$PHP = ;

However, some tools are not interesting for any job anymore and the only reason we use them is because of inertia. I've done a lot a php in the past, and i can't think of a single task thar I, as a professional developper, would benefit from using php to perform instead of something else in my toolbox.

The only reason i still do php at all is that some clients ask for it. Inertia.

I can, using my imagination, picture a situation were using php is better for someone, for something.

I can also aknowledge that php has been used to create very nice products at the time, including wordpress, joomla and prestashop.

But there is such thing as evolution in programming. And yes, php has been outperformed by several modern dynamic languages out there. There is no shame in it. That's life.

Same here, I always sell myself as polyglot developer.

And in spite of my opinions here, I will use languages and tools that I dislike, if that is what the customer needs as a means to solve their problem.

$=${$}[$]; $($);

Actually some time ago I found some piece of alien PHP code (a backdoor) in my server, and I couldn't understand it! I did't know the $($); syntax. After searching for that and not finding anything I discovery that exist one special Unicode character that is invisible.

Full code here: https://imgur.com/a/Cggdx

Especially at non-language specific conferences. I was at a talk once on Clojure where the speakers spent quite a bit of his opening bashing PHP.

Later he asked the audience what language they use, and as everyone blurted out theirs, I blurt out PHP. There was a literal gasp from the audience.

I could tell it was sarcastic all along: he mentioned mongodb.

100% sarcasm

Source: I'm British.

It was 100% joke/sarcasm, there were no true statements except the part at the bottom about Fuzz hiring both node and php devs. The graphs are jokes too. He is implying that re-inventing the wheel is a bad thing. Unfortunately, that's a strawman for any language.

Given the footer, yeah they’re being sarcastic.

I know people hate PHP, but I love it. I was able to completely automate my home theatre using it- it uses an Insteon Hub and HTTP commands to drive my dimmers, projector plug, and motorized curtain. I can control the whole room with a website. I can schedule shows or start something immediately and my PHP cron job runs everything, even bringing the lights up for the credits.

To me, PHP is extremely versatile and powerful.

good point

> HN can’t do emojis

I hope it is more a case of don't wish to do emojis.

parrot party, parrot party, parrot party

That’s exactly why I read the post, asking me where it will go with this strange statement;

Then I saw the emoji and thought « Ah. One more »

And then finally it was fun.

It's the whole point of node. Instead of threading it's all async. Then you just spawn more processes to take advantage of your additional cores.

It's a simpler model than trying to make everything thread safe and guess the correct number of threads.

They use it to spend hours of their day hiding the fact that it’s single threaded by doing EVERYTHING asynchronously.

It’s a great time sink.

I don't use Node, but my understanding is as follows:

Rather than blocking the thread on IO, you instead arrange for a callback to be executed once your IO operation is completed. The thread is then free to work on other tasks (e.g. other requests) while that operation is in progress. As a result, the thread is always busy.

The main disadvantages of this are that you are switching from straightforward top-down code to a continuation-passing style (mitigated somewhat by promises and async functions), and the fact that CPU-bound code will prevent other tasks from being serviced during execution.

There are similar facilities available in most languages now (including syntax sugar to help with things, such as C# through the async feature, and F# through the async computational expression), except that you also have the benefit of multiple threads.

The article is satire.