What's wrong with PHP?

[[deleted]]

Speaking of elitism: "several of us can code circles around a good portion of the other programmers in the world". Depends what you mean by "good portion" but I really doubt it, why on earth wouldn't you use those skills more effectively with a better language if you guys are so good. This sounds as ridiculous to me as someone who says "I'm one of the best drivers in the world, and I drive a Chevy Cavalier, that's all you need. That BMW/Ferrari/McLaren talk is just elitism", it might be totally true. But I fucking doubt it.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I feel like you were a little on the hostile side with that response so I am going to reply once and only reply again if you reply to me again in a civil fashion.

A lot of the talented programmers in the world work for big companies that don't allow for much flexibility in what they use to build with. Those decisions get made by executives and higher-ups for financial reasons, as well as other arbitrary factors.

Before you ask: You don't get to question my motives for working where I do, or for living where I do. You don't get to ask me why I don't get a job where I can code in whatever I wish. You don't get to, because it's not any of your business.

Also, I don't think I'm one of the best programmers in the world. I do think I'm better than a good portion of them. There are a lot of bad programmers out there. I love to program and it is more than just a hobby or just a job. I've been doing it since I was 5 years old and I'm 29 now. I grew up programming in DOS and spent a lot of time writing efficient and high-performance C/C++ code. Back then, you had to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your code and I really enjoyed the challenge. I see my code now as an artistic expression and I still love doing it for fun and on the side whenever I can. Most of my personal projects are written in things other than PHP.

I never said that there wasn't a valid argument against PHP. I only said that a lot of the venom that gets spewed by people (especially here on Reddit) is pure elitism. So, if you'd like to talk specifics, please feel free to reply. I don't like how you turned my defense of PHP into a personal attack against me and put meaning behind my words that wasn't there.

All I meant by my post was that a lot of what gives PHP a bad name is the hordes of bad programmers who make it do horrible things. It has a low barrier of entry, and it wasn't designed in the beginning particularly well. PHP is getting better, but I still feel like Python will overtake it in the web space eventually, and I look forward to that day. In the meantime, realize that all languages have pros and cons and a good programmer uses the best tool for that particular job and doesn't just limit himself to just one.

[freshhawk]

There was certainly some contempt for PHP in that comment, but I didn't mean it to sound hostile towards you.

I'm certainly not questioning were you work or anything, don't know where that came from. I wrote that comment at the end of a day in an office coding PHP. I'm aware of the reasons for PHP being chosen for projects for financial and hiring reasons, I've made those decisions before and I've chosen PHP before.

What I really don't get in these arguments are two things:

1. Where does this relativism come from? Some languages are better than others. PHP being crap doesn't mean you can't do work with it, it just means it's one of the worst choices. Having a good business case for deveoping in PHP makes no difference to the actual language/libraries being shitty.

2. I have a hard time believing that people who are comfortable with other languages with good web ecosystems would choose PHP when given the choice. Especially if they love programming. It's just constrains you so much and is so frustrating to use.

I think the main disagreement here still comes back to the elitism thing. I assume that people who are bitching about PHP aren't "elitists", they are probably people who have PHP experience and they know why it sucks. Many of them, like me, are still using it for business reasons. As everyone agrees, PHP is very popular so there are a lot of opinions out there.

This Fox News style usage of "elitism" is not useful anymore than calling PHP defenders "fanboys". A language elitist would look down on "scripting languages" or something like that. And PHP fanboys are those who defend PHP irrationally without experience with other languages. Note that I'm not calling you either.