Hacker News Reader

Comment by EngineerBetter | Hacker News Reader

PHP was originally called Personal Home Page Tools. Perhaps people should consider that before building large and complex systems using it.

View on HN

You know, I understand a certain amount of PHP bashing. It's far from the most sane language that I have ever used and parts of the syntax are flat out painful.

That said though, the version of PHP you are talking about was written 23 years ago. The language has changed a tremendous amount over 23 years. The state of the tool 23 years ago would be a very poor reason to choose or avoid it today.

Hell, Java is roughly the same age as PHP. Nobody in their right mind would dream of using that first version of Java today. It isn't that the tool itself is bad. Rather, the tool has improved dramatically over the last two decades.

> It's far from the most sane language that I have ever used and parts of the syntax are flat out painful.

Also applies to JavaScript, and to be fair, many other scripting languages. None of them were perfect in v.1 and to add missing features it was often necessary to bend them in ways that are inconsistent with the rest of the language.

Similarly, I'd argue against using a tool designed for scripting Java applets in browsers for anything large and complex as well. /s

Like Facebook or Uber? Both started with PHP.

So you start with PHP, and you keep adding hacks on top of hacks, until you realise it's hopeless. But you're too invested, so you create a new language that is kind of compatible, and a JIT for good measure. Of course, I hope you got really successful, because you'll need serious engineering talent and money.

No language/tech stack is going to ensure success, or have no challenges. But learning from the past is not a weakness.

> But learning from the past is not a weakness.

What's the lesson you are learning from?

The lesson I see is that any language, even PHP, will give you success if you "build something people want".

I read lots of startup "shutdown" stories - and I've not read one that mentioned the choice of "PHP" (or any language) as the reason for shutting down.

So if your comfortable with PHP - punch out what you need to get started...

Businesses usually don't fail because of picking a wrong programming language. If the tool that's best for the job is not the same as the tool you can make what you want the fastest, I'd say go with the tool that gets you where you want the fastest, even if it isn't the best. If you're successful you'll have money to fix that later on. If you're not successful then it doesn't matter which tool you picked anyway. If Zuckerberg would've learned another language first, there might not have been a Facebook.

Or you use sane development practices, well supported libraries and frameworks, and the latest version of PHP and run very successfully, because it's more than fast enough, shared nothing is a viable paradigm and being able to quickly see the effect of code changes without compiling and redeploying into a container is something you miss when working in the Java world.

Is it suitable for EVERY application? No. But then again, nothing is a one-size-fits-all solution for all problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com