I've often winced as I've heard people deride languages like PHP, small throwaway statements like those betray an ignorance. I started my career on PHP and the tools that you mention, I've built many web sites and smaller web-based utilities using PHP 4 and 5 that brought a lot of value to their users. With the benefit of hindsight its easy to criticize the deficiencies but I felt just as productive and able to meet requirements then as I do now (working in the .net ecosystem). PHP, like any other language, is fundamentally a tool that helps you accomplish a goal. If you use it irresponsibly, it's on you. Granted, it's possible to build in safe guards so users of your language don't hit problems but PHP was a pioneer of sorts, lessons learned fed into new languages and frameworks, it laid a small part of the groundwork for what we have today. Let's also not forget that PHP still has a vibrant community and ecosystem. Can something that's survived all those supposed failings be so bad?
Absolutely, PHP was a pioneer, and it was a very good language by the criteria of 15 years ago. I think nobody in their right mind criticizes that. But the times have changed, we now know much better ways to do some things (the hindsight you're talking about), and let's be honest, most of the community and ecosystem is there by inertia, not by explicit will (which is ok). Learning new tools is hard.
I meant for a particular purpose: hacking together a dynamic homepage in one night. Of course if you want to write a microframework with it, you'll encounter weird roadblocks. You could say that the reason people who hack a homepage in one night don't complain is simply that they don't know any better, and there is a bit of truth in that argument -- but still, many people used PHP quite successfully back then.
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I've often winced as I've heard people deride languages like PHP, small throwaway statements like those betray an ignorance. I started my career on PHP and the tools that you mention, I've built many web sites and smaller web-based utilities using PHP 4 and 5 that brought a lot of value to their users. With the benefit of hindsight its easy to criticize the deficiencies but I felt just as productive and able to meet requirements then as I do now (working in the .net ecosystem). PHP, like any other language, is fundamentally a tool that helps you accomplish a goal. If you use it irresponsibly, it's on you. Granted, it's possible to build in safe guards so users of your language don't hit problems but PHP was a pioneer of sorts, lessons learned fed into new languages and frameworks, it laid a small part of the groundwork for what we have today. Let's also not forget that PHP still has a vibrant community and ecosystem. Can something that's survived all those supposed failings be so bad?
These are wonderful points, Andrew! Thank you for sharing this! 👏👏👏
Absolutely, PHP was a pioneer, and it was a very good language by the criteria of 15 years ago. I think nobody in their right mind criticizes that. But the times have changed, we now know much better ways to do some things (the hindsight you're talking about), and let's be honest, most of the community and ecosystem is there by inertia, not by explicit will (which is ok). Learning new tools is hard.
I meant for a particular purpose: hacking together a dynamic homepage in one night. Of course if you want to write a microframework with it, you'll encounter weird roadblocks. You could say that the reason people who hack a homepage in one night don't complain is simply that they don't know any better, and there is a bit of truth in that argument -- but still, many people used PHP quite successfully back then.