
$PHP = ; - exonintrendo
https://medium.com/fuzz/php-a0d0b1d365d8
======
bpizzi
While being sarcastic and not really giving any meaningful technical
information (which is fine!), this quick read made me remember that I
definitely became more productive when I stopped seeing myself as a
'[php/node/ruby/c/whatever] programmer' and started describing me as a
'problem solver using the best tools for a given context'.

~~~
sametmax
However, some tools are not interesting for any job anymore and the only
reason we use them is because of inertia. I've done a lot a php in the past,
and i can't think of a single task thar I, as a professional developper, would
benefit from using php to perform instead of something else in my toolbox.

The only reason i still do php at all is that some clients ask for it.
Inertia.

I can, using my imagination, picture a situation were using php is better for
someone, for something.

I can also aknowledge that php has been used to create very nice products at
the time, including wordpress, joomla and prestashop.

But there is such thing as evolution in programming. And yes, php has been
outperformed by several modern dynamic languages out there. There is no shame
in it. That's life.

------
superasn
I get that the author is joking but seriously Php is still the best language
to get shit done even today. For small businesses Php is still the best thing
that has happened for them.

Also just yesterday I found this tweet by the creator of nomadlist which
really puts things into perspective :)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/93870716650815488...](https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/938707166508154880?lang=en)

------
smaili
FWIW, the reason there is an empty space after the equals and before the
semicolon is because there's supposed to be a poop emoji -- i.e., PHP is
"poop". It's a pity, my initial reaction seeing the headline was somebody had
found an interesting hack with that particular syntax.

~~~
fdomingues
$=${$}[$]; $($);

Actually some time ago I found some piece of alien PHP code (a backdoor) in my
server, and I couldn't understand it! I did't know the _$($);_ syntax. After
searching for that and not finding anything I discovery that exist one special
Unicode character that is _invisible_.

Full code here: [https://imgur.com/a/Cggdx](https://imgur.com/a/Cggdx)

------
seba_dos1
Both are terrible languages, popular only because of being the first to target
some important niche. There is no flame war to make here :)

------
pigeonlaser
This made my day: Things You Can’t do as a PHP Developer \- Tell people you’re
a PHP developer

~~~
donatj
Especially at non-language specific conferences. I was at a talk once on
Clojure where the speakers spent quite a bit of his opening bashing PHP.

Later he asked the audience what language they use, and as everyone blurted
out theirs, I blurt out PHP. There was a literal gasp from the audience.

------
ghaydarov
Is it just me, was author sarcastic all along? Hearing for the first time that
reinventing the wheel is a good thing.

~~~
stanlarroque
I could tell it was sarcastic all along: he mentioned mongodb.

------
jimjag
Many languages WISH they were as popular and as useful as PHP.

~~~
thrusong
I know people hate PHP, but I love it. I was able to completely automate my
home theatre using it- it uses an Insteon Hub and HTTP commands to drive my
dimmers, projector plug, and motorized curtain. I can control the whole room
with a website. I can schedule shows or start something immediately and my PHP
cron job runs everything, even bringing the lights up for the credits.

To me, PHP is extremely versatile and powerful.

------
pan69
Over the years I have come to notice that programming languages are, most of
the time, not important at all. However, tooling and ecosystem around a
language is.

Turns out, yes, PHP is not a very elegant language and there is still quite a
bit of phpclasses style gunk out there to be found. But, PHP has a fantastic
mature ecosystem. Projects such as Symfony, Doctrine, Composer, The PHP League
and PHP The Right Way, to name but a few, are all great examples of this.

To me, for building business type CRUD apps, PHP is still the most productive.

------
vgy7ujm
Now lets move to Perl 6.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16211864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16211864)

------
ianhawes
This past July it was adorable to see DHH and the RoR community excited over
the release of Active Storage, an abstraction layer for local and cloud files.

Flysystem for PHP had been around for almost 5 years prior, and Laravel had it
integrated almost 2 years by that point.

There are very innovative things happening in the PHP world that most
Ruby/Python elitists don’t even know about. I encourage everyone to take a
look.

------
krisives
Syntax error in a headline because HN can’t do emojis

~~~
oneweekwonder
> HN can’t do emojis

I hope it is more a case of don't wish to do emojis.

 _parrot party_ , _parrot party_ , _parrot party_

------
snomad
Brilliant caption to the jobs graph.

After 15 years of PHP I went to .net last year. Their are many things PHP gets
right and IMO are still better than ASP. For example, configuration is silly
weird and complicated in ASP net core, php.ini still handles all the main
settings just fine even after all these years.

------
fimdomeio
One serious thing one can get from the article is "By writing their own
framework, a developer can truly separate themselves from their competition
(...) I wonder how many people/companies actually just use this a business
strategy.

------
tangue
Written as a sarcasm but reveals indeed the narcissistic deficit faced when
developping in php. For some good or bad reasons the stigma related to php
means that as a php dev, you can’t be a cool dev.

------
hedora
Is node really single threaded?!?

What do people use it for? Interactive Prodigy games, or trawling AOL forums?

~~~
donatj
They use it to spend hours of their day hiding the fact that it’s single
threaded by doing EVERYTHING asynchronously.

It’s a great time sink.

~~~
nallerooth
After spending quite a lot of time trying to track down a memory leak in
asynchronous JavaScript, opening up a PHP project felt really comfy.

------
devsmt
Sarcastic remark about the latest fad inconclusiveness.

------
_nalply
Disclosure: Till today I program in PHP. Yesterday to get a CORS proxy to a
brain-dead API without Access-Control-Allow-Origin header. But I use PHP only
for quick throw-away solutions.

------
slouch
"It’s well known that PHP is a dead programming language"
[https://medium.com/fuzz/php-a0d0b1d365d8](https://medium.com/fuzz/php-a0d0b1d365d8)

"29% of the web uses WordPress"
[https://wordpress.org/](https://wordpress.org/)

Are these statements mutually exclusive?

~~~
amyjess
The article is satire.

~~~
slouch
Oh, woosh. I didn't read much further than that first sentence.

