NormlOverrated

>But we all know you won't. You'll buy this MacBook sooner or later

Try me.

Available on AWS in 2017.

That's... oddly neutral, yet slightly discouraging.

Still... if you were building a web application today, would you consider using PHP, a "flawed language"?

Hello Andrea... May I ask a question?

You're quite critical of PHP, and often claim it's bad and flawed. And yet you're a core contributor, are you not?

Well... what are your suggestions? What would you do? What's the future of the language? Should people bail or not?

>I just don't think anyone is really interested in doing so. Most PHP users don't care much

They care. They are interested.

But backwards compatibility is a huge issue. PHP7 is much better, it's faster, it uses less resources, and yet you still have hosts running PHP 5.3, some even running 5.2! How do you combat a crowd like that? I don't want PHP to get stuck in IE6 mode, and I sure hope the community voices their valid criticism and takes action.

PHP is too easy to get started with and is too popular.

You can even use WYSIWYG tools to create a website, and then proceed to insert small, poorly written PHP scripts in it. Try creating a PHP gig and start looking for developers on many freelance sites - you'll get tons of people who don't even know what the hell a function is, and yet their profile claims they're experienced in PHP.

>Wordpress developers

No offense to actual Wordpress developers, but many self proclaimed Wordpress "PHP devs" I've seen are only capable of installing Wordpress with a few plugins and select skins. Maybe they know how to edit a file or two in a plugin, but that's about it. And when you ask them what language do they use, they'll obviously pick PHP, even though they couldn't code their way out of a cardboard box. This drives the average wage down, but hell, even mom & pop shops need a dynamic website these days, and Wordpress giveth.

In fact, the market really wants Wordpress developers these days. I checked out many freelance sites like freelancer.com and upwork, and there are tons of gigs available for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and shopping cart setups. Hell, I'm currently looking to help out a friend by finding a dev to create a small website in PHP (or any suitable language, don't care), but the local shops only offer Wordpress and Drupal! Won't touch anything else!

Try finding a Python, Ruby, Node or Go shop who will only install scripts/CMSes and customize them. Nope, not yet! But given enough time and popularity, they'll have their fair share or developers who have no clue what the hell they're doing and will drive the average wage down. Just wait.

C/C++ and Java was like that. Since it was a part of most people's college education, everyone and their mom claimed they knew C++ or Java. It was on their resume, even though their knowledge was superficial at best. In my experience, Indian and Pakistani applicants were the worst offenders in this.

>PHP isn't quick.

As of PHP7... it actually is quicker than other languages in it's domain.

My first language was Pascal. The concept of combining strings and integers in PHP without any conversion was scary and magical to me at first, but the damn thing worked, as long as you were careful. I still get mad at people who complain about type coercion because they expect their programming language of choice to read their minds and wipe their ass.

And Dijkstra was kidding. As is Rasmus when he says he'll restart Apache every 10 requests. Hyperbole. Learn languages instead of a language and it'll click. It has to.

PHP also has IDEs, tons of tools, tests, and gets deployed with many services and scripts. It's an inconsistent language, it's used by newbies in a very bad manner without even understanding the bare fundamentals of HTTP, but I really wouldn't call it a garbage language. If it were, it would have been dropped ages ago.

But I see what you're getting at... if you need to whip up something quick, don't start experimenting with the "flavor of the day" language or library.

Could we not?

That thing was parroted a thousand times already and it really boils down to a personal rant about tons of legacy features rather than a properly worded criticism of the language itself.

The author is also really confused about type coercion in PHP.

It's been almost 5 years. Let it go.

Use this:

www.phpsadness.com

It maybe is... but not if you aren't Swiss.

>Hell, now there are people talking about a basic income for doing nothing

Yes, there are. And you know why? Because jobs are being more automated as we speak. What will people do? Where will they be employed? Instead of being happy for introducing driverless vehicles, automated machinery to maintain and harvest our food, we grow scared for our jobs and turn into Luddites. We should be thinking about improving humanity as a whole, not just going "me me me me!".

And I feel you are a bit blinded from your American standpoint. You know who paid for your GI bill and your ability to be in the military? The state - the working people. You most likely didn't produce anything of value in the military, nor did you likely protect anybody. Jose worked his ass off for the tomatoes on your tables, while you most likely stood around with a gun, if that.

>I agree with scripture, work or don't eat

There are many, many people on this planet, and in the US who DO work, but still can't find enough food to eat. Think about that.

HHVM is not a compiler that it used to be with Facebook, it compiles PHP and Hack into JIT bytecode now. PHP has opcache, which speeds it up quite nicely, and PHP7 has great performance improvements.

>PHP is legacy codebase used for simple CMS

Of course it is, honey...