Here to see how many comments don't bother reading the piece and just react to the title.
> PHP is the most widely used language in the world for websites.
Being served does not equate to being used to develop new things.
Is there really that many new websites, website features being authored in PHP? Sure there is maintenance work and some popular platforms are written in it. But beyond that? I haven't seen a job posting in long time.
$data = [
'more' => [
'complex' => ['my value']
]
];
if (array_key_exists('more', $data) && array_key_exists('complex', $data['more']) && array_key_exists(0, $data['more']['complex'])) {
echo $data['more']['complex'][0];
}
echo Arr::get($data, 'more.complex.0');
// fetch the value of $_GET['user'] and returns 'not passed'
// if username is not passed
$username = $_GET['username'] ?? 'not passed';
I do think better languages do it better, for example in Elixir I can extract multiple elements out of an object at the same time.
object = %{nested: ["my value"], other: "some element"}
%{nested: [first | _], other: other} = object
PHP sucks because of the legacy it pulls with it that keeps it from being simple and elegant. It also fails pretty hard when you use it outside of it's niche, and a multi-purpose language > single purpose language.
The only thing I can think of is that HN rewards early responses with more karma, so people feel a need to rush past the "reading" and "thinking" parts and just skip to the "responding" part to rack up more internet points. Perhaps HN should look into ways to rework things to reduce or remove that incentive.