There's no denying PHP's popular, but that doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job.
Most of the arguments I see against it though are really problems with the programmers using it. "Look at this horrible code I have to put up with! The comments are inane and useless, there's no structure at all, and I'm stuck in a chain of nested if statements 10 layers deep and I have no idea what's going on. PHP sucks!"
As Jeff Atwood said, "sufficiently incompetent coders can write FORTRAN in any language."
"But the converse is also true: sufficiently talented coders can write great applications in terrible languages, too."
PHP wasn't exactly designed… it was formed, like a ball of mud picking up various debris as it grew. It shows, too, especially if you've had the pleasure of working with PHP 4. (I can only imagine what earlier versions were like.) I can't for the life of me think of a language with more brain-dead "reference" semantics. It's just bizarre. Their date functions miraculously manage to be worse than their C counterparts. I could go on and on.
But in the end, using PHP doesn't doom your project to failure any more than using the current flavor of the week guarantees your success. Jeff Atwood, again: "The only conclusion I can draw is that building a compelling application is far more important than choice of language."
So why are we still comparing programming languages instead of writing code?
Most of the arguments I see against it though are really problems with the programmers using it. "Look at this horrible code I have to put up with! The comments are inane and useless, there's no structure at all, and I'm stuck in a chain of nested if statements 10 layers deep and I have no idea what's going on. PHP sucks!"
As Jeff Atwood said, "sufficiently incompetent coders can write FORTRAN in any language."
"But the converse is also true: sufficiently talented coders can write great applications in terrible languages, too."
PHP wasn't exactly designed… it was formed, like a ball of mud picking up various debris as it grew. It shows, too, especially if you've had the pleasure of working with PHP 4. (I can only imagine what earlier versions were like.) I can't for the life of me think of a language with more brain-dead "reference" semantics. It's just bizarre. Their date functions miraculously manage to be worse than their C counterparts. I could go on and on.
But in the end, using PHP doesn't doom your project to failure any more than using the current flavor of the week guarantees your success. Jeff Atwood, again: "The only conclusion I can draw is that building a compelling application is far more important than choice of language."
So why are we still comparing programming languages instead of writing code?