PHP Addiction

The message you should get from this post is that familiarity with one's tools easily trumps any aesthetic flaws (consistency in parameter ordering, naming conventions, etc are really nothing more than aesthetic flaws and not "deep" [1] as the author suggests. After all, human language is inconsistent. After awhile you just get used to it and don't think about it anymore. Programming languages are no different.

I agree with Marco that it will take "years to master" whatever he chooses next. I always scratch my head at these "I learnt Python in a day" claims you often see around here. No, you didn't learn Python in a day. You learnt the syntax for a for loop in a day. Idiomatic Python takes much longer.

I don't agree that choice is the reason people don't use Linux on the desktop. Desktop Linux is the reason people don't use Linux on the desktop. I'm sorry but it's truly awful and probably won't ever get better. In the absence of product direction you have us geeks making everything configurable because, you never know, you may want to write your own window manager (and knowing us geeks, no two will agree on what's right) so you have no consistency, no grand UI/UX design and it's just terrible.

I use Linux/Ubuntu at work basically because I have to. There are advantages on having your dev environment mirror your production environment and Linux (over OSX) does actually have a package system (it's a messy hack on OSX) but I certainly don't like it.

The only computers I use that I truly enjoy using are my iPad and my Macbook Air.

Fear of the wrong choice isn't I believe what motivates most people. Fear of looking like an idiot? Sure. But that's different and will probably be the case with anything new.

People don't tend to weight up two or more options, decide which is best and go with it. They tend to use the first thing they come across until its flaws (perceived or actual) outweigh the "cost" of transition and appearing like an idiot for awhile.

[1]: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...

If I want to write a hello world application in PHP, it's neither as long as <?php print("hello world");?> nor as short as <?="hello world"?>

Rather it's simply: hello world. Just type in those 11 characters in a text file and save it as hello.php. Now load it on your browser [or run it from command line] and it will print hello world. I don't think it can get any more simpler than that in other languages. PHP was developed from the ground up as a templateting language for serving HTML pages. These other languages are more of a general type.

Therefore the replacement for PHP should come through a new language targeted as a replacement for PHP as Jeff said. Otherwise there always be extra web/template stacks for the developers to take care of. And that will be the first hurdle to learn and overcome for novice developers looking for switching to something easier.

But it's preaching to the choir. If you've never seen anything other than PHP, you won't understand two thirds of the list or why they're problems. (<- Not looking down on PHP coders there, rather I'm thinking back to when I started out on PHP and am speculating on how I would have received the document.)

How do we communicate effectively what makes other languages better to someone with no reference frame other than PHP itself?

The multi-core reality means that the long-term languages will have a strong concurrency model. Clojure and Go are two languages with strong concurrency models that are building momentum and have potential to go mainstream.

But for your first foray out of PHP, I would pick a language that has a large, well-established community with mounds of documentation, books, and resources.

My path out of PHP would be:

  1. Python
  2. Clojure
  3. Go

Then once you're comfortable with Python, I would venture into Clojure. It's different, but in a good way. And you get access to all of Java's libraries so it's practical now, even though it's relatively new.

And then look at Go. Go is building momentum fast, but right now it doesn't have the massive libraries that Python and Clojure have. However, in a few years, this will change.

PHP is good. I'm living proof of that. I'm a very successful developer and PHP does just about everything I ask of it. I also find it enjoyable (when you don't use crap frameworks or CMS' like Drupal). For those of you that do struggle with PHP, then what on God's green Earth makes you think you'll do any better with the next language? There comes a point when you've rifled through everything saying they are all junk that you gotta look in the mirror and ask yourself what's really the problem?

Interested in learning something that isn't PHP to code your web applications in? Ok. You have a ton of options and this is a very exciting time to be a web developer.

Do you want to lean towards stability and proven concepts and work within a full application structure? Look at Django and Rails.

Do you want to serve up responses from a simple script without a lot of extra pieces? Look at Sinatra and Flask.

Do you want to get in on the cutting edge and don't mind forging some of the path yourself? Look at Node.js and Meteor.

Got a high level decision made? Sweet. Now compare the primary languages between your choices (forget the framework for now). After a few minutes looking at each, which reads better to you? Feel free to go on gut instinct here: there are no wrong choices.

You've now made a choice for your next learning target. Now: don't spend years. Don't worry about knowing everything about the framework and the language. Google for "X tutorial" and follow the first link that looks reasonable and current. Do that tutorial. Now you have some bearings within the framework and have some idea of how it thinks.

Now. Pick something you want to build (a todo list is popular now, it used to be a blog or a wiki). Build it. You will make mistakes. You will be confused. Google for answers (if you're in Node.js or Meteor you will have trouble here) or hack until you get something working.

Throw what you built up on github and ask others to check it out. Build something else. Repeat.

If you are already a decent programmer with a good grasp of the web and how HTTP works: you will pick up any of these frameworks well enough to work in it in a month or so. In six months you'll be well advanced: especially if there are good books available for the framework/language you are working in.

Have fun!

It's built for smaller web apps, and rapid prototyping. The system of mapping endpoints to functions is incredibly intuitive -- if you've used Python before, learning Flask is incredibly easy.

I know it's difficult to compare or find an observer who could adequately judge between the two, but I wonder if Ruby made Jekyll easier to write and maintain? Of course, there's not any easy way to make that judgment without knowing how much effort Marco put into Second Crack versus what was put into Jekyll.

So when I start something that has a deadline in 24 hours or just a few days, I can either fall back to PHP to get something going fast or spend most of my time just learning a new language. So, I have been typically going with PHP…

I've found that the important thing is to take the time to set yourself up with the minimum environment that can get something, anything going in a different language: that means whatever is needed to print something on a page and get some logic working with GET and POST parameters. Because the nice thing with PHP is that it's so easy to write a single file that displays text on a page, or that responds to POST and GET parameters with some logic behind it. If I started with Ruby for example, I wouldn't know how to do this basic thing. (granted, with Rails and Heroku, this is easy)

My plan is to make Python my generalist programming language and I started to look at Flask (http://flask.pocoo.org/) for that reason: it's a mini-framework that doesn't take long to learn how to do these simple things. I can then play with it for simple things.

*though it can make things easier since I can just work on whatever I want in whatever language I want :)

Sure, there's a learning curve to any new language, and I would love to learn a "better" language, but, if you can't explain to a novice why a certain language is better, the novice is going to go for the smallest learning curve and the language with the best/most ubiquitous documentation.

What do Python or Ruby do that PHP can't? Are they "faster?" I've heard that they are more secure, but does that mean that PHP can't be as secure if a skilled developer is coding for security? People say things like "rapid development," but I've been using CodeIgniter and it seems pretty rapid to me. What it all comes down to is this: are Ruby and Python "practical" for novice programmers like me? Truly? If not, then doesn't it make sense to start with a language like PHP and then, when you have figured shit out, make the jump to Python or Ruby? I wish this was more clear.

Something that I'm not seeing people take into account generally when they decide to develop in a "new" language or complain about any established language additionally is how far along that new language is and how many people know it well. Choosing the best thing also involves how easy it is to get the help of others. An analogy might be an automobile purchase. If you are located in the middle of nowhere it might be a better idea to buy the Honda where there are multiple local dealers rather than the NewGreatAuto (pick any car with less market share that is better price and feature wise) where you have to travel 50 miles each way for warranty service.

I went through this with hardware back in the 90's choosing SGI servers that were better price and performance wise than Sun, only to find that many open source software ready to run was not available for SGI. And that there were less people that knew IRIX than Solaris.

Why do I need to switch?

You've already gone through the pain of learning how to work around all of its warts, and you will lose a ton of productivity immediately after switching to a new language. This may seem trivial if you are just programming as a hobby (and fun, even, to learn something new) but if you are a professional programmer, the productivity loss can be a problem. If you are a freelancer billing at a good rate, can you charge the same thing to your new client knowing things will take you twice as long and be less optimal, with bugs happening in new surprising places?

Taking on a new language needs to happen for a better reason than "the language I'm an expert in is kind of ugly." Are there libraries that are only available in the new language? Is there a different server architecture that lets you write applications with several times the performance in certain important use cases? These are valid reasons. "Too many functions in the global namespace" is not, especially if you already have them all memorized.

Like PHP, .PYP files would be templates with no limits on mixing presentation and logic. The filesystem hierarchy provides the default URL-routing.

But, you get the regularity/power/compactness of Python wherever you want it. (Perhaps, every line in a .PYP file beginning with '\' is meaningfully-indented Python.) If you ever want to hijack a part of the URL-space from the filesystem, there are routing utilities to do that.

Would such a glide-path from PHP to Python be a good thing? Or bad? ("The barbarians are at the gates!")

Go with Python if you already find it appealing.

a) You need to know it anyway.

b) Node.js is awesome and works the way web servers ought to work.

c) JavaScript, if you avoid the obvious warts, is a really nice language. Every other language I've learned either has as many warts as JavaScript or isn't practical.

Having picked JavaScript, it turns out to be amazingly powerful. Need to automate content production? Adobe's stuff is all scriptable via JavaScript. Want to write a 3d game? Unity uses a dialect of JavaScript.

I stopped myself from, unfortunately, not building things. I've spent the last year learning Ruby, Python, Rails, Django, and a half dozen javascript frameworks to get myself acquainted with it all. Only recently I took a position where I'll be working with Rails full-time. It's a tough addiction to break, but it's so liberating once you learn what else is out there and what you can do with it!

So if I was operating in the capacity of a recruiter for a project/company/startup, I'd definitely pick a skilled RoR dev over a skilled PHP dev, because the frameworks and the language themselves are handicaps for the PHP dev. Even if PHP is faster for a very small project, as soon as you move into a decent sized project, the frameworks start paying handsome returns for using them.

Note: I don't particularly love RoR/Django. Substitute with your favorite framework. It's just to illustrate a point.

I mean, I install node, I install the node package, I start the server...

And then it just looks for an "index.node" file or something in a directory? URL's would map to node files? It would use some kind of templating syntax like <? ?> or whatever, but the point is, it would be as easy to use as PHP. (Each template could get the URL parameters, and read session variables, just like PHP.)

I've used Express, of course, but that's overkill for throwing together a little website. People love the PHP model of files. It's clearly not theoretically ideal, or particularly scalable, but it works and is easy.

Anything out there? Maybe I should throw it together myself...

The fact is that my comfort with PHP stems from knowing what I know, knowing there are things I don't know, knowing there are unknowns I don't know, and knowing there are unknowns that are unknown. (Thanks, Rumsfeld)

Its this grasp on the language that gives me comfort. Mix that in with the universality of PHP and I'm more than willing to take my lumps for being told I solve problems using a shitty language.

There are shitty guns and shitty marksman. A good marksman can kill you with a shitty gun, but a shitty marksman will always be a shitty marksman.

Same with my distro - I am currently using Mint, but that may change, when my next boot hard drive fails.

Even with VBA, where I had done much of the work using DAO (started in 2005 with what I already knew) I am now trying to make the next changes using ADODB. The benefit being it will be easier to shift the back end to MySQL (or any other ODBC-compliant flavor) and have more then one language used in different front ends.

Ah, the learning! My joy in life.... And these days, thankfully little tuition required.

Between these two extremes run all others with their fair share of incongruencies and imperfections. They are just not popular and probably never will be. So I don't care. Let me know when there is a language that slaps me on the wrist for bad design and coding!

A huge part of node's appeal to me (and many others, I'm sure) was the fact that I already knew javascript. Making the switch couldn't have been easier.

I used to defend PHP; but now when I look at PHP code, even well-written code, it just makes me go "ugh".

It's not exactly mind-shattering stuff, but it's nice to have some common terms to describe the properties programming languages have that make them the kinds of products they are.

This discussion seems to be missing a key factor: context.

I seriously dislike PHP and its inconsistent, unpredictable features and libraries. I avoid PHP whenever reasonable/possible. I also avoid talking to mean, verbose or dumb people whenever reasonable/possible. But sometimes I just gotta do it...

So I use PHP, Python, [Java|Coffee]script, Ruby, Django, Pyramid, Express, Wordpress, Joomla, or whatever else is the right tool for the context/job.

In the context of building a 100M request/month API server, I used Python + Django. I would never have used PHP and I consider it a serious mistake to build large scale systems in PHP. Of course, others would choose Ruby, Clojure, Java, Scala, etc and those are all reasonable answers. I happened to be able to get the thing up and running fastest and most effectively in Python + Django.

In the context of currently re-building a client site that needs social features, a small CMS, etc, we're using PHP and Wordpress. I would never have used Python + Django because the client would not know how to host it and whomever is called on to fix a template is going to have to set up a Python stack, learn git and SSH, log into a VPS, etc in order to tweak anything.

Blends are good, too. We recently worked with a client where the website and application were built in PHP/Wordpress, but their API was Python. The "application" was basically a handful of Wordpress templates that pulled API data. They got the nice little CMS interface of Wordpress which made the website admins happy, but the developers got to do the heavy lifting in Python. Their anti-PHP developers were quite happy with the arrangement.

On Marco's post:

    If you can get PHP programmers to agree that they need to stop using it, 
    the first question that comes up is what to use instead, and they’re met 
    with a barrage of difficult choices and 
    wildly different opinions and recommendations.

I think the tension for PHP developers is in understanding on a personal-level how and when to make the transition to newer languages. Unfortunately, many seem to ignore the possibility that a transition is underway.

I would love to be able to not write PHP. But the language that replaces it has to be that easy to deploy.

If you want a nice introduction into the world of developing web apps with Python, I suggest you read the Flask user manual (see http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/). It not only covers the basics of the framework, but also seems to assume that you're a first-time Python user as well. It covers topics such as using virtualenv and pip to setup your environment which I found very helpful when getting started with the language.

Make small incremental steps.

The investment you think you have in X (PHP) is less than you think. It's much more in how to code, how web works, etc. the PHP parts are cruft you won't miss anyway.

They have the man-power required to displace it, as well as the serious need... although the only potential solution they have come up with HipHop / HPHPi is really lacking in community support. Its open source but rather undocumented, and took an entire day to get set up.

If they could produce a viable alternative to PHP... something that fixes the clear fuckups but doesn't try to fix everything I think it would have a real shot.

[1] http://davelang.github.com/

Edit: Perhaps I worded my question wrong. How do PHP programmers try and keep to DRY (ala layouts and view templates)?

An excuse for not learning something new.

-Bjarne Stroustrup

It runs half the Internet quite well, but if you went by the posting on HN, you'd think it was Windows Vista.

I've probably read every article critical of PHP that has hit the front page of HN in the last few years, and the one thing they all have in common is the vague refrain that PHP is a broken language. And yet the gap between tangible proof of that being the case in real world use and the gossip of it supposedly being true, couldn't be wider.

The real answer is "it doesn't matter". Of course python people will try to convince you to use python, and ruby people will try to convince you to use ruby. But both groups will agree that either language is far better than PHP. And as someone who likes neither of those languages, I would agree with both of them, just pick one. There's no "wrong choice" to worry about.

Hilarious suggestions contained throughout his post.

What? Really?

   "[php solves problems etc] but it's deeply flawed.
   [...] I promised my next project i would code in something else
   [...] but i went right back to PHP"

Or is it just a signal that PHP is indeed damn practical for web prototypes that tend to overgrow?

i'm pretty comfortable dumping C and assembly to microcontrolers (kidding, nobody is. damn datasheets full of mistakes) and automating every bit of what i do in bash and python. but i can't get away from PHP for web crap!

Do not write every part of a project in only one language. Following the UNIX "Small is beautiful", most projects can and are cut to small things that work together.

I often find myself writing a library in Python and publishing it's API in web.py, building services that rely on this API in Node.js, and making the final website in PHP.

Just out of curiosity, why would someone believe this? The syntax of python and ruby are nearly identical, but ruby has more tools and support for web-based projects. For someone looking to develop for the web, ruby is pretty clearly a better choice. And this is not knocking python at all, I really enjoy them both and there are many other things python has more community support for - don't get me wrong.

To support what I'm saying about the syntax, check out this comparison: http://hyperpolyglot.org/scripting - they are super similar, if anything ruby is a tiiiny bit more elegant.

    {%
    name = request.get('name','world')
    list = ['this','language','rocks']
    %}
    <h1>Hello {{ name.upper }}</h1>
    <ul>
    {% for item in list %}
        <li>{{ item }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>

Create a mod_next and try it on any web server like apache, nginx, etc. It should work without any extra fiddling with config files or installing frameworks or template engines.

It should just work!

That's the kind of platform that would leave php behind once and for all.