3 HN users recommended this explainer3 months2023–2024score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters share it to show that modern PHP is much better than its reputation.
Aaron Francis walks through how PHP has changed from 2012 to 2023, covering traits, array destructuring, generators, typed properties and more. It is a quick chaptered tour of modern PHP features.
“I was quite surprised to see how far PHP has come since I used it many years ago” (HN, 2023)
I've been working with PHP since the early 2000s, and it has undergone massive changes. I made a video recently called "PHP doesn't suck (anymore)"[0] to try to cover some of the changes from 2012 to now. If you read through the comments you see a lot of people surprised at how much the language has evolved. And a lot of people saying "PHP sucks lol," but it is YouTube afterall. [0] [this video]
Many people who learned to code with PHP in the 2000s are picking it up again as first choice for web projects since they improved it so much and websites can be updated and running with a simple `git pull` without restarting any services. I saw a video not long ago that made me have hope for the future of PHP again -> [this video]
Not related to security, but I was quite surprised to see how far PHP has come since I used it many years ago: [PHP doesn't suck (anymore)]( [this video] )
What’s the alternative?! You can either have a massive Python project and struggle with a lack of types and a tenseness that becomes unreadable at huge sizes; A Laravel project that’s PHP, which despite being way, way, better than it used to be (types! traits! union type returns! faster than ruby! weak maps! [0]) still has a few footguns left; Or you can have a JavaScript monster. The worst of all worlds. Your complexity complaints times 10. A nightmare than in 10 years will make a 2008 PHP project look well-organized. A project that has thousands of packages you’ve never read. On the edges, you’ve got microservices (which turns into a mess); or you can go fancy with Go and Rust (have fun managing the budget). There’s also, of course, C# and Java, but come now, it’s 2024, you’re probably coupling them to a JavaScript monster anyway. TL;DR: Every large project becomes a mess. Pick your poison. One is hardly worse than another’s. Best to have the devil you know. Even if you do things perfectly with a FAANG level budget, AWS and Azure still have outages. [0] [this video]
If you need to clarify that something isn’t something else, because it isn’t obviously different, maybe the two are more alike than you’d like to admit. On that note, I’m a happy PHP developer, PHP doesn’t suck anymore ( [this video] ), and there is no way to say JavaScript doesn’t have at least as many footguns now. (Personally, I think JavaScript’s footguns - like the ludicrous dependency trees and framework churn - are actually worse.)
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