

PHP's brighter future? On the "PHP the Right Way" project - lucperkins
http://blog.phpfog.com/2012/07/17/phps-brighter-future-on-the-php-the-right-way-project/

======
TylerE
I'm not going to waste time bashing PHP, that's a dead horse.

I'm just going to say that's it's a bit amusing that of the things he lists as
"revelations" python has had since:

1\. when dinosaurs roamed the earth (lambda)

2\. 2003 (wsgi)

3\. years ago (pip/easy_install)

4\. ages (db-api)

~~~
lucperkins
My point wasn't that these things don't exist in other languages. Again, I'm
not saying that PHP is objectively better than anything else. I know not to
play that game. All that I'm doing is remaining steadfast in my claim that PHP
doesn't deserve all the flak that it gets and that the language deserves
consideration for a whole variety of use cases. That's all!

~~~
papsosouid
But if it isn't objectively better than similar languages in any way, then
_why_ does it deserve consideration? "You can work around and/or avoid most of
the horrible problems in PHP" isn't a compelling argument in favour of PHP
when every other language just doesn't have those horrible problems to begin
with.

~~~
malachismith
In that case, shouldn't we all be using C?

~~~
papsosouid
I can't think of any logical way to put your post in context. Why would we all
be using C?

------
Legion
PHP is still usable, sure, but there's just not many compelling reasons to do
so, except in certain cases where it does offer a clear-cut advantage (low-
friction, newb-friendly development and deployment of simple dynamic sites,
for example).

I also find the "there's tons of spaghetti code in other languages" argument
tiresome. That's true, but well-designed languages tend to help keep people
off that path - or at least do a better job of doing so. PHP is not one of
those languages, hence the need for a "PHP the Right Way".

As asserted in the post, PHP is indeed used on a ton of websites. Most of
these websites were written when PHP _was_ the best tool for the job. But
languages evolve. Other languages have learned the lessons of PHP and improved
upon it.

PHP has done a fine job of "modernizing" itself lately, but it's still stuck
with a lower quality overall design than some of the alternatives, and those
alternatives have kept moving forward at the same time too. It reminds me a
lot of IE's "look, we've implemented that thing that the good browsers had 3
years ago" announcements. It's great that PHP is not standing still, and that
continued improvement must be awesome for existing projects that are built on
PHP.

But for me, starting new projects in 2012, there's zero compelling case for
using PHP, just as there are many old languages that would have been "the"
choice once upon a time, but are now replaced by better things.

~~~
ericclemmons
> ... replaced by better things.

I thought we agreed that different solutions required different tools?

It's 2012 and all of our new apps our driven by PHP+Symfony2 with AngularJS on
top. This combination has been _huge_ for us (my company, I mean).

Maybe what should be answering is what "things" are better compared to PHP
development with equal expertise. Like, what will RoR do for me that my
existing setup won't? Why swap Symfony2 for ExpressJS and a multitude of NPM
packages?

I'm alays eager, like most of the HN community, to be sold on the next great
thing that makes my life easier, code cleaner, and site faster. But aside from
language design, I haven't seen any apples-to-apples comparisons on the
applications of these "better things."

