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Comment by dr42 | Hacker News Reader

Haha, this is so not true! Using php has nothing to do with setting up apache. You're mistakenly associating solutions with the language. It's like saying you can only write enterprise apps in java, or only write machine learning apps in python.

PHP has all the usual programming constructs and is easy enough to get into that I think it's a great language to start out in.

And discounting web apps as not real programming is just wrong. Some of the most challenging programming problems today are in the web field. Some people write low level software algorithms, and some write higher level ones that scale to billions of people using them concurrently. They are all 'real programming'. Not all web programming is request.getParameter("foo") and form processing.

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> PHP has all the usual programming constructs and is easy enough to get into that I think it's a great language to start out in.

Yes it does, so what? Programming is not just fors and ifs and classes you know. There is more to it. You won't learn it if you limit yourself to the PHP cage forever.

> And discounting web apps as not real programming is just wrong

Did I say anywhere that web applications are not "real programs"?

Huh? "You won't learn it if you limit yourself to the PHP cage forever" That's true of ANY language; you seem to think that just because someone starts out with PHP they're permanently crippled and unable to grasp higher programming concepts. Hell, I'd rather someone start out with PHP than, say, Pascal.

No. In fact, as I already mentioned, I started in PHP myself. The thing that annoys me is that "Meh, PHP is good enough" attitude, which a lot of people seem to share. With that kind of thinking, your progress will be seriously hindered.

On a side note, why the hate on Pascal? It's a lot better than PHP as a starter language, it teaches structured programming from the ground up.

Re pascal, that really was a language that had unpredictable order of evaluation. Not to mention its issues with forward declarations leading to infinite recursion. Fortunately i have relegated pascal to the attic of my mind. These days I seldom stray far from python or JavaScript. Both of which are wonderful languages. Java's ok when eclipse is used to auto complete the verboseness.

Start out in pascal these days and try getting a job!

I learned programming 25 years ago, assembly, pascal and c. Over the years I've learned and used Java, php and python.

PHP is only a cage if you let it be. PHP has all the tools you need to build anything. I prefer python any day, but I don't like to see people who never got beyond the newbie level criticize something just because they couldn't make it work for them. As the old phrase goes, a bad workman always blames his tools. The criticisms you have leveled at php are all the usual newbie ones, not understanding how stings and numbers are equated etc, it's like a python programmer not getting is vs ==, or a JavaScript programmer not understanding undefined, or a SQL programmer not understanding why null = null for purposes if group by, but not in equality testing. You have to undertake the language in hand properly before you can use it properly.

And yes you did make that assertion at the beginning of your thread. Go back to the first comment you made here on this thread.

> PHP is only a cage if you let it be. PHP has all the tools you need to build anything.

I don't think we understand each other. PHP has all the tools available to allow you to build anything within a certain problem domain, i.e. web programming. If you start with it, your focus will be shifted towards that domain. I think a better idea is to start with something more general-purpose, more consistent, get a good foundation, and then look at all the available options and say "ok, now I want to work in this field".

> I don't like to see people who never got beyond the newbie level criticize something

It is true that I don't have 10 years of experience in php, but I don't see why I should have continued investing valuable time into learning this platform when there were clearly better options available.

> not understanding how stings and numbers are equated etc

I understand it. I just think it's a bad decision to do it that way. Also note how all of your examples with other languages have reasonable logical explanations. The particular type conversion rule we were talking about does not have such an explanation.

> And yes you did make that assertion at the beginning of your thread

I only said "..slapping together websites (which is not really programming, let's be honest)" Web sites are web applications are different things in my book :)

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