Comment by threepipeproblm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by threepipeproblm | Hacker News Reader

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threepipeproblm

This lack of insight is why PHP developers have lower average salaries than non-PHP developers.

If you think PHP is looked down on by those who care about language features because of a popularity context, rather than because of asinine language decisions and limited support for modern programming paradigms, I think it's you who is missing it. Since any program can technically be written in any (Turing Complete) language, the fact that some big sites were made to work with PHP also sort of misses the point. When most of the big "success stories" adopted PHP, options for web-friendly open source languages were much thinner. Now if you look at the new development projects they highlight, you don't see PHP come up that much. Facebook, for example, is prominently using Haskell. I don't know anyone who both programs in Haskell and is willing to touch PHP.

Of course, many thoughtful criticisms of PHP have been discussed on HN. e.g. https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ & http://poincare101.blogspot.com/2011/11/php-sucks-but-some-f....

You're not wrong, but those articles are 5+ years old and PHP has changed A LOT in recent years — especially since the release of v7.

Still, that's not going to do much to change public perception, and I guess that's somewhat fair. PHP has earned it's reputation, even if many (but not all) criticism are now largely dated.

I'm just happy I switched to working on other languages, aside from the occasional Laravel-based side projects.

> PHP has changed A LOT in recent years — especially since the release of v7.

I was curious and wanted to see if that is the case. So I checked for the most basic thing. The arrow notation for lambdas. Surely they must've added that by now. Surely they must've added that before Java did. Nope, still RFC. Now I wonder if it's idiomatic to pass those "long form" lambdas around when writing in functional style or is it something nobody does. In any event this little discovery makes me think parent's sentiment seems to be still justified.

I guess that's one way of judging a software language's progress, sure.

Thanks, that is absolutely worth pointing out. But there is only so much you can do to fix languages when they are designed with problems initially and you want to keep old programs working. I have the same concerns about ES6 BTW, although JavaScript foundations are arguably less flawed overall (excepting a few areas that are just bat shit crazy).

Is public perception the reason you are happy to be mostly using something else now, though?

It's certainly nice when talking in developer circles, but no, public perception is not the primary reason — it's more of a bonus :)

I really enjoy some of the more flexible syntax and design choices present in some other languages. It also help that various job requirements over the year have required that I build a broader skillset. Finally, the growth I've experienced by stepping outside my comfort zone the past few years is probably the best benefit, which is a good experience regardless of which language(s) you start with.

In the end, however, as we both know, most decisions in software development are an exercise in managing tradeoffs. I guess the core of my argument is that, in the past few years, PHP has done a great job at improving its balance of tradeoffs.

Programmers discussing languages is like carpenters discussing screwdrivers.

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