Available on AWS in 2017.
Readit NewsNormlOverrated commented on Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community · Posted by u/jqueryin
> And yet you're a core contributor, are you not?
A contributor to the core, certainly. I can't say if I'm a “core” contributor.
> Well... what are your suggestions? What would you do?
I can't say with certainty what I will do, but I can point to what I've done. I've tried to fix some things which have bugged me.
> What's the future of the language?
I have no idea. There's not really a roadmap.
> Should people bail or not?
If they want to. If they'd rather use something other than PHP, and they have the choice to, then they're free to do so.
That's... oddly neutral, yet slightly discouraging.
Still... if you were building a web application today, would you consider using PHP, a "flawed language"?
NormlOverrated commented on Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community · Posted by u/jqueryin
I've contributed to the PHP codebase for 3 years, and I think it's bad.
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?
NormlOverrated commented on Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community · Posted by u/jqueryin
I just oppose naming it "brand new". Its largely still just as broken as it always was. Fixing one issue per release will maybe get PHP to state comparable with other languages somewhere in the next century (if they stand still in the meantime).
Also PHP could easily add sane new stdlib if it wanted to, and keep supporting the old one as long as people want to. I just don't think anyone is really interested in doing so. Most PHP users don't care much, and few large companies that fund the work are mainly focused on keeping the ship from sinking.
>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.
NormlOverrated commented on Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community · Posted by u/jqueryin
> I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language.
Indeed, this becomes quite apparent when it comes time to hire. The vast majority of candidates that claim competency in PHP generally fall into two camps: 1) "W3C school grads" 2) Wordpress developers. Both sets drastically increase the signal/noise ratio.
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.
NormlOverrated commented on Taking PHP Seriously slack.engineering/taking-... · Posted by u/josephscott
PHP isn't quick. It isn't faster than other languages. It's just a tool, and if you know how to use it well, it will be faster for you.
If you want fast, build a static site. If you're iterating on your builds and doing something non-trivial, pick your tools carefully but don't be afraid to try new things.
>PHP isn't quick.
As of PHP7... it actually is quicker than other languages in it's domain.
NormlOverrated commented on Taking PHP Seriously slack.engineering/taking-... · Posted by u/josephscott
PHP always reminds me of the Dijkstra quote:
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
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.
NormlOverrated commented on Taking PHP Seriously slack.engineering/taking-... · Posted by u/josephscott
I work on PHP at my day job (in a public company), before this, I came from Ruby, and .NET before that.
I'm convinced the reason so many successful projects use PHP, is not because of any inherent nature of the language. I think it's the people who use it. They just don't care. A successful project needs to be started by someone that cares just enough, but not too much.
If you're programming in PHP, you're not running around talking about "convention over configuration" giving talks, or trying to make your code beautiful. It's a garbage language, and you know it. But it allows you to get something up and running, so dang quick. You're failing while the other guy is still updating his gem file. You're advertising while the other guy is trying out some fancy new deploy script. You're incorporating feedback while the other guy is just starting to get to work. When he finally fails, he's used up half his runway, whereas you, the guy who didn't give a fuck about your code has gotten past that first failure, and are finally getting some traction.
Hopefully, the next guy to join the company will clean up your shit. The other guys code may not look like shit, but it doesn't solve any useful problems... so they never got the chance to hire that next guy.
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.
NormlOverrated commented on Taking PHP Seriously slack.engineering/taking-... · Posted by u/josephscott
I'm surprised no one has posted this fairly thorough criticism of PHP from a few years ago https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
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
Let's be honest for a moment. Apple has never in the history been the one to wait for market to adapt to some new technology. They have been the one who immediately puts it on their products and gets rid of the old standards. Everybody has known this for years so this really shouldn't surprise anyone.
Generally speaking whether you like it or not, no one really cares if the ESC button is on the touchbar instead of being traditional physical button. Even fewer people care if there are ridiculous 32GB models available when most devs dont even need 16GB. Not to mention average consumers.
If Apple would give you guys 32GB option then people would cry why they can't get 64GB option. If the new MacBook wouldn't have touchbar then people would complain why Apple isn't innovating anymore etc.
What Apple is doing with their new MacBook is what Apple has been doing with their products for decades. If you don't like it feel free to switch to other laptops and run Win10 or Linux. But we all know you won't. You'll buy this MacBook sooner or later, then in 2018 when Apple releases new models you'll be here complaining about something again and you'll still buy that one as well.
Try me.