
PHP needs a vision - dave1010uk
http://news.php.net/php.internals/64770
======
h2s
That closing appeal to deal with the abusiveness of the php.internals list
fell a little flat given the opening statement of "shut up". I loved Rasmus'
answer to this though.

<http://news.php.net/php.internals/64771>

    
    
        > The vision has been the same for years. A general purpose scripting
        > language with a focus on web development. You are simply saying you want
        > the vision to be more specific than that because everyone has a
        > different view of what web development means. But even if we narrow the
        > vision, it will still be open to a lot interpretation. We try to strike
        > a balance between the different and changing views of web development
        > the same way we strike a balance between appealing to weekend warriors
        > and top-100 trafficed sites. No vision statement is going to answer the
        > question of whether annotations should be in docblocks or in the core
        > language. That's simply not what vision statements do.
        > 
        > -Rasmus
    

Maintaining clarity of purpose in a project can be difficult sometimes. Kudos
to Rasmus for managing to do so in the midst of what looks like it's gearing
up to be another php.internals shitstorm.

~~~
cies
Personally I find nothing much 'general purpose' about PHP. The language has
configuration files! That alone prohibits me from doing anything generic with
it.

So all that's left for me is 'focus on web development'. And to be honest: I
think today it is not even so good at that. We have server side JS (Node),
Ruby, Python and Java -- all freely available with huge communities. Does PHP
stack up against these today?

I sure see that back in the days, when cgi scripts in Perl were the norm, PHP
had huge advantages over its direct competition in open source web dev land.

To me Rasmus merely underlines the lack of vision, or ability to act on one.

~~~
cies
On a more positive note:

I think the Symfony team actually has the vision: provided it has to be with
PHP, let's make a full stack web development framework (like Rails) that does
not suck, and create heaps of interesting components/libraries that can be
used perfectly on their own in the process!

These guys and girls are showing to what extend PHP can be pushed, they also
build a fair share of general purpose libs that the PHP community badly needed
(e.g.: composer).

It you are looking for PHP with a vision, line yourself up with Symfony: they
seem to have it.

Jokingly: If web development is what PHP is useful for, then Symfony simply
needs to be shipped with it :)

Plenty of vision is communicated from their site, and it all makes sense:

<http://symfony.com/symfony-at-a-glance>

<http://symfony.com/elevator-pitches>

~~~
jaequery
have you ever even tried Symfony? i think a lot of the debate is about how
people are starting to get fed up with the Java/c#-like direction PHP is
heading. symfony is not like rails, no where close to it. not sure exactly
where they started taking the wrong turn but it's really going the opposite
direction from other languages like node/python/ruby where simplicity is at
it's core.

~~~
orangethirty
PHP is one of the major corporate web languages. That is why its heading down
Java street. But that's not a bad thing either. Every language covers a
specific need. They can't all be everything to everybody. Sure, there is a lot
of horrible PHP code (specially in the online ads industry), but that does not
change the fact that the language works for the needs of a given market. I
don't get why people want to turn PHP into Ruby/Python. If you want that, then
by all means use Ruby/Python. If you _have_ to use PHP at work, then make
peace with it, and use a more modern PHP style. If you are going to complain,
just do it to your CTO or person in charge of choosing programming languages.
Though most don't listen...

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Where "modern PHP style" is defined by the kind of OO frameworkization
excesses that the Java community introduced to the world over 10 years ago.
It's not a specific need of the enterprise, it's just a historical
coincidence.

PHP happened to be the language that websites were written in at a time when
the old Java guard came into management positions, bringing with them their
failed ideas of what "professional" software design means.

I don't see why you think it is more justified for PHP to become J2EE than
Rails/Django. PHP as a language doesn't support one style any better than the
other. The only thing that really sets PHP apart from other dynamic languages
is that it is a page template engine by default.

So if you absolutely have to ask one of those "why turn PHP into xyz?"
questions, why not ask "why turn PHP into anything other than a page template
language?".

The answer to all these questions is, because programming languages are indeed
languages. People use the languages they know to say the the things they need
to say and they use them to experiment with new ideas. That's a good thing.

~~~
orangethirty
_I don't see why you think it is more justified for PHP to become J2EE than
Rails/Django._

I don't. But like you said (IMO, your comment is spot on), PHP has suffered
from the Java mindset. Though I do think that people should not have a
language do everything. But thats a problem at the enterprise level, where one
size fits all.

------
kjackson2012
I come from a C++ background, and early last year tried my hand at web
development.

After hearing about all the stuff about how PHP was an "old", kludgey
language, I tried to learn python, and go the webpy. It was doable, but I kept
running into issues all the time.

I gave up and switched to PHP, and I have to say that it was a much easier
experience. For the most part, everything just worked. Regardless of how
kludgey its history is, how inconsistent the syntax is, etc, it really does
work well. I'm now doing PHP development at my current job and it's been fine.

One thing I learned from a previous job was the saying "Your customers don't
care about your technology. They care about you solving their problems." If
you are solving their problems, they will pay you, regardless of whether or
not your back-end is CGI, perl, PHP, or whatever.

~~~
pippy

        "PHP Should Be Implementation Neutral, and Support All Paradigms Equally".
    

This is what I like about PHP. When you want a 4 page site, you can use
procedural and functional programming. When you're working on an enterprise
level CMS you can whip out the OO paradigm and you're set. PHP is a messy soup
but it does web better than most other languages.

~~~
taylorbuley
One nice side affect of this is that PHP can suit both novice and experienced
programmers. Newbies don't have to learn OO before they write Hello World.

~~~
nnq
Yeah, and thanks to this, you end up with a "beast" like Magento, written by
"experienced" programmers, and then you have novices tasked with writing
themes and components for it, but it doesn't work that way because the "beast"
is not "black boxed" well enough for the novices to ignore it. (I keep quoting
"experienced" here because the example Magento is just "Java written in PHP"
and I'd fire anyone turning up this type of code.)

~~~
Corrado
Having had the unfortunate experience to work with Magento recently, I
completely agree with your evaluation. My reoccurring thoughts were exactly
"this is Java written in PHP!".

~~~
nnq
Then please spread the word and stop clients/managers from choosing it! Let's
stop others from falling into the "look, it even has ebay integration!" trap!

------
saraid216
Stas responded here: <http://news.php.net/php.internals/64775>

"PHP's vision is being simple and practical and focused on the web. PHP is
what people use to get their first site off the ground. PHP is what a web
designer learns when he/she wants to go into programming. PHP is what a random
Joe uses when he needs to whip up a page and he's in "do it yourself" mind.
PHP is what you expect everybody to be able to handle, and everything to be
able to run. It is not to serve everybody, every use case and every possible
need."

Frankly, I don't understand this vision at all. Is PHP supposed to be a
beginner's language that a webdev eventually moves on from? I mean, don't get
me wrong: I used PHP for exactly that when I graduated from high school. But
is the directive really, "Real programmers don't use our language"?

~~~
herge
Python has often been called an easy to learn language and a good first start
because it tries to be easy to read.

Does that mean that it is also a beginner's language that people eventually
are supposed to move on from?

~~~
spdy
People who pickup Python will always stay and never move on completely.

My programming carear startet with perl -> php -> python and i found one holy
grail to solve most of my problems. Python had an easy entry point the same as
PHP but when you jumped over the first learning curve and discovered the
complete ecosystem it`s mindblowing.

I never had that feeling with PHP you could do websites and thats it. And most
of the time it gets a mess real quick. PHP will slowly phase out over the next
decade.

~~~
VMG
I picked up Python and am now using Node/CoffeScript for web dev. I'll
probably transition to Clojure in the future and I'll try Haskell after that.

> PHP will slowly phase out over the next decade.

Wanna bet on it?

------
cies
Too late if you ask me, let me explain:

Programming languages are hard to change, very hard, because it will certainly
break programs written in it in many places. So if you want a programming
language with a vision you should start with it, or simply accept it has no
vision and it merely goes with the whim of its maintainers. The latter is what
I believe happened to PHP. No biggy, there are plenty of languages that do
have strong visions and are very suitable for web-development; just move on.

If PHP was to implement a vision, it would soon not be PHP anymore, whether
that is a good thing is up to the users of that language. In that case I
foretell a hack of a lot of porting effort and a fork (facebook?)... :)

~~~
nikic
PHP has changed a lot over time. It moved from a C-style procedural language
to very Java-esque object oriented language. "PHP" hasn't been "PHP" for a
long time already.

It's always hard to do large language changes, but it's not impossible. E.g.
consider the change that PHP did from version 4 to 5. That was a pretty major
paradigm shift, with lots of broken code, but it worked out well in the end :)

~~~
cies
To me the OO features of PHP have always felt 'bolted on', yet Java is OO
from-head-to-toes. It only emphasizes my point: unlike a startup, a
programming language cannot pick/change vision when it is a grown-up.

~~~
objectified
Probably because they were in fact "bolted on". Saying that Java is OO from
head to toes, I can't agree with. Java has primitive types as well, and not
everything is a first class object (like methods). Python is more OO in that
sense, for example. In a sense, Java is having trouble incorporating modern
features in the language too. Just take a look at how generics are
implemented, and the endless closure debate.

~~~
cies
Python? Try to subclass an int in Python, and see that it is not as OO as you
think.

Ruby is more OO then Java for the reason you give, still there are primitives
but they have a thick OO-coating so you are less likely to notice they are
'different'. Try subclassing a Fixnum -- it works! But Fixnums have no 'new'.

------
phatbyte
Personally I think PHP has a bad rap for two reasons:

First: Community like HN and such, have lot of good and smart people, however,
lots of us are what I like to call "tech hipster", they like to always brag
about how they prefer some new-shiny language/framework whatever, as if that
means they know more than the average developer. Like an hipster when it comes
to some underground-indie-band.

It's pretty fun to see this, I laugh quite a lot TBH. And because of this PHP
is looked upon as a mainstream language, like POP music, always number one on
the charts, always on the frontpages, but like POP it lacks quality, good
taste and so on (what some people think at least).

So, many of us, just hate PHP cause it's POP and using a POP language is
cheesy and lame...whatever...and they just hate PHP because they read someone
else's saying it sucks. eg: "PHP sucks, because I use X"

Second reason: Other people on the other hand, have really fundamental reasons
to dislike PHP, however, I noticed that a lot of these people haven't used PHP
since version 4, and they are completely out of the current state of PHP. I
don't mean everyone, but most of them do.

I'm not a PHP fan or anything, in my work I have to use it, although I really
wish I could use Python, but I can't. So, instead I try my best to use it in
the best way I can.

I'm currently using Symfony2 framework, which brings a lot of good web dev
practices into PHP world. I'm looking at Laravel as well.

To be, most people still think PHP developers use a PHP as a single file where
they put PHP function on the top tof the file and html at the bottom and
such...and if you a good developer you can really make PHP shine these days,
because there a good tools and frameworks out there.

~~~
dirktheman
Nice analogy with the indie/mainstream pop, and I couldn't agree more with the
techno-hipster with their 'cool' underground languages. PHP is still the bread
and butter of the web, wether you like it or not.

I can really recommend the Laravel framework, it's quite elegant!

------
jfaucett
I couldn't agree more, and I'm a fan of PHP. It's a swiss army knife of a
language, allowing you to program however you want. C programmers can code
procedurally and java guys can jump in and basically go all out with the OOP
constructs provided. I've watched PHP get better over the years, and it
continually does so, but after having switched recently to Ruby, I have to say
a solid "Benevolent Dictator" would probably not be such a bad thing for the
language. Ruby has its paradigms, its own way of doing things, and you frankly
can't develop software in many ways PHP allows you to, but for me Ruby is
still a much more succint and beautiful lang, one I enjoy programming in more,
I think partially because it has this, a set way of thinking about software
design. I mean unit tests are in the stdlib for example, and you can't program
long in the language without using utils, gems, etc, that all are chalk full
of test suits that pass.

IMHO, a programming language should not just focus on itself or whether it has
such and such feature, but on how it can be used in the entire software
development cycle. This is something Go and Ruby are doing exceptionally well,
and is why I like using them so much to build software, whether its web or
otherwise. Probably because of its history as a template language embedded
into HTML (way back when :), PHP has still got some growing pains in order to
build up its software development paradigms, but I'm still hopefull, it has
gone amazingly far and continues to improve.

------
nnq
PHP has never been about the "language" as far as I see (hell, it was a
templating system "evolved into a language"!), but about the platform
(language + libraries + server + tools and what this meant for deployment and
scaling).

PHP (the LAMP "web development platform" that happens to include the PHP
language) got so popular because:

1\. ease of deployment

2\. ease of scaling

3! KISS by _keeping the layers of abstraction few and thin_ (at first it was
just a thin "templating" layer to reach the functions in C libs)

Only (3) has anything to do with the language itself, and is the only one the
could translate to a language "vision". If PHP were to remain true to itself
and its advantages that made it what it is today, their vision can only be _to
keep the layer of abstractions few and thin_ and this can only mean 2 and 3
from the OPs rant: procedural, functional and multi-paradigm enough to support
OO (I know, people don't write functional code in PHP but I think they should
- it really helps with KISS once you go over the "procedural brain rot").

P.S. As a developer I _hate_ PHP (viscerally, passionately, religiously and in
all other ways imaginable)! As a manager I absolutely love the "fail cheap,
fail fast" philosophy and PHP is one of the few languages that enables this
"flow".

------
dirktheman
Wow. I must say I'm surprised (not in a good way!) by the lack of quality of a
number of the comments here. I already knew that PHP isn't the language of
choice of cool programmers, but at least they make some sort of informed
decision. Some of the comments here ("PHP must die!" and "I use Rails" or "I
switched to JavaScipt") really show a lack of understanding about even the
most basic concepts of PHP, or programming in general.

I'm the first one to admit that PHP has its flaws, but that's not to say that
other languages are perfect, or 'better'. PHP is a Frankenstein's monster, and
no matter the quality of body parts you schlep onto it, it will probably still
work. Ruby on the other hand is stricter, more consistent. If you're new to
programming you can hit the ground running with Ruby (especially with the
Rails framework, but if you're new to programming, would you even know how a
framework relates to a programming language?). But if you want to go beyond a
simple CRUD-app, Ruby poses a lot of challenges that can be hard to solve
whereas PHP, well, just works.

My point is: you pick the right tool for the right job. For a lot of people,
the right tool is PHP because it's the only thing they know. That's not PHP's
fault, now is it? This kind of thinking reminds me of the clash between Apple
fanboys and Fandroids: to each their merits, but you can't seriously state the
one's perfect and the other one is utter rubbish.

Wether you like PHP or not, it's still: a) the most popular programming
language b) the programming language with the most job openings (Source:
<http://www.udemy.com/blog/modern-language-wars/>) This has to count for
something, right?

So please, for the sake of keeping HN a decent place, refrain from using non-
argumented statements like 'PHP must die'. You're not adding anything to the
discussion and you make yourself look like a fool.

As for the 'vision of PHP': I'm glad there is none. It's the gateway drug to a
lot of programmers, and I'm sure that I would have given up on programming if
it weren't for PHP. When I look back on some of the stuff I wrote some 10
years ago I just want to cry, but that does show that I've grown as a
programmer. It's perfectly possible for people to start out with PHP and
evolve to good programmers, regardless of language used. A stricter defined
PHP would just kill that.

~~~
tsewlliw
> But if you want to go beyond a simple CRUD-app, Ruby poses a lot of
> challenges that can be hard to solve whereas PHP, well, just works.

I write PHP professionally. I like PHP programmers. I'm starting to have a
soft spot for PHP. PHP and its standard library are a minefield.

------
blantonl
I think PHP (5.x/6x) is still applicable to any developer, new or old,
experienced or not. Many of us cut our teeth on PHP's simple scripting
concepts, and that shouldn't change. And from what I've seen from past
history, it won't.

There is a tremendous amount of backwards compatibility in current versions of
PHP that allows one to follow the same approach to Web development that those
did back 10-15 years ago with PHP 4. No, it is not "Enterprise", and yes there
are security considerations to account for. But the process of adoption is
key, and PHP continues to be adopted by a lot of startups/projects. Those that
choose to adopt the PHP language as their advanced vernacular moving forward
still continue to have a number of more advanced programming language concepts
to utilize in PHP with each new release, with barely any breakage with other
approaches to using PHP.

~~~
kysol
"Many of us cut our teeth on PHP's simple scripting concepts" -- The Gateway
Drug :D

I went Perl -> PHP and have been there ever since. Not because I'm too lazy to
learn another language, but because it has done everything that I have needed
it to do, and when I found something that it couldn't, I looked elsewhere for
that one aspect of the project.

Isn't it our role as developers to push the boundaries of our chosen language?
I'm pretty sure back when Javascript was being thrown around, they wouldn't
have imagined what it is today.

Trying not to sing praises, and throwing fuel on a fire that should have died
a long time ago... To each their own.

------
programminggeek
PHP is for webdev. That's it. Go outside the bounds of that and it loses its
magic. On its own it's great for spitting out a webpage. It's a scripting and
templating language in one, which is kind of cool.

That said, outside of that to make PHP work on bigger projects you end up with
a lot of structure and ceremony that make PHP suck, not quite as much as Java,
but it's not amazing.

Thiings like testing and testability aren't much fun in PHP. For a long time
package management was a joke.

PHP is for webdev. That's it.

~~~
objectified
I can't agree with that. Personally I happen to use PHP not for web
development, but almost exclusively for system administration and monitoring
(I'm not a web developer). It's very comfortable using PHP in these areas, as:

\- PHP and many of the PHP extensions are packaged for about every major OS
and architecture

\- a lot of functionality is already shipped with the interpreter (so no
additional stuff necessary)

\- it's very easy to deploy We've tried a number of options, especially in the
monitoring area, but PHP eventually seemed to be the most suitable for the
job.

~~~
lmm
Deployment is "easy" because you just copy a bunch of files, right?
Reproducible deployment takes a little more effort, but it's well worth it
when the time comes to upgrade a server, or a pipe bursts on top of your
existing one.

Python has your other advantages, quite a lot of existing monitoring software,
and is a far more pleasant language to program in.

~~~
objectified
Well, you could just copy a bunch of files, if that's all you need to do. But
ideally you'd use a tool like Fabric to do your copying/moving, symlinking,
server config changes, etc.

We use Python for a number of things too (and yes, I like the language a lot).
The only trouble I have with Python in this context is actually cross platform
support. It's a bit harder to get packages for the latest and greatest
versions of modules and the interpreter if you have to deploy to e.g. Solaris
9 systems, unless you create them yourself. Theoretically it should have the
same advantages, yes.

------
kamme
Whenever this issue pops up I always imagine Fabien Potencier (while he's no
dictator, he has a very clear path) taking over the php source and change it
according to his vision. Then I imagine going back to the first php script I
ever wrote and how if I would have been able to create it with the changes. I
can honestly say I can imagine it would have been a lot harder to do and there
is a big chance that I would have given up because I can imagine him going
into full OO mode. Don't think I don't like Fabien, for me personally his php
version would probably be a lot better, but also a lot harder for new users.

This is one of the best things of php: it's easy enough for new developers and
you can grow into the OO aspects of it. While I must admit I would also like a
big cleanup to make the function names and arguments more uniform, I don't
hope they change anything that makes it harder to begin with php or limit the
possibilities to grow.

------
verelo
Some of the statements there such as this really disappoint me.

"PHP is what people use to get their first site off the ground. PHP is what a
web designer learns when he/she wants to go into programming. PHP is what a
random Joe uses when he needs to whip up a page and he's in "do it yourself"
mind."

PHP is a great language in that its very flexible and quick to get going with,
the sad thing is people don't want it to grow up...after all, so many massive
companies (FB?) use PHP for core components. Why can't those internally have a
slightly larger vision...

~~~
lucasmullens
Facebook hates PHP, but it would be too expensive to convert their 3 million
lines of code. They just use HipHop to compile it to C++.

~~~
verelo
A totally reasonable reply (kind of expected someone to say it!) but the fact
that they use php (despite the use of HipHop, which is a wonderful innovation)
does say something about the language.

It just makes me sad that rather than saying "look what php can do with some
work!" and doing something to head in a direction that could make some of its
power uses (like FB) love/like the language, the people in charge simply seem
to not care.

A better positioning would be saying something like "php is a great tool to
start a web project in, and over time it'll continue to be the best tool to
start a project in by helping people innovate even faster." Building it into
boxes and decouple it from the rest of the code down the road, like FB have,
is likely what most people will do, but at least saying PHP strives to fit
this need would be a better vision than saying its for "Joe's weekend
website", when clearly that's just shortsighted.

Saying what you're going to do in a public place does increase your chances of
following through with it. PHP should document something that says what they
want to be, even if its not what some people want them to be!

------
fleitz
It has lots of vision, what it needs is a janitor.

------
venomsnake
You want a vision? Here is one - make the mess we have at the moment work.

I write in php for the better part of 4 years now and hate it every day. And I
have written in c++ before that. Ask 20000 developers what are their main pain
grievances sort them by "popularity" and just remove them one by one.

For me it is the hard debugging, the include mess and the "extremely" creative
ways parsing and runtime errors are communicated to the developers.

~~~
jtreminio
You seriously find PHP hard to debug? I wrote something that may help you :
[http://jtreminio.com/2012/07/xdebug-and-you-why-you-
should-b...](http://jtreminio.com/2012/07/xdebug-and-you-why-you-should-be-
using-a-real-debugger)

Thanks to namespaces, PSR-0 and Composer, I no longer have to worry about
"include mess". Use an autoloader, that's what it's for. If you're finding you
have to include a file to access information in it, that tells me you're not
testing your code.

The only error I've run across that gave me pause, for a second, was the T
PAAMAYIM NEKUDOTAYIM. A quick, 5 second Google search gave me the information
I needed.

------
polemic
Worthwhile reading the email that preceded it:

<http://news.php.net/php.internals/64763>

The response hardly seems warranted. The vision is pretty stated there.

~~~
ircmaxell
The response would seem warranted if you had been a participating member of
the PHP internals list for any significant length of time. Stas is pretty well
known for jumping into threads and completely derailing, and shooting things
down with BS like "PHP is not Java, stop trying to make it into Java". The
response is a culmination of a long time of watching him respond in such a
fashion.

Stuff like this: [http://marc.info/?l=php-
internals&m=135083835232016&...](http://marc.info/?l=php-
internals&m=135083835232016&w=2)

Sometimes he contributes to discussions in a very positive manner. But too
often he degrades the discussion into BS rhetoric and greatly demoralizes
contributors (I know I am not the only one to voice disdain, I may just be the
first publicly)...

I guess you can say I just had enough...

~~~
polemic
Fair enough, but the only Proven Successful (tm) solution to trolling is to
ignore it. If it's not productive, disregard it.

~~~
jtreminio
Can't ignore him, he's got a vote in PHP internal.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
php's internals mailing list is chaos. It's a pantomime of "YES-NO-YES-NO-YES-
NO" ad nauseum. And that is why PHP is such a horrible, inconsistent language.
It has never had any consistent direction. JS was bad at first, but its
mistakes are slowly being corrected and it is become more consistent and
coherent. PHP was bad at first, and they keep breaking things as well as
improving it.

------
olleicua
I think this may be too optimistic. It seems to me that PHP's lack of vision
has already made it a horrifically bad language. The problem is not that it
tries to do OO while also not really trying to do OO (don't get me wrong
though, that is a problem). The problem is that it tries to do OO like Java.
Get with the times and learn Ruby already.

~~~
jaequery
it's true, php core devs have some kind of a Java OOP/DP fetish. maybe because
they think Java is enterprise so they should replicate what works for them.

------
bunwich
I have $20. $10 to two PHP BDFL's kickstarters that are willing to take on the
responsibilty of improving the language and removing the inconsistencies.

1) No one from Zend or Rasmus can apply. 2) facebook - would love if you guys
forked it, but you don't need my money.

------
TheEmpath
PHP would do well getting proper weak references in play, regardless of
vision. No easy task at this point, sadly :(

More specifically: Put in proper weak refs -> get lexical scoping -> get first
class functions.

------
rmoriz
They should hire DHH for 10.000$/day. I'm sure he can help.

~~~
dexcs
Glad i searched before posting exact the same. Don't forget matz in this
context...

------
jahitr
Switched PHP for JS. Never looked back.

Seriously, It needs to die.

~~~
icelancer
The two are not analogous at all.

~~~
se85
Please Explain

------
towski
So does Perl

------
nunbot
it needs a relapse. dont do shit because its popular, do it because its
useful!

------
Tichy
PHP needs to die

Sorry...

~~~
jtreminio
Empty, non-contributing comments like yours that appear in every single thread
about PHP on HN need to stop being posted. Not sorry, I mean it. Stop.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
It's not an "empty, non-contributing comment" to those of us who have had to
use PHP, especially after years of using far better languages. It rings
especially true to us who have seen the horror systems implemented in PHP can
be.

~~~
shaldengeki
I feel as though we ought to hold our comments to higher standards than
"expresses a strong negative opinion with no supporting evidence or
reasoning". Maybe that's just me?

It certainly feels strange that this sort of comment is being defended when
the same comment with PHP replaced by
Python/Ruby/(Java/Coffee)script/Haskell/C/C++ would be universally reviled.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
I don't think that the supporting evidence needs to be explicitly stated.
Those of us who have used PHP before inherently know why he posted what he
posted. The evidence and reasoning is in our past experience with the
language, and it's much stronger than a "citation" of some blog post or
anything of that sort.

It's quite telling that we don't see comments like that for other languages
that often, if ever. Aside from perhaps JavaScript, no other mainstream
programming language causes experienced programmers so much grief. No other
language is so riddled with obvious deficiencies, and so problematic.

~~~
shaldengeki
I hardly think that you and he speak for "those of us who have used PHP
before", and to pretend that you do seems awfully arrogant on your part. I
definitely don't share your sentiments, that's for sure!

Even if you did speak for everyone who'd used PHP before, I don't think this
comment is in any way useful or productive - are we all just supposed to take
it on faith that every person who has a strong negative opinion on something
speaks for everyone who's familiar with the topic? It seems to me that this is
precisely against the spirit of HN (and reasoned discussion in general). So
yes, I think that if you're going to make a comment like "PHP needs to die"
and want to contribute something meaningful to the discussion, you're expected
to elaborate on why you think that way. It's surprising to me that you're even
trying to say otherwise.

I'm not sure what to make of your assertion that the existence of a vocal
group of PHP haters indicates that "PHP needs to die". I'll admit the language
has its warts, but the hatred directed at PHP on HN seems way out of
proportion to any other programming community I've been to, and out of
proportion to the actual deficiencies with the language. And I don't really
think that it makes sense to call PHP a "cancer" or to say that the existence
of PHP is a problem; it's not as if we shun and shame programmers when they
try to migrate from PHP to other languages, and it's not as if PHP paradigms
are "infiltrating" other languages.

