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Comment by zaphar | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I've been burned too badly by PHP. There are languages I haven't done in years that I would go back to if there was a compelling need to.

PHP is not that language. Far to many sleepless late nights trying to clean up some security hole. PHP is like that abusive Ex that everyone says has changed. It may be true, in which case, good for PHP

But I won't be putting myself in that position again.

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I've been burned by some language that create a poor developer experience with long compilation time and garbage collection.

Maybe V language (vlang.io) could pique your curiosity.

You can be burned by every program language if you dont know the in and outs. It all boils down to, pick the right language for the job and more important, know the language you choose.

Seems like to know PHP, though, you need to know all the history that the author has picked up by following the PHP space since forever. Which mysql functions are appropriate, etc. If knowing the language means "being a working programmer in 2010 so that you could gain a working knowledge of the old APIs and some context for the new ones" I'm out. Keep PHP, I'll move to a different language where knowing historical baggage isn't a prerequisite.

There are languages which have great design from the start though (like Clojure).

PHP, javascript are not them.

Probably that's the reason why Clojure tends to be in top of the "developer happiness" polls.

.... and the bottom of "jobs available".

Languages have foot guns. Most however don't default to being loaded and already pointed at your foot.

I did know PHP. I was actually pretty good at and wrote non-trival software in it. Even then the relationship was pretty abusive. Even when I was writing bug free code the author of a library I was using wasn't or a co-worker wasn't.

It may in fact be that PHP has improved to the point that the relationship isn't abusive anymore. But I'll never go back to find out. PHP and me were done years ago.

Saying that all programming languages are equally good is about as true as saying that all sorting algorithms are equally fast.

That i didnt say.

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