Hacker News Reader

Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

Why should I switch from PHP, a mature and stable language with an enormous support base, many libraries and an obvious career path? I need a more compelling reason than "it fixes PHP's idiosyncracies", most of which I have come to understand.

View on HN

In your case you shouldn't. :) PHP is string manipulation language, it's really hard to do anything else with it. (binary manipulation, network programs, binary streams, long running apps...)

That isn't true. PHP is a general purpose programming language. Binary manipulation is done about as often with PHP as it is with ruby. PHP has pack and unpack functions. Binary data can be stored in a PHP string with little overhead.

Also in practice PHP has been weak at certain types of string manipulation, because the template language doesn't lend itself to capturing the output in order to filter it. Intermediate PHP developers know how to save buffered data, but it isn't as straightforward as manipulating output data with rack or wsgi middleware.

You cant rely on long running processes with PHP because of its error system. And PHP threads are a joke. PHP is definetly not a multipurpose language ,it's a string processor ,otherwise you would not have to begin your scripts with <?php

> PHP is a general purpose programming language.

No no no no no no no. Nonono. No.

It's a web framework and template language built around a handful of C wrappers and awkward database interactions. It can't even represent unsigned 64 bit integers. Any complex math requires you to convert the numbers into strings.

PHP is an advanced template language for HTML.

Does it matter?

> PHP is an advanced template language for HTML.

PHP is a template language for HTML that's prone to CSRF.

Ha. PHP is a binary manipulation language, it's a bit more difficult to do unicode with it. Network, binary streams, and even long running apps are doable.

What do you mean with 'come to understand'? You can use them or you understand why they are there? Because I wouldn't call the former understanding per se and if it is the latter i'm interested to hear about it. If it is something else than 'the developer of x(a,b) was someone else than who implemented y(b,a) and he was lazy or somewhat opinionated, but just not enough to fix the other functions as well' that is.

I could have said "come to live with" instead. It works, it let's me do my job. PHP provides me with a good living (I primarily build boring CRUD apps, also using Python and Ruby).

I think part of PHP's popularity is that it offers a good balance throughout a product lifecycle - prototyping (because of the number of libraries), production (because it runs on anything), maintenance (because it's stable and easy to hire for).

The best analogy I can give is like someone selling me a car. Right now, I'm driving a 20 year old Ford because I'm more interested in saving money than going quickly. If somebody wants me to get a new car, they need to show how I'm going to save money, not just how quick the other car is.

I guess 'Slash' could do that, but right now the copy is not focusing on the difficulties I have with PHP.

Yeah I thought you meant that. I did too :) But I just hoped you had some divine insight everyone missed here. Shame :)

Nobody is forcing you to switch languages, this is just a hobby project made by someone

I agree. I was more balking at the title ('replacement for PHP') than the page itself.

Agreed. I've come to rely on so many different libraries, that I would need to see an API first.

I don't understand how you switch from “wow, guy wrote a language I can use in my projects” to “why should I switch from PHP, I need a more compelling reason” and stuff.

And yeah, PHP sucks. And your career path is something you should not think about at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com