Interesting comments from Rasmus Lerdorf

NogDog

PHP Creator Extolls Language's Modest Start

Weedpacket

Rasmus Ledorf wrote:
"I had no intention of writing a language. I didn't have a clue how to write a language. I didn't want to write a language. I just wanted to solve a problem of churning out Web applications very, very fast."

Unfortunately a language is exactly what is needed for such a job.

It's like the way FTP defaults to ASCII transmission: when FTP was invented there were no common standards for character encodings or word lengths or byte sizes, so one had to be imposed as a default; you'd only then switch to binary if you knew the server you were connecting to had the right architecture to make sense of what you would be sending.

Your quick hack today might end up becoming tomorrow's ineradicable [standard/support headache] (delete whichever is inapplicable).

Bunkermaster

Our race is built on layers of errors and bad choices. We then adapt and move forward to new mistakes and poor decisions! Till we turn this planet into a desert or a giant microwave generator with wireless devices.

Edit: If PHP is a mistake, it's a mistake that's been paying for my house, my food, my car, my kids' education and my cigars (along other things) for almost 11 years.

laserlight

I'm fairly sure that every programming language in common use today has its warts and quirks. PHP just happens to have more than its fair share because of its development history, but those are mistakes in its design and does not mean that PHP itself is a mistake.

NogDog

In a way, it's a demonstration of the old military axiom that it's better to make a less than perfect decision right away than the perfect decision too late. While theorists and experts at designing computer languages might have been debating the advantages of object-oriented versus aspect-oriented programing and whether or not Ada was a mistake, Lerdorf simply created something that filled an available niche in a sufficiently effective and timely manner, such that in a sense it won a battle even though it did not have the best "soldiers."

Weedpacket

One of the pages linked to in that article says the fact that facebook et al. use PHP is not a point in its favour because they could have used some other language. The point is though that they chose PHP - for whatever reasons: one of the biggest being that it does the job.

Still, I'm sure you'll agree that there are things wrong with the language (and it's hilarious how trivial by comparison some of the problems PHP haters come up with are - not to mention how many of them are shared by other languages).

So: opportunity for speculation...

With the benefit of hindsight, and granted the luxury of not having to worry about backwards-compatibility, what should be done to PHP?

Bonesnap

What also annoys me about people who complain about PHP is they claim since the language is so bad developers have to spend extra time to create websites that are usually mediocre. I was "raised" on PHP, so I guess all of its "problems" just seem natural to me. Like yeah, there's no real standard when it comes to function naming. Some have underscores, some don't. Oh well. That slows a person down what, like a second? Not to mention anyone who cares that much about the language will be using a decent IDE that has intellisense and tooltips so stuff like that shouldn't even matter.

People can hate PHP all they want, more opportunities for me.

dalecosp

Bonesnap wrote:
What also annoys me about people who complain about PHP is they claim since the language is so bad developers have to spend extra time to create websites that are usually mediocre.

Funny thing, this criticism. I will admit that the way some of my projects have looked is, perhaps, sub-par. That's more about the quality of my graphics ability and visual arts training, or, in the case of more "professional" projects, the issue of the graphics personnel associated with the project, or, even more, the mindset of the management that decrees what THEY think the site should look like (and, for the programming side, how it should work/behave).

What I find interesting is that sites I've written, modules I've created for extant sites, scripts that "do stuff" for server maintenance, etc., all have run quickly, efficiently, and securely ... just like the computers they run on (generally a 'Nix type). We've experienced security issues with client-side Windows software and with ColdFusion modules (that was not a good experience at the current job ... although, it was easy enough to fix once we found the vulnerable bit of code).

People talk about PHP's "low barrier of entry". And I doubt you could set it a lot lower than what I had available at the time I started ... it doesn't explain how I've been able to do as much as I have with it. Every language has some issues. For now, I'll take PHP's.

dalecosp

Bunkermaster;11009097 wrote:
If PHP is a mistake, it's a mistake that's been paying for my house, my food, my car, my kids' education and my cigars (along other things) for almost 11 years.

Monsieur S. --- that is .sig worthy! 🙂

cretaceous

Pays my bills too.
I do believe some of the complaints are from the "lawyer" mentality who like to ensure knowledge is arcane and only belongs to the priesthood.
Though the more you use it the more you realise you're kinda in da 'hood already

sneakyimp

I've been working on a VB.NET project for some time now (thus my absence here at phpbuilder). There's plenty wrong with Microsoft's languages/frameworks/platforms. The primary problem with the project I'm working on (and the genesis of the need for the project) is the fact that Microsoft decided to change their language and deprecated VB6. Because they don't support VB6 on their modern operating systems, this application is now obsolete. The whole thing needs to be rewritten so that it uses the new MS technologies.

For all of PHP's flaws, planned obsolescence is not one of them.

Weedpacket

cretaceous;11009393 wrote:
Pays my bills too.
I do believe some of the complaints are from the "lawyer" mentality who like to ensure knowledge is arcane and only belongs to the priesthood.
Though the more you use it the more you realise you're kinda in da 'hood already

Just saying "programming is easy" doesn't make it so 🙂
If the bar is set too low it's just banking up trouble that will come out later when you find important stuff has been left in the hands of someone who doesn't really know what they're doing.