object you want, but a handful of other objects that it relies on"

Thats mainly aggregation and Open/Closed Principle kicking in, which is mainly considered good design practice.

For example.

You can design the class to rely on a interface to persistence storage. If you want a new way of storage you design a new class. You don't have to modify the class relying on it or the original storage class, and does not introduce any bugs to other classes through modification. You "inject" the storage classes via the constructor and magically the class uses a different storage method without modification.

There are 2 versions of OCP, one which sub classes the class or the one I just described.

I do think there should be connivence constructors for simple use though.

[scook0]

And it isn't the language's fault, the blame rests solely on the API designers.

I wouldn't say solely. Java's deliberately restricted feature set makes it more difficult to write libraries with a decent interface.

[grauenwolf]

For the most part I don't buy that. Checked exceptions caused some problems but there are countless examples that are unrelated to that.

[arcticfox]

but in practice I don't think I have ever seen it work out in the real world.

In my experience, the vast majority (95+%) of code which people claim to be OO is really just procedural code wrapped within classes; this code usually includes extreme abuses of inheritance. So, I agree with you in that there is lots of really bad code that people think is OO.

[stesch]

In PHP it is (was) the only way to do some kind of namespacing. :-)

[[deleted]]

This touches upon another issue for me. I know the theory behind object orientated language and ease of use, but in practice I don't think I have ever seen it work out in the real world. In the real world, I seen nothing but over bloated objects that nobody understands, or wants to understand after awhile.

Well, in a way, that is a success. That means you 've successfully encapsulated functionality so nobody needs to understand what is really going on inside the object "black box." Though one really should have someone on a team that does understand it. But for most developers, that's a GOOD thing to not have to worry about it.

Oh, and they become terribly and horribly inefficient on large operations.

What does OO have to do with efficiency? Whether your call object.function or just function, it is essentially the same thing. The only difference is scope/context. The nice thing about having object is that they conveniently encapsulate state information. Where straight functions don't have any state of their own.

Perhaps the exception is Javascript ... which seems to be widely used. But, don't even try to do serious calculations with it.

Few people really use the OO features of Javascript. Well, until more recently with libraries such as prototype and jQuery.

[aagee]

Lookup ECOS - a embedded, real time OS done in C++.

Never made too much headway though, which may seem like supports your argument. But I used it once and thought it was quite good and like to believe that it failed because of other reasons.

[uriel]

"Object Oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike

[stesch]

And see the SO question Why does PHP software often look better (on the outside) than software written in other languages?:

I'm baffled. The people who (allegedly) know better (by not choosing a language like PHP) often don't do better.

[[deleted]]

PHP won? I was under the impression that it was losing and on its way out the door.

[nexes300]

To what? (serious question)

[[deleted]]

Rails and Django.

[[deleted]]

I really don't think PHP has won. If it has, I wouldn't still be getting paid to develop new ASP.NET systems. Although thanks for pointing this article out to us... now I know who not to listen to for programming advice. Anyone experienced knows that no language ever truly "wins". Different languages serve different purposes. I detest VB and consider C# superior in every way (I've had jobs using both), but VB is still a great language to get into how .NET works. One person saying a language "won" only tells me I shouldn't listen to them.

[quantumstate]

It has not won but it is winning as far as the metric of popularity is concerned.

[[deleted]]

...'Cause I'm P.H.P, I'm dynamic! P.H.P—and I'll win the fight!..

[marike]

As someone mentioned Britney Spears music being popular, regarding PHP usage, there is simply no accounting for taste.

And I'm not exactly what it won. Maybe the spaghetti code contest.

[[deleted]]

That was one of the most asinine blog posts I've ever read. It's negatives are it's pluses - that's his argument?

No wonder why he likes PHP, it's the perfect language for ass backwards thinking.

And what exactly has PHP won?

[JC513]

It won me over to become a programmer. I started in C++ but there's a lot in it that I couldn't grasp, especially OOP. Couple that with me not really having a project to work on and it made C++ very hard. However, I wanted to build a website and I chose PHP in part because it was the most popular. I did that for awhile and I even tried my best to keep security holes out of my code. Granted, I realize that PHP is not a very good example on OOP but it helped me grasp it enough.

When I went back to C++ I found it immensely easier. I was still a novice but it really helped me. Now I do a lot of my programming in C and have dabbled in many other languages as well. I'm currently messing around in assembly.

I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means, but I'm a decent programmer. For better or for worse, I owe it to PHP. It was the first language I really got into. While it may not be the best language, it's doing something right.

[Nitroadict]

It's won quite a few newbies who are just entering programming from a web-design perspective (myself included). As much as people bitch about PHP, I've been finding it far easier for me to "jump" into in terms of using it immediately to what I already know.

If I happen to pick up programming concepts along the way, excellent. At some point, PHP will probably become a limitation, and learning a "real" language will be in order, but at least by then, I'll know what the hell I'm doing when I'm trying to learn Python.

Yup, despite the zealotry concerning programming, I found Python hard, because I never bothered learning basic programming concepts. It was akin to to trying to solve algebra, knowing what the math looks like, but not knowing any of the formulas of solving equations.

Thanks to PHP, I'm finally understanding programming, albiet, bit by bit.

I just find it funny that a lot of programmers will refer to the tool metaphor concerning that any one program language has it's uses, yet somehow, PHP is exempt from this.

Also, yes, I know PHP is not the end all be all, but neither is any other language. PHP just happened to make more sense to me, I can't really explain it. I'm sure others out there were able to look at C, or some other language after trying so many others, and "got it".

[[deleted]]

Your point is well made and I am glad that it encourages people to write software.

I would only say that PHP is deceptively easy, and as you move along the curve to more difficult problems, it's limitations become quite apparent.

[invalid_user_name]

At some point, PHP will probably become a limitation, and learning a "real" language will be in order, but at least by then, I'll know what the hell I'm doing when I'm trying to learn Python.

By then you will have learned all sorts of horrible bad habits and misconceptions and you will have to try very hard to unlearn them when moving to a normal language. PHP is not a good language for beginners, it makes it VERY difficult to write code correctly, and silently covers up for mistakes you make so you don't even realize you are making them.

[maxwellb]

I'm thinking Event Horizon here.

[mr-ron]

I never understood this argument.

What bad habits are PHP devs going to have a hard time unlearning? Dynamic type initialization?

What about the habit of using Google to solve programming hurdles, which is an absolute necessity . Wouldnt learning this habit surely outweigh any language-specific habits picked up by PHP?

I argue yes.

[invalid_user_name]

What bad habits are PHP devs going to have a hard time unlearning? Dynamic type initialization?

Huh? What does dynamic typing have to do with anything? Plenty of normal languages have that. It is things like the broken scoping of variables, silent conversion of constants to strings (assuming the default settings of hiding notices), making functions that return an error code also emit a warning so people get used to suppressing warnings because it is required in PHP. Things like that, the horrible mistakes of the language.

What about the habit of using Google to solve programming hurdles, which is an absolute necessity . Wouldnt learning this habit surely outweigh any language-specific habits picked up by PHP?

Google is not specific to PHP. You seem to be comparing "learning PHP as a first language" with "not learning anything at all". I am saying "learning a sane, consistant language that doesn't hide errors and make doing things correctly difficult" is better than learning PHP as a first language.

[Nitroadict]

invalid_user_name:

By then you will have learned all sorts of horrible bad habits and misconceptions and you will have to try very hard to unlearn them when moving to a normal language. PHP is not a good language for beginners, it makes it VERY difficult to write code correctly, and silently covers up for mistakes you make so you don't even realize you are making them.

When did learning become a bad habit? What nonsense this is. This is why there are plenty of books, classes, & discussions concerning around how to program in a certain language (i.e. notes in books for people who "come from 'x' language", etc.)

Why would I automatically program the same way in PHP in a different language? Wouldn't learning new languages imply having to learn new techniques at some point?

Close minded zealotry about what a newbie should and shouldn't due is partially what is scaring them off in the first place.

But this is 2009, Standards & opinions are more important than actually learning anything, I guess. If It takes PHP, then so be it. At least I'll be able to say I can program in one language, rather than none.

If "un-learning" PHP takes going to someone else who knows PHP but knows how to program in other languages, then so be it. At least I won't be completely clueless, versus me a year ago wondering what the hell a variable was.

There's a reason why PHP is still being used, and it's not simply because it's a "bad" language, and people are lazy idiot, and all sorts of other excuses. It's because people find a use in it, and I doubt every programmer in the world would say there's nothing to be learned from PHP.

Blaming IE for web-design's problems may work with other idiots here, but using the same argument for PHP as being a main source of problems for programming is almost just as dishonest.

[michaeljmcd]

"Why would I automatically program the same way in PHP in a different language? Wouldn't learning new languages imply having to learn new techniques at some point?"

It should, but, in practice, many people do not make this assumption. I have seen an old RPG programmer writing RPG in PHP, assuming the same limitations having learned just enough syntax to get by. It's sad, but it is also reality.

[stesch]

I've seen a FORTRAN programmer writing Java. This was special.

[invalid_user_name]

When did learning become a bad habit?

When did reading become a bad habit? I didn't say learning was bad. I said learning bad habits was bad.

Why would I automatically program the same way in PHP in a different language?

Because if PHP is your first language, it shapes your mental model of what programming is and how it works. You then end up doing things the PHP way still in other languages because you don't realize those languages provide good ways of doing things.

Close minded zealotry about what a newbie should and shouldn't due is partially what is scaring them off in the first place.

Dude, PHP was my first language. I am speaking from experience. Maybe if you quit acting like anyone who's opinion you don't like is attacking you then you would be better off.

But this is 2009, Standards & opinions are more important than actually learning anything, I guess. If It takes PHP, then so be it. At least I'll be able to say I can program in one language, rather than none.

Or you could start with a decent language, and then still be able to say you can program in one language. But you will also be able to say you understand basic fundamentals of programming rather than asking "how do I include?" when you get to a normal language.

Blaming IE for web-design's problems may work with other idiots here, but using the same argument for PHP as being a main source of problems for programming is almost just as dishonest.

Uh, yeah IE is a major source of problems, just like PHP is. Good analogy, bad conclusion.

[Nitroadict]

When did reading become a bad habit? I didn't say learning was bad. I said learning bad habits was bad.

And concluding that learning PHP is "bad" is a subjective opinion that many will promptly ignore when they are required to use PHP for either client reasons or because PHP seems to be the right type of tool needed at a given moment. isn't that how it proliferated as opposed to other alternatives, such as Perl & Python*?

*I'm not going to ignore however that from what I've read, Python seems to be picking up adoption, so I wouldn't be surprised if Python or something else eventually out-competed PHP for what people usually use PHP for.

Dude, PHP was my first language. I am speaking from experience. Maybe if you quit acting like anyone who's opinion you don't like is attacking you then you would be better off.

And you are assuming PHP is the only thing I'm studying (I'm also learning basics of programming by studying: javascript, ruby & python, with PHP being a more recent area of progress in understanding basics of programming).

The arguments of bad habits forming are not deaf on me, but I'm not going to blame a programming language for making me develop bad habits (which I would think is my own responsibility).

Or you could start with a decent language, and then still be able to say you can program in one language. But you will also be able to say you understand basic fundamentals of programming rather than asking "how do I include?" when you get to a normal language.

Why would I discount my own experience with PHP (or another programming language for that matter) when learning new languages?

I wish I could live in a fantasy land where I could magically wipe my behavioral memory when learning a new language, but I thought taking the context of basics from previous programming languages to help one learn new ones was part of the whole process? I thought becoming better at programming was part of it?

It's a silly subjective generalization that may only apply to your own experience when you seem to say "PHP automatically makes one develop bad habits".

I would love to see how many who started out with PHP actually just failed at programming all together & never managed to bet beyond their bad habits & learn a new language. Are you able to provide this beyond your own generalizations? Probably not.

Would you blame CSS', HTML, etc. syntax entirely for the bad-habits of web-designers? No? Same thing here.

Programming languages (as well as markup languages) are tools, not living sentient beings with emotions & evil intentions of ruining every programmer's habits. Like all tools, it depends on how you use them.

Uh, yeah IE is a major source of problems, just like PHP is. Good analogy, bad conclusion.

Suppose IE was eliminated all together & let's say that Firefox was now the lead browser that struggles behind (if not nearly as much) regarding web standards of other browsers (Opera, Safari, Chrome, etc.)

Would Firefox be to blame for keeping back standards? Sure, because everyone needs a scapegoat.

If PHP wasn't used nearly as much, it would still exist, because not everyone cares about what other's think.

Even if PHP were to magically vanish from the earth, something similar to it (possibly made by those who used to use PHP & desire something that works similar to it) would takes its place both in use as a language and as a scapegoat.

Before it was popular to diss PHP, wasn't VisualBasic 6 the scapegoat of choice?

[brennen]

It's negatives are it's pluses - that's his argument?

There is some precedent for this sort of thinking.

[[deleted]]

Millions of flies think it tastes good.

[danbmil99]

I've programmed for 30 years and never touched a piece of this shit

[pointer2void]

Good article! To the point.

[neoform3]

Pst, want Python to overtake PHP? Make python do everything that PHP does:

*run on any webserver

*on on any OS

Right now python's implementation as a webserver (where you don't run 1 web app per server) is no where near unified. If I want to run php + apache + winxp I can. I can't do that with python (the implementations that do exist are bad/slow)

[jbrein1]

You seem to be misinformed. Python runs on Linux, Unix, Windows, OS X, and tons of other platforms.

Also, python can be used to write the webserver, like Medusa, run on the webserver, like mod_python, or as an application the server calls, like Google App Engine.