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0 pointsjessedhillon15y ago0 comments

> This is a poor argument. I use and enjoy many other languages.

Not suggesting that you don't use good languages (unless you use and enjoy PHP). Just saying where other people are coming from.

> Of course, but hindsight is always 20/20. Perhaps Python should have had unicode to start with and should have never made print a statement instead of a function. Perhaps templates were not the best way to add generics to C++. See, we can play this game all night.

The only response I really have to this is that, when some other language teams realize they need to change, they have a better process for setting the future direction of their language.

Much of the fail you describe as being the result of accumulation is really, in my mind, a failure to set or predict the direction of the language.

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wvenable15y ago· 2 in thread

> unless you use and enjoy PHP

I use an enjoy PHP. I assume that you don't use PHP because if you did, you wouldn't be arguing over such trivial things. For example, the inconsistency of namespace/class/member access looks terrible in theory but in practice it hardly makes any difference. It's not like you get confused as to which one to use and having them look different is somewhat helpful in understanding what the code actually says.

I used to think the backslash was the worse possible thing that could ever been done to PHP but after using it extensively for a while, eh, it's not so bad. At this point, I'd gladly change a whole bunch of other stuff before I'd change that.

> Just saying where other people are coming from.

Hey, I know where other people are coming from. I think I might be more qualified to bitch about the language than those who don't use it day to day.

jessedhillonOP15y ago

I use it every day at work, and have been a PHP programmer for years -- however, I don't suffer from the Stockholm syndrome that requires you perform the mental gymnastics involved in rationalizing away sheer volume of fail.

We both work daily with a horrible language, but at least one of us realizes it.

wvenable15y ago

I don't think we're having the discussion you think we're having; I'm well aware of how "horrible" PHP is. But I program in plenty of languages and there is very little difference in code size, code organization, or pain between my code across those languages. I could translate my current PHP project in Python and the differences wouldn't be that great.

I imagine you haven't experience any real pain: programming large projects in VBScript, C++, or doing any work in COBOL. The minor irritations of PHP is just that.

I suspect your problem isn't so much PHP but the code that you have to work with written in PHP. Most PHP code is embarrassingly bad. I'm lucky that, for the most part, I don't have to deal with a lot of terrible PHP code. I bend PHP to my will, not the other way around. A lot of people fault the language design for the insane way people use it -- it doesn't have to be that way.

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