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Comment by robertoandred | Hacker News Reader

PHP can't run in the browser.

Ah but that's not what I am referring to. If you take a look at Vercel Postgres page [^0], you will see that Vercel is marketing a new way of writing server side rendered code, where you can write SQL code right next to the HTML-ish code for the frontend. So I'm just merely making a (meant to be humorous) comparison with PHP.

> PHP can't run in the browser.

Well actually, WordPress did it [^1] [^2]. They compiled PHP to WASM, so you can run our favorite web framework in your own browser.

I see your point anyway. Systems evolve. Tooling has to follow suit. PHP cannot achieve some of the feat today mega stack can. The problem arises when we apply the latest bleeding edge technology meant for systems that have to serve millions into our little MVP that may have less than 1000 users in your first few years.

[0]: https://vercel.com/storage/postgres [1]: https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/ [2]: https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground

You don't need a mega stack to attach an event listener to an element. PHP can't do that.

I dont think you are listening what he is saying. The vercel sql library is serverside javascript. This could be any language. What the library reinvets is pattern that has been criticised, hated and laughed at not that long ago. Especially in this form of raw sql mixed in between html.

It was specifically the react/you-must-have-api crowd who bashed PHP bacause of this.

I guess in the end PHP was what people wanted all along.

The Vercel SQL library doesn't mix raw SQL and HTML. It can't, since that'd easily allow public db access on the frontend.

What people wanted was the speed of a server-rendered starting point and the flexibility and performance of client-side templating and interactivity. JS/React can deliver this, PHP cannot.

You could do that with PHP backend + any frontend framework during the last 2 decades before.

OK, now you can do it using just one JS framework i guess? But is it a revolution? A breakthrough?

You couldn't do that before. Combining a PHP backend and a frontend framework meant you had two different html templates.

What are you event talking about? Are you aware that any touring completel language can output JSON... what two different html templates?

Thats not true. You had one .php file (or more, if you use includes) where everything was located: the HTML, if necessary any JS via <script> and interspersed with <?php … ?> depending on what dynamic stuff you wanted to output.

And this is parsed to one output file that is sent back to the browser.

Wow i just said that it is server side javascript because you were claiming ... and that its mixing raw sql with html template like what was hated in PHP. Have you even looked at https://vercel.com/storage/postgres - its right there in their example.

You are either trolling me or you are not really sure how these things work?

I'd say don't give anyone bad ideas, but we are too late:

https://github.com/oraoto/pib

Sorry friend, WordPress already beat you to it: https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground

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