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Tell HN: I think you're downplaying the PHP community

by jqueryin on 10/14/16, 2:18 PM with 104 comments

• by pwinnski on 10/14/16, 4:00 PM

  My theory is simple: Have you ever heard the pithy saying that there is no worse non-smoker than an ex-smoker?

  I think many of the loudest anti-PHP voices are ex-PHP developers. They/We naturally assume our own experience is normative, and since we didn't know X, Y, or Z back when we were coding in PHP, obviously neither does anybody else still coding in PHP.

  Or, more graciously, back then PHP was the best language we had learned up to that point (better than BASIC or Perl, say), but now we use Ruby or Python or something else, so now we recognize the deficiencies in PHP. Clearly those other people, just a few steps behind us on the path, need to also learn about the deficiencies in PHP and how much better X is.

  There are any number of nuanced ways for that to be expressed, but ultimately I think it's mostly tribalism, and obviously unhelpful. Sure, I used to write PHP. Built my first startup with it, sold it, and stuck with it for a few years more even after that. And sure, I don't write in PHP any more. These days it's Python or Java or Clojure for me. Because PHP sucks? No, because it doesn't suit what I'm doing these days as well. And not necessarily for reasons related to the quality of the language.

• by s0l1dsnak3123 on 10/14/16, 3:39 PM

  In British politics we have this concept of "The silent majority" which inevitably gets mentioned at referenda and elections. The effect was probably most prevalent in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 where a no vote of 55% bet a yes vote of 45%.

  Many many yes voters (including myself) were very surprised by this result - the internet was on fire with grass roots activism of all kinds. Glasgow had weekly rallies with thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) attending. And yet we lost.

  I can't help but wonder if we're witnessing the same phenomena - a silent majority of people who feel no need to contribute to the discourse but have different opinions and values on the subjects us in the comments section are discussing.

  Interesting stuff.

• by gkya on 10/14/16, 4:13 PM

  Php is objectively a bad language, and as the literature on why it is is wast like oceans, I don't feel the need to add to it. That said it's quite understandable why the language is used regardless of it's inferiority, there are some practical reasons, just like JavaScript. Thus it's understandable why people follow its news and also why it's harshly criticised. HN is a technical forum of tech entrepreneurs and computer hackers, and people discuss most often the technical aspects of things, and for Php it's more than expected that the tone be downplaying. Though I believe that should be taken as is and not be extended to community itself.

• by throwaway420 on 10/14/16, 3:01 PM

  > So where does this discrepancy between vote counts and comments stem from?

  People are probably concerned about not being viewed as a good or knowledgeable developer if they admit to using PHP here, so it's probably not a fight that's worth having for most posters. People don't always give their genuine opinions when they think that their personal reputations or livelihoods are on the line.

  This isn't just the case in technical or career matters, but especially when it comes to personal reputation. Just ask people how many sex partners they've had: the results will probably be skewed up or down in fairly predictable ways if people think there's a chance that they'll be judged somehow based on the answer.

  Personally I think PHP is a useful (and extremely imperfect) tool that is very appropriate to solve a fairly wide range of problems. For certain problems, it's arguably the best tool. That's why it's going to be around for quite a while.

• by nbouscal on 10/14/16, 3:47 PM

  I would attribute this discrepancy to a natural extension of pg's thoughts about the blub paradox (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html). Most PHP developers I've talked to justify their work in PHP by saying that essentially languages are more or less the same, and that PHP is "just as good" as any other language. It's rare for me to hear someone say that PHP is substantially better than other languages. By contrast, former PHP developers who now work in other languages usually say that PHP is significantly worse than other languages. It seems natural that someone who thinks there's a significant difference would be more likely to comment about it than someone who thinks the languages are basically the same. There's more to say about the difference than there is about a lack of difference, and it's relatively hard to provide real arguments for the lack of a difference – it's usually more "there's no real evidence of a difference and this works fine for me."

• by chrisgoman on 10/14/16, 10:14 PM

  The PHP people are working instead of complaining about it https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329#...

• by 1123581321 on 10/14/16, 2:48 PM

  That's a fair criticism. I do a fair amount of PHP and participate in the community, so I know what you are talking about. That said, to me, the PHP professional development community seems anemic compared to the communities of other languages. I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language.

• by ythl on 10/14/16, 3:27 PM

  People are worried about how they are perceived by other developers. It's the same reason a lot of people loudly pooh-pooh GameMaker (citing Godot, UR4, Unity, etc. as superior) even though it's a super powerful tool that, in the right hands, can be used to rapidly prototype very complicated and versatile games.

• by hotsy_botsy on 10/14/16, 3:40 PM

  PHP is the Toyota Corolla of programming languages. Not many are passionate about the Corolla, but it's one of the most widely driven cars in America.

  I challenge you to come up with a better car analogy.

• by z0r on 10/14/16, 3:32 PM

  I've never worked on PHP code in a truly professional context, but I've had one-off (very) small jobs where I've had to perform maintenance on some PHP. I have no doubt that the language and tooling has improved over the years, but I have no desire to ever work on any of it ever again. This is my honest opinion, and I'm not writing it to signal anything. There are dozens of viable production languages and life is short, so why work with one that you find very painful? If PHP works for you, that's fine, but people who don't like PHP are going to be vocal about it because they don't want to find themselves in a situation where they have to write it. You might not end up being forced to write PHP for pay these days, but it's not unrealistic to imagine that you might end up writing (for example) Java because you need a job even if you really don't like it. So you end up with language advocacy and trash talking and there's nothing wrong with any of that, it's just a way to let off steam and preserve your sanity.

• by leovonl on 10/15/16, 6:07 PM

  See, the thing is: I spend much of my time trying to show people that good tools can be used to make good software. We have MUCH misinformation, and people don't even understand that you can prove a software right using theorem provers, don't know anything about type system - "C has types but they don't work" - and etc. I've heard arguments like this all the time, and that really sucks, because then you get limited by tools "you can hire people to work with".

  In fact, I've been hearing for 10 years things like "what, OCaml? where do we hire someone to work on this?", "Haskell? nobody uses that", and more recently "we cannot use Rust as we don't have anyone that can possibly understand this". Saying "PHP is just another language/tool" is just throwing the towel without trying to understand anything.

  What would you think if someone said "coal is just another fuel, stop trying to push electric, let me use coal and go on with life"? Well, a lot of people believe this, but let's pretent there's a consensus on this, shall we?

  So, the question is: you CAN use PHP for doing web development. You can also use coal as a fuel. Not only that, but all libraries are written with this in mind, all code bases and fragments of code are focused on web development, etc. Coal is also combustible, a lot of manufactures dominate the technology, it's cheap, so.. hey, energy!

  Even if the language is pure crap - as coal is as a fuel - people will only hit the crappy parts when their system is already implemented and being used by more people. "Hey, this language has a lot of issues" - "hey, this coal thing really polutes". Too late. You already have a full system implemented, you have experience with the language - or energy production technology... so you just change your workflow to accommodate this. Or you just never realize it - "whatever, no big deal" - and keep using it, as you see the advantages as more important.

  There's tons of factors that contribute to the PHP popularity - the same thing with C, Perl, etc. Doesn't mean the language is good, and also doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you that "it's just another tool, let's go back to business".

  So yeah, no.. I won't let you go on with PHP, sorry. I want better tools, better systems, and I want to spread knowledge. I guess we are going to agree to disagree on that.

• by tbirrell on 10/14/16, 3:38 PM

  Because arguing on the internet tends to be an exercise in frustration. If I like PHP and you don't it is unlikely that either of us will change the other's mind. So it's not really worth my time or effort to defend the language to virtual strangers. I can respect your dislike while going off to code in PHP anyway, and the world won't end. If you ask me my opinion, I'll be happy to share it, but I don't feel the urge to offer it unsolicited.

• by circlefavshape on 10/14/16, 5:17 PM

  /me raises hand

  I've been writing php professionally since 2000, and I like it well enough. I know it so much better than any other language that, 20 years into my career, I can't see how I'll ever learn another one well enough to compare them.

• by mst on 10/14/16, 4:44 PM

  I write a lot of perl. You see a similarly depressing response there as well.

  Mostly I file it under "hipsters gonna hipster" and then go back to doing something useful.

• by oliwarner on 10/15/16, 12:26 AM

  Use and hatred are not mutually exclusive. I can't be the only developer in here who has to maintain legacy webapps written in awful languages. If I see a post offering a 200× speedup on my crappy old PHP scripts, it gets an upvote.

• by flanger001 on 10/15/16, 1:25 PM

  I wish PHP had methods on primitive types, but I can live without them. PHP is not my first choice of language to develop in, but I don't think it's a bad language, and it paid my bills for quite a long time.

• by ryanlm on 10/14/16, 3:13 PM

  People that state it's such a horrible language are "follow" types. I believe some people actually do think it's a bad language, but for the most part, I would say people are just following the status quo.

• by ryanlm on 10/14/16, 5:34 PM

  Flagged? Interesting.

• by crimsonalucard on 10/15/16, 2:20 AM

  Not everything in the world is apples and oranges..