Edit : seems like i wasn't clear. I don't mean sad for the people working on the project ( i'm sure they love what they're doing), i mean sad because as a non-php dev ( but basically everything else dev), i know many "better" languages that would benefit from having those kind of people on board.
Modern PHP, with Composer, the PSR standards, and the Framework Interoperability Group's efforts is a very different beast to PHP4 or <=PHP5.3. Sure, one can make an argument that a "better" language would be a nicer target for this sort of amazing talent, but that ignores reality: So many things run on PHP, that it's a good idea to fix PHP's issues. HHVM and Hack are doing sp (in parallel with the communities efforts), and I thank them for it,
Besides inconsistent/bad library argument order/naming, and a couple parser related issues that are slowly being fixed (like the "immediately use an array returned from a function" issue fixed in 5.4) I don't see any "huge amount" of quirks.
I do see a lot of bikeshedding, from people who could have found similar BS in most languages in major use.
I personnally started coding with Actionscript 3, I wish PHP looked exactly like that,while keeping the scripting and the execution model.
What does looking like Java have to do with being able to write huge codebases? Both Python and Ruby have libraries just as big as (or bigger than) Doctrine and Symfony.
which ones?you didn't name them.
These issues are the least of it's 'quirks'. The most important thing that is wrong with it is the badly or 'un-designed' core of the language. This result of this is that when you are implementing modern programming constructs, you won't be able to implement it in a consistent way (Most of the time the implementers does not care, but even if you do you ill see quickly running out of options.). So the modern features PHP get are often half-baked so that if you try to put it to real use, it ll come to a grinding halt.
Another aspect of this 'un-designed' core is that there will be a big fight over introduction of any 'core-like' feature. And often implementers wont be able to go with one philosophy and is forced to make everyone happy, ending up with very weird behaviors in the implementation.
Another thing is Exceptions. Because the exceptions was not available from the start, only a part of the language uses them. So you cannot rely on exceptions being thrown in a consistent way.
Another important thing is the most people who have been working on the language are hobbists and students with no sort of professional experience, and they end up implementing the features in the most awkward fashion (Eg: Methods on the datetime object mutating it).
One could go on and on and on..http://www.reddit.com/r/lolphp
1. set hhvm.error_handling.call_user_handler_on_fatals=true in your ini file 2. throw exceptions from your handler :)
P1 - "PHP sucks, it's a terrible language with no proper design and no serious person would ever want to use it"
P2 - "But tons of large projects are built on it and people ship with it everyday"
P1 - "So? It's still terrible"
P2 - "What do you think is so terrible?"
P1 - "Oh lots and lots of things, I wouldn't even know where to begin"
P2 - "How about this: let's throw boatloads of cash on it for a while and see where we get."
P1 - "Oh gee, I dunno if..."
P2 - "Boatloads of cash it is.
[edit] After seeing how my comment could be seen as ridiculing HHVM: I'm a PHP dev and I'm loving every second of what they're doing. I think they're right on the money.
That said, I'm appreciating the move to containerization and micro-services more... replacing some pieces with better options becomes far easier when those pieces are smaller. I can prototype in something like node, and move those troublesome bits to something like go or c++ if needed.
It's simply not viable from a time-investment point of view to throw away tools you know extremely well, are well entrenched, well supported and stable every few years because something new comes along.
1995: PHP, Javascript, Java, Ruby
Hack is a fantastic language and the work by the HHVM team benefits the PHP ecosystem as a whole.
PHP may have its problems, but many companies use it for its many benefits, mainly the ease of finding developer talent.
Or the best decision ever made by the company.
Given the choice of migrating / transpiling an entire codebase or making the underlying interpreter / compiler and language fantastic and speedy, the latter is a big, big win.
What would rewriting the whole thing in, say, Ruby or Python have done beyond limiting the amount of "PHP sucks!" critique they so often get?
Seriously, take a look at Hack. It's very well done.
You might as well feel sad that these brilliant people are not "curing cancer" or "eliminating AIDS" or something.