Web Dev full-stack [LAMP] since 2005, but much heavier on the JS stuff these days.
Jack of all Stacks, Master of some.
Always looking to learn new things. Always glad to help out, just ask.
Location
Atlanta, GA
Education
B.S. in Biochemistry 2004, M.S. in Computer Information Systems 2007
Love the article. Frankly for all developers, regardless of language-allegiance:
You don't know, what you don't know. Learn this lesson and accept that no matter how much you've learned, someone else will always come by knowing something you don't. This is the nature of web development.
I see many newbies talk crap about PHP because they don't know how to use it.
I see "classical programmers" talk crap about PHP, but they can't build websites any better than the average PHP dev without a mountain of dependencies and compiling. God forbid they try frontend html/css.
I mean, sure, you can "write" html and css easy, anyone can. But you can't make it crossbrowser, responsive, seo-friendly, accessible and perform well without some serious experience doing it. The same goes for using PHP for websites.
A lot of people list WordPress as to why they hate PHP, and most often it's because they've had one or two experiences with badly written themes. Let's blame the most popular CMS in use by 1/3 of the internet because it gets constantly attacked by hackers while keeping the bar to entry so low that a dev with zero experience and use it in one day.
Note that a great many themes were created by designers, not developers, or outsourced to the cheapest bidder, the end result, a marketplace full of crap, this isn't the fault of PHP.
Again, you don't know what you don't know.
As for the security flaws in PHP....yea, there are some. Does anyone using PHP daily care? No. Do experienced devs know how to secure their code? Sometimes.
I have sites I built 15 years ago that still run perfectly fine. Some have been hacked over the years, and we patch em, rebuild 'em or just spin em back up from a backup. That's part of web development, we are literally under attack 24/7.
Anyone who hasn't experienced that can just drop the subject because you don't know what you don't know.
As with any language, the language is never the problem, it's the developer's skill level that determines if what they produce is crap or not.
Web Dev full-stack [LAMP] since 2005, but much heavier on the JS stuff these days.
Jack of all Stacks, Master of some.
Always looking to learn new things. Always glad to help out, just ask.
Location
Atlanta, GA
Education
B.S. in Biochemistry 2004, M.S. in Computer Information Systems 2007
Programming languages are built for people to use them; if everyone is bad at using them, than yes, that's the languages fault. If your hammer has no head, it's not your fault for not swinging the stick hard enough.
Web Dev full-stack [LAMP] since 2005, but much heavier on the JS stuff these days.
Jack of all Stacks, Master of some.
Always looking to learn new things. Always glad to help out, just ask.
Location
Atlanta, GA
Education
B.S. in Biochemistry 2004, M.S. in Computer Information Systems 2007
Lol, it still comes down to the users. If a language really is so "terrible" then people shouldn't use it. Brainfuck was created as a joke, as a proof of concept, and some hardcore nerds decided to actually use it, but no one in their right mind uses it for real world applications.
And really most discussions about whether a language is good or bad revolve around .NET, PHP, and JavaScript or the C, C++, C#, Java arguments.
These are all languages uses by hundreds of thousands of devs globally. And in each of them, the language is not the problem. The devs understanding of the language is.
Love the article. Frankly for all developers, regardless of language-allegiance:
You don't know, what you don't know. Learn this lesson and accept that no matter how much you've learned, someone else will always come by knowing something you don't. This is the nature of web development.
I see many newbies talk crap about PHP because they don't know how to use it.
I see "classical programmers" talk crap about PHP, but they can't build websites any better than the average PHP dev without a mountain of dependencies and compiling. God forbid they try frontend html/css.
I mean, sure, you can "write" html and css easy, anyone can. But you can't make it crossbrowser, responsive, seo-friendly, accessible and perform well without some serious experience doing it. The same goes for using PHP for websites.
A lot of people list WordPress as to why they hate PHP, and most often it's because they've had one or two experiences with badly written themes. Let's blame the most popular CMS in use by 1/3 of the internet because it gets constantly attacked by hackers while keeping the bar to entry so low that a dev with zero experience and use it in one day.
Note that a great many themes were created by designers, not developers, or outsourced to the cheapest bidder, the end result, a marketplace full of crap, this isn't the fault of PHP.
Again, you don't know what you don't know.
As for the security flaws in PHP....yea, there are some. Does anyone using PHP daily care? No. Do experienced devs know how to secure their code? Sometimes.
I have sites I built 15 years ago that still run perfectly fine. Some have been hacked over the years, and we patch em, rebuild 'em or just spin em back up from a backup. That's part of web development, we are literally under attack 24/7.
Anyone who hasn't experienced that can just drop the subject because you don't know what you don't know.
As with any language, the language is never the problem, it's the developer's skill level that determines if what they produce is crap or not.
Well said, all of this about the security, experience, and the "what you don't know, you don't know" phrase :)
Build me a website in brainfuck, then I'll accept that claim.
Just because you and I, and probably everyone, are bad at Brainfuck doesn't make the language the problem.
Programming languages are built for people to use them; if everyone is bad at using them, than yes, that's the languages fault. If your hammer has no head, it's not your fault for not swinging the stick hard enough.
Lol, it still comes down to the users. If a language really is so "terrible" then people shouldn't use it. Brainfuck was created as a joke, as a proof of concept, and some hardcore nerds decided to actually use it, but no one in their right mind uses it for real world applications.
And really most discussions about whether a language is good or bad revolve around .NET, PHP, and JavaScript or the C, C++, C#, Java arguments.
These are all languages uses by hundreds of thousands of devs globally. And in each of them, the language is not the problem. The devs understanding of the language is.
PHP