Awesome!
I'm proud of beeing part of the PHP Community!
Some non-PHP developers still think that PHP doesn't have frameworks or that it is impossible to automate tests with it. The fact is, PHP is a solid language and is suitable for mission-critical projects. To avoid PHP for its flaws is like throwing away the book "Million Dollar Consulting" for its typos!
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Anonymous2013-03-25 16:36
I’ve been noticing a lot of PHP bashing around the web. Most of it is related to one major issue: Security. But more often than not, the security loopholes are due to bad/inconsistent programming principles. Also, PHP’s lack of support for threaded programming is another major let down. While this is a genuine issue, rewriting the entire PHP core and the parser to support threads is not worth the effort. Also, the major strength of PHP - its simplicity will be compromised if threading is to be introduced. PHP 6 is touted to be THE release, which will address most of the major concerns.
For all its shortcomings, its still THE easiest server side scripting language to work with. The C/C++ syntax, seamless integration with MYSQL, support by almost all web hosting providers still make it THE web language IMHO. The LAMP stack is undoubtedly the king of the web, and will continue to be so, owing to the simplicity and widespread community support offered by all its components. And not to forget, its completely free.
and if it ends in .php its usually a virus
He almost got it right.
If it ends in .php it's GUARANTEED to be a virus.
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Anonymous2013-03-25 19:40
In real life, here's a typical situation. You have to make a website for your employer that collects survey data from various people out in the world, in a way that no current off-the-shelf program quite does correctly. If you could buy a program to do it that'd be ideal, but you can't find a good one, so you decide to write one from scratch. The data collection is time-sensitive and absolutely must start by X date. The interface is a web page, and people are going to pointy-clicky their way through, and type some numbers, that's it; the backend just doesn't matter. For your server, someone dug an old dusty desktop machine out of a closet and threw Linux on there for you and gave you an SSH account. Oh right, and this project isn't your only job. It's one of many things you're trying to juggle in a 40-hour work week.
One option is to write it in Common Lisp. You can start by going on a quest for a web server. Don't even think about mod_lisp, would be my advice, based on past experience. Hunchentoot is good, or you can pay a fortune for one of the commercial Lisps. If you want you could also look for a web framework; there are many to choose from, each more esoteric, poorly documented and nearly impossible to install than the last. Then you get to hunt for a Lisp implementation that actually runs those frameworks. Then you get to try to install it and all of your libraries on your Linux server, and on the Windows desktop machine you have to use as a workstation. Good luck.
Don't bet on anyone in your office being able to help you with writing code, because no one knows Lisp. Might not want to mention to your boss that if you're run over by a bus tomorrow, it's going to be impossible to hire someone to replace you, because no one will be able to read what you wrote. When your boss asks why it's taking you so long, you can mention that the YAML parser you had to write from scratch to interact with a bunch of legacy stuff is super cool and a lovely piece of Lisp code, even if it did take you a week to write and debug given your other workload.
Another option is to use PHP. Apache is everywhere. MySQL is one simple apt-get away. PHP works with no effort. You can download a single-click-install LAMP stack for Windows nowadays. PHP libraries for everything are everywhere and free and mature because thousands of people already use them. The PHP official documentation is ridiculously thorough, with community participation at the bottom of every page. Google any question you can imagine and you come up with a million answers because the community is huge. Or walk down the hall and ask anyone who's ever done web programming.
The language is stupid, but stupid means easy to learn. You can learn PHP in a day or two if you're familiar with any other language. You can write PHP code in any editor or environment you want. Emacs? Vim? Notepad? nano? Who cares? Whatever floats your boat. Being a stupid language also means that everyone knows it. If you jump ship, your boss can throw together a "PHP coder wanted" ad and replace you in short order.
And what do you lose? You have to use a butt-ugly horrid language, but the price you pay in headaches and swallowed bile is more than offset by the practical gains. PHP is overly verbose and terribly inconsistent and lacks powerful methods of abstraction and proper closures and easy-to-use meta-programming goodness and Lisp-macro syntactic wonders; in that sense it's not a very powerful language. Your web framework in PHP probably isn't continuation-based, it probably doesn't compile your s-expression HTML tree into assembler code before rendering it.
But PHP is probably the most powerful language around for many jobs if you judge by the one and only measure that counts for many people: wall clock time from "Here, do this" to "Yay, I'm done, it's not the prettiest thing in the world but it works".
The above situation was one I experienced at work, and I did choose PHP right from the start, and I did get it done quickly, and it was apparently not too bad because everyone likes the website. No one witnessed the pain of writing all that PHP code, but that pain doesn't matter to anyone but the code monkey.
If I had to do it over again I might pick Ruby, but certainly never Lisp. I hate PHP more than almost anything (maybe with the exception of Java) but I still use it when it's called for. An old rusty wobbly-headed crooked-handled hammer is the best tool for the job if it's right next to you and you only need to pound in a couple of nails.
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Anonymous2013-03-25 19:47
any retard can write php.
only some retards can write perl
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Anonymous2013-03-25 20:02
>>47
Actually, rote momoizing http://php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php would be too hard for a retard, who fails to memoize even operator precedences, not mentioning the over 9000 core keywords of PHP. That is why retards prefer Common Lisp and Scheme.
>>48
nice try, Leah.
Why memorise when you can look up the manual every 2 seconds?
Retards can't properly understand the complex (((()))(())((()))) featured in lisp dialects.