Slashdot Mirror
Book Review: Programming PHP 3rd Edition
Michael Ross writes "As a hugely popular scripting language with an 18-year history, PHP has been the topic of countless computer language books. One of the most comprehensive offerings has been Programming PHP, published by O'Reilly Media. The first edition appeared in March 2002, and was written by Rasmus Lerdorf (the original developer of PHP) and Kevin Tatroe. A second edition was released in May 2006, and saw the addition of another co-author, Peter MacIntyre. With the many changes to the language during the past seven years, the book has again been updated, to cover all of the major new features made available in version 5 of PHP." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.
Programming PHP, 3rd Edition
author
Kevin Tatroe, Peter MacIntyre and Rasmus Lerdorf
pages
540
publisher
O'Reilly Media
rating
8/10
reviewer
Michael Ross
ISBN
978-1449392772
summary
An extensive tutorial of the PHP web programming language.
This third edition was published on 22 February 2013, under the ISBN 978-1449392772, with the same three authors at the helm. At a substantial 540 pages, the information is organized into 17 chapters, each focusing on a particular area of the language and its usage. This material precedes an appendix of almost 130 pages, which serves as a reference for all of the language's built-in functions. In fact, not only could this book suffice as a reference guide, it could also serve as a tutorial, because it is accessible to programmers of all levels, including beginners who have never before worked with PHP. The preface notes that the material assumes only "a working knowledge of HTML." However, the example code seems to also assume that the reader is comfortable with fundamental programming concepts, such as conditionals and loops.
To learn more about the book, prospective readers and buyers may wish to visit the publisher's website, where they will find a description of the book, its table of contents, a free copy of its first chapter, and the example code for ten of the chapters. Speaking of formats, the book is available in print and electronic media. (This review is based upon a copy of the print version kindly provided by the publisher.)
The first three chapters explain the bedrock fundamentals of the language, including its lexical structure, data types, variables, expressions, operators, flow-control statements, code inclusion methods, and functions. All of the information appears to be valid, aside from several technical blemishes: In Example 1-1, most of the lines of code are duplicated. Example 1-5, which supposedly creates a PNG file, does not seem to work. The section on constants (page 21) should have mentioned the core predefined constants and also distinguished those from magic ones. The binary literal 0b01100000 is 96, not 1 (page 23). It is claimed that an object is evaluated as false if it contains no values or functions (page 25), and yet: "class C{} assert( new C );." The closure example code (page 29) fails because it includes a function name and no terminating semicolon. The example code in the middle of page 66 contradicts the claim that an inner function "cannot be called from code parsed after the outer function." The example code starting at the end of that page fails because $a in foo() is undefined. Nonetheless, even experienced PHP programmers could pick up knowledge not encountered before, or at least refresh what was learned years ago and since forgotten due to disuse.
The next two chapters explore in detail further essential components of PHP: strings, regular expressions, and arrays. As with the earlier chapters, readers will encounter example code that does not appear to have been tested. For instance, the print_r() output of an object is missing the class name (page 84). On the same page, print_r() and var_dump() of $GLOBALS do indicate "*RECURSION*," but do not loop infinitely or three times, respectively, as claimed. The $record on page 86 is missing its trailing tab character. For these errors and others, it is not clear whether the authors or the technical reviewers are ultimately responsible. Regardless, readers should find useful the tables summarizing regular expression character classes, anchors, quantifiers, and options. On the other hand, the treatment of conditional expressions is sorely in need of examples. Also, readers will be baffled when told that "The preg_match() function takes the same arguments and gives the same return value as the preg_match() function []" (page 112). Lastly, the callback example code is faulty (pages 131, 133, and 141). The sixth chapter, covering object-oriented programming is well-written, aside from the confusing phrase "including it to a different name" (page 160) and the anti-Nietzschean "this will fatal" (page 161).
With Chapter 7, the book shifts gears from the basic underpinnings of PHP to more applied topics, in this case, web techniques — specifically HTTP, global variables, server information, web form processing, sessions, and more. The narrative is quite clear, except when the reader is told that periods in field names are converted to underscores because periods are illegal in PHP variable names (page 178); the connection is not explained. The next chapter looks at server-side data storage, including the topics of PDO, MySQLi, SQLite, and MongoDB. Confusingly, readers are told that the sample SQL database code is available in a file, but they are not told where to find it (http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920012443/).
Chapters 9 through 11 address PHP's support for three specialized file types: graphics, PDF, and XML. The explanations are excellent, and the authors provide numerous examples. The only obvious flaws are in Example 11-1 (page 269), where the echo statement is missing the "<?" and two of the lines have mismatched single and double quotes.
The remaining half dozen chapters cover critical aspects of PHP development. The chapter on security does not attempt to be exhaustive, but instead explains the most common attack vectors and how to block them. The chapter on application techniques discusses code libraries, templating, output buffering and compression, error handling, and performance tuning. Any programmer intrigued by the idea of replacing clunky VBA code with PHP, should be interested in Chapter 14, which explores the differences in running PHP on Windows vs. other platforms, with a brief look at manipulating the contents of Microsoft Word and Excel files using PHP. RESTful web services and XML-RPC are the topics of the next chapter, whose only apparent blemish is that json_encode() does not add spaces between the array values (page 339). The penultimate chapter addresses multiple environments, manual debugging, and the use of an IDE. The last chapter briefly covers PHP support for dates and times, and thus should have been located much earlier in the book, with the other material on fundamental concepts.
Overall, this book is quite approachable. Throughout, one will find programming style recommendations, However, as with any technical work of this size, there are passages that could be made more complete or clear. Occasionally the authors will mention something explained only later — e.g., "short echo tag" (page 60) — which can be frustrating to anyone new to a language.
The concepts of PHP being taught are extensively illustrated with example code. Some of it is concise enough so as not to distract from the narrative flow, but far too many examples involve much more code than necessary. This at first glance might seem to be an advantage, but it actually makes it more difficult for the reader to see the parts of the code relevant to the topic at hand. Also, the authors underutilize whitespace in the code, instead jamming tokens and parentheses together.
In a book of this size, we should not be astonished to find some errata: "Wordpress" (page xv), "try and" (same page; should read "try to"), "tick function registered when register_tick_function()" (55; should read "with" not "when"), "eXtensible" (59), "super-global" (67; should read "superglobal"), "display_classes() function" (vs. "function displayClasses()"; 164), "$var" (294 and 295; should read "$value"), "functions of blocks" (323; should read "functions or blocks"), "retried" (337; should read "retrieved"), and "a.k.a." (350; should read "e.g.").
In terms of the production of the book, like most other O'Reilly titles, this one is nicely put together, with readable font. But sometimes words are jammed together so much that lines appear to be a single word, e.g., "codeitselfbutplentifulenoughthatyoucanusethecommentstotellwhat'shappening" (page 17). Also, the publisher should avoid splitting the function names as if they were English words, e.g., "addc" and "slashes()" on separate lines (page 91). The index is missing some obvious entries, e.g., "closures." Many code snippets are missing the "Example" numbers and captions. This may be fine if the authors do not reference those snippets, but makes it problematic for anyone else to reference them.
Even though this is arguably one of the most comprehensive PHP books on the market, it does not cover all aspects of the language. On page 1, readers learn that PHP can be utilized in three major ways — server-side scripting, command-line scripting, and client-side GUI applications; but only the first is covered in the book. The appendix consumes over 120 pages, and comprises information easily available online in the PHP manual's function reference. Those pages could instead have been devoted to at least introducing command-line scripting and GUI applications. In fact, there are two major changes the authors could take in bringing this book much closer to perfection: Firstly, retest all of the code and root out any technical snafus. Secondly, replace the lengthy appendix with full coverage of the topics of command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications.
Regardless, Programming PHP is both a tutorial and a reference resource packed with information and example code. Benefiting from the author's deep expertise in the language and its usage, the book is the most promising single source for anyone who wishes to learn this ubiquitous web scripting language.
Michael Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.
You can purchase Programming PHP, 3rd Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
To learn more about the book, prospective readers and buyers may wish to visit the publisher's website, where they will find a description of the book, its table of contents, a free copy of its first chapter, and the example code for ten of the chapters. Speaking of formats, the book is available in print and electronic media. (This review is based upon a copy of the print version kindly provided by the publisher.)
The first three chapters explain the bedrock fundamentals of the language, including its lexical structure, data types, variables, expressions, operators, flow-control statements, code inclusion methods, and functions. All of the information appears to be valid, aside from several technical blemishes: In Example 1-1, most of the lines of code are duplicated. Example 1-5, which supposedly creates a PNG file, does not seem to work. The section on constants (page 21) should have mentioned the core predefined constants and also distinguished those from magic ones. The binary literal 0b01100000 is 96, not 1 (page 23). It is claimed that an object is evaluated as false if it contains no values or functions (page 25), and yet: "class C{} assert( new C );." The closure example code (page 29) fails because it includes a function name and no terminating semicolon. The example code in the middle of page 66 contradicts the claim that an inner function "cannot be called from code parsed after the outer function." The example code starting at the end of that page fails because $a in foo() is undefined. Nonetheless, even experienced PHP programmers could pick up knowledge not encountered before, or at least refresh what was learned years ago and since forgotten due to disuse.
The next two chapters explore in detail further essential components of PHP: strings, regular expressions, and arrays. As with the earlier chapters, readers will encounter example code that does not appear to have been tested. For instance, the print_r() output of an object is missing the class name (page 84). On the same page, print_r() and var_dump() of $GLOBALS do indicate "*RECURSION*," but do not loop infinitely or three times, respectively, as claimed. The $record on page 86 is missing its trailing tab character. For these errors and others, it is not clear whether the authors or the technical reviewers are ultimately responsible. Regardless, readers should find useful the tables summarizing regular expression character classes, anchors, quantifiers, and options. On the other hand, the treatment of conditional expressions is sorely in need of examples. Also, readers will be baffled when told that "The preg_match() function takes the same arguments and gives the same return value as the preg_match() function []" (page 112). Lastly, the callback example code is faulty (pages 131, 133, and 141). The sixth chapter, covering object-oriented programming is well-written, aside from the confusing phrase "including it to a different name" (page 160) and the anti-Nietzschean "this will fatal" (page 161).
With Chapter 7, the book shifts gears from the basic underpinnings of PHP to more applied topics, in this case, web techniques — specifically HTTP, global variables, server information, web form processing, sessions, and more. The narrative is quite clear, except when the reader is told that periods in field names are converted to underscores because periods are illegal in PHP variable names (page 178); the connection is not explained. The next chapter looks at server-side data storage, including the topics of PDO, MySQLi, SQLite, and MongoDB. Confusingly, readers are told that the sample SQL database code is available in a file, but they are not told where to find it (http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920012443/).
Chapters 9 through 11 address PHP's support for three specialized file types: graphics, PDF, and XML. The explanations are excellent, and the authors provide numerous examples. The only obvious flaws are in Example 11-1 (page 269), where the echo statement is missing the "<?" and two of the lines have mismatched single and double quotes.
The remaining half dozen chapters cover critical aspects of PHP development. The chapter on security does not attempt to be exhaustive, but instead explains the most common attack vectors and how to block them. The chapter on application techniques discusses code libraries, templating, output buffering and compression, error handling, and performance tuning. Any programmer intrigued by the idea of replacing clunky VBA code with PHP, should be interested in Chapter 14, which explores the differences in running PHP on Windows vs. other platforms, with a brief look at manipulating the contents of Microsoft Word and Excel files using PHP. RESTful web services and XML-RPC are the topics of the next chapter, whose only apparent blemish is that json_encode() does not add spaces between the array values (page 339). The penultimate chapter addresses multiple environments, manual debugging, and the use of an IDE. The last chapter briefly covers PHP support for dates and times, and thus should have been located much earlier in the book, with the other material on fundamental concepts.
Overall, this book is quite approachable. Throughout, one will find programming style recommendations, However, as with any technical work of this size, there are passages that could be made more complete or clear. Occasionally the authors will mention something explained only later — e.g., "short echo tag" (page 60) — which can be frustrating to anyone new to a language.
The concepts of PHP being taught are extensively illustrated with example code. Some of it is concise enough so as not to distract from the narrative flow, but far too many examples involve much more code than necessary. This at first glance might seem to be an advantage, but it actually makes it more difficult for the reader to see the parts of the code relevant to the topic at hand. Also, the authors underutilize whitespace in the code, instead jamming tokens and parentheses together.
In a book of this size, we should not be astonished to find some errata: "Wordpress" (page xv), "try and" (same page; should read "try to"), "tick function registered when register_tick_function()" (55; should read "with" not "when"), "eXtensible" (59), "super-global" (67; should read "superglobal"), "display_classes() function" (vs. "function displayClasses()"; 164), "$var" (294 and 295; should read "$value"), "functions of blocks" (323; should read "functions or blocks"), "retried" (337; should read "retrieved"), and "a.k.a." (350; should read "e.g.").
In terms of the production of the book, like most other O'Reilly titles, this one is nicely put together, with readable font. But sometimes words are jammed together so much that lines appear to be a single word, e.g., "codeitselfbutplentifulenoughthatyoucanusethecommentstotellwhat'shappening" (page 17). Also, the publisher should avoid splitting the function names as if they were English words, e.g., "addc" and "slashes()" on separate lines (page 91). The index is missing some obvious entries, e.g., "closures." Many code snippets are missing the "Example" numbers and captions. This may be fine if the authors do not reference those snippets, but makes it problematic for anyone else to reference them.
Even though this is arguably one of the most comprehensive PHP books on the market, it does not cover all aspects of the language. On page 1, readers learn that PHP can be utilized in three major ways — server-side scripting, command-line scripting, and client-side GUI applications; but only the first is covered in the book. The appendix consumes over 120 pages, and comprises information easily available online in the PHP manual's function reference. Those pages could instead have been devoted to at least introducing command-line scripting and GUI applications. In fact, there are two major changes the authors could take in bringing this book much closer to perfection: Firstly, retest all of the code and root out any technical snafus. Secondly, replace the lengthy appendix with full coverage of the topics of command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications.
Regardless, Programming PHP is both a tutorial and a reference resource packed with information and example code. Benefiting from the author's deep expertise in the language and its usage, the book is the most promising single source for anyone who wishes to learn this ubiquitous web scripting language.
Michael Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.
You can purchase Programming PHP, 3rd Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I stopped after i read about GOTO. Do you want raptors?
This just in, people still use the most popular programming language on the web, the size of which makes all other web programming languages niche choices by comparison.
Honestly, I don't understand what all the complaining is about. It just seems like a lot of language snobbery to me. I used PHP on my small website because every cheap web host out there supports it, there's tons of example code, and it's easy to learn if you have a C/C++ background. It seems to work just fine. Is it suitable for a gigantic website like Facebook? I have no idea really, and I don't care, just like I don't care that bash shell scripts probably aren't suitable for writing, for instance, a full-featured application like a spreadsheet or a video editor, as shell scripts work quite well for the things I do use them for.
Ok you hate PHP. But how many other Popular alternatives are out there.
JSP Oracle is the bad guy right.
ASP Microsoft is the bad guy right.
Perl The 1990's called and they want their programming back.
Ruby on Rails, good alternative however it will be hard to find replacement programmers.
Python, Python is my favorite language, however it isn't that good for web.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Similar questions:
People still use automobiles outside of Detroit?
People still eat food outside of McDonalds?
People still have sex outside of brothels?
People still say stupid shit outside of anonymous Slashdot comments?
There is a nice looking framework for Scala called Play. I think that could be a good alternative. http://www.playframework.com/
Get over your bias, and use whatever programming language needed for the job. I'll take a job doing PHP, perl, ruby, python, java, even actionscript. If I'm paid well, I'll learn it. My resume gives me the flexibility to get jobs using different languages, precisely because I'm not biased and have worked professionally in most of them.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Honestly. If you can't offer a better solution, stop bitching about it. I and others have asked for something other than PHP for website programming over the past few articles and all I hear is bitching about how bad PHP is.
I use perl for sysadmin scripting stuff. I like perl. For sysadmin scripting stuff. It's a fricking pain in the ass to set up and maintain for the creation of web pages though.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Scala and Go would be good alternatives.
Lua + LuaJIT is can be interesting too.
GOTOs can be a useful language feature, improving program speed, size and code clearness, but only when used in a sensible way by a comparably sensible programmer.
Linus Torvalds: http://kerneltrap.org/node/553 (mirror at the Wayback Machine)
Steve McConnell: http://www.stevemcconnell.com/ccgoto.htm
So what you're saying is that PHP is better than COBOL -- hmmm. PHP reminds me of those spider webs made by spiders on different drugs. PHP is like COBOL reimplemented under the influence of which drug, I wonder?
I swear, Slashdot only posts PHP stories to troll for negative comments...
Dark Reflection
Honestly, I don't understand what all the complaining is about. It just seems like a lot of language snobbery to me.
As someone who works with PHP every working day: It's a language that wasn't designed, it was congealed. Its lack of design is very evident as soon as you start trying to build anything interesting with it. It was something that was created to solve a short-term problem for one guy, and more-or-less accidentally grew into what it is today. What structures it does have are poor attempts at imitating other languages.
Some examples of what went wrong: ...]" like everyone else.
- Arrays and hashes are the same data structure, for no readily apparent reason. Also, the simplest way of using that data structure is "array(a,b,c,...)", not "[a,b,c,
- All variables start with $, in imitation of Perl, but don't use the @ or % prefixes the way Perl does, instead just pretending everything's a scalar even though it's not.
- For a long time, OOP was an afterthought.
- Unlike other scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and Perl, PHP can't figure out which files to include for you when you reference something outside of the current file. Instead, it offers a global facility called an "autoloader" that allows you to write your own code to tell it how to find it, which completely breaks when multiple libraries have competing autoloaders trying to pick up two different classes with the same name.
- Library functions display no consistency whatsoever. Some are camelCase, some are under_scored. Some search functions put the needle before the haystack, some the other way around.
- Some operators are funky: Values can be equal without being the same thing, for example.
- A significant number of errors, instead of generating exceptions that can be caught and handled, generate fatal errors, which crash your application no matter what. By comparison, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Java allow you to handle almost any error.
I could go on, but the point is there's real reasons for hating PHP.
I am officially gone from
If a job advertises they want PHP in pretty short order you are digging around their Perl code. If a job advertises they want .NET pretty soon you are trying to fix MFC code. I've seen this all throughout my career in programming most times these languages that seem easy or are popular...well usually its just a trap. This separates the men from the boys pretty quickly IMO. Cherry-picking is not for professionals and never has been. In the real world you learn this rather quickly if you intend to survive as a programmer.
How many web hosts support it? That is why PHP still lives on.
Is it suitable for a gigantic website like Facebook?
Yes. Facebook is actually implemented in PHP. At one point they used a compiler to compile PHP directly to machine code. Today they have an alternative to Zend called the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM.)
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
It's also harder to learn how to do things WELL in PHP. PHP is full of gotchas that complicate programs and catch even veteran programmers, ending up as bugs.
It is a bad language as far as languages go. It's ONLY upside, in today's world, is it's ubiquity, which is not really much of a bragging point.
Node, or Python/ruby with a good framework (which unsurprisingly, the php frameworks are now emulating), is a better choice for someone starting a new project, hands down.
I so know what my next shell script should be.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yeah, only idiots use PHP -- that's why it's only used by 80% of the web.
Language snobbery benefits no one. Unless you're Chuck Moore, it also makes you look like an idiot who can't form their own opinions.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Why isn't python "good for the web" ?
I'm not sure but it should run as long as you have Java. Scala compiles down to Java byte code.
Someone did go on, and on, and on, on this topic. Interesting read that makes never want to go near PHP again:
http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
Johnkoerner.com
How many of these are still problems now, as opposed to in earlier versions of the language/interpreter? Perl is another language that wasn't all that well designed at first, but was added onto later as it grew into popularity and was used in roles that were unthinkable in its early days.
It is pretty obvious that PHP started out small and grew into its present form, which can be seen with the inconsistency with library function names; obviously they didn't want to break compatibility arbitrarily so they stuck with the old names, but there's several functions that have been deprecated, such as the old MySQL interface library.
I'm not saying PHP is the greatest language ever (or even a great language), but it seems to get the job done for smaller sites, and there don't seem to be many really good alternatives that are well-supported, or so easy to embed into HTML like PHP does. It'd be nice if they'd fix some of these issues that seem to mostly stem from legacy issues, but I guess that conflicts with the goal of backwards compatibility so that's probably why that isn't done so quickly.
PHP Array Short Syntax
There are answers to most of your gripes....except search function needle/haystack ordering. That one bugs me too, as I can never remember which function uses which order.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Yup, as stupid as the Facebook bank balance.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Dart might be interesting, when they stop changing everything...all the time.
"Lame" - Galaxar
- Arrays and hashes are the same data structure, for no readily apparent reason. Also, the simplest way of using that data structure is "array(a,b,c,...)", not "[a,b,c, ...]" like everyone else.
So? Does this gripe have any practical implications? Or is it just a whine for a whine's sake? Also, as of PHP 5.4 (which has been March 2012 BTW), you CAN use the [a,b,c] syntax to create arrays.
- All variables start with $, in imitation of Perl, but don't use the @ or % prefixes the way Perl does, instead just pretending everything's a scalar even though it's not.
Again - so what? You presumably learned how PHP variables work, so you're doing OK. Don't worry about Perl when you're using PHP.
- For a long time, OOP was an afterthought.
But it's not an afterthought now. Or are you still using PHP 4?
- Unlike other scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and Perl, PHP can't figure out which files to include for you when you reference something outside of the current file. Instead, it offers a global facility called an "autoloader" that allows you to write your own code to tell it how to find it, which completely breaks when multiple libraries have competing autoloaders trying to pick up two different classes with the same name.
Again, don't worry about other languages. You're using PHP. And, more importantly, why are you using libraries with their own autoloaders?
- Library functions display no consistency whatsoever. Some are camelCase, some are under_scored. Some search functions put the needle before the haystack, some the other way around.
I agree that this is annoying. But is it a show-stopper?
- Some operators are funky: Values can be equal without being the same thing, for example.
Once again: so what? It's not random behavior. Learn how this stuff works and then move on with your life.
- A significant number of errors, instead of generating exceptions that can be caught and handled, generate fatal errors, which crash your application no matter what. By comparison, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Java allow you to handle almost any error.
What do you mean by "handle"? If you mean catch and log, then PHP allows you to catch all errors, including fatal ones (see register_shutdown_function for example). If you mean "recover from", I would suggest that attempting to "recover" from a fatal error is a very bad idea. A fatal error means that something is seriously wrong with your application - the "recovery" should be fixing it, not pushing it under the rug.
Your points just touch on the same old, tired "but it's not like $randomLanguageName and therefore it's bad!" If you constantly compare PHP - or any language - to other languages than I'm afraid you'll have a long road to hoe. If PHP is your chosen tool - as it is for me - learn it inside and out and stop comparing it to other languages.
Honestly, I don't understand what all the complaining is about. It just seems like a lot of language snobbery to me.
As someone who works with PHP every working day: It's a language that wasn't designed, it was congealed. Its lack of design is very evident as soon as you start trying to build anything interesting with it. It was something that was created to solve a short-term problem for one guy, and more-or-less accidentally grew into what it is today. What structures it does have are poor attempts at imitating other languages.
Some examples of what went wrong: - Arrays and hashes are the same data structure, for no readily apparent reason. Also, the simplest way of using that data structure is "array(a,b,c,...)", not "[a,b,c, ...]" like everyone else.
- All variables start with $, in imitation of Perl, but don't use the @ or % prefixes the way Perl does, instead just pretending everything's a scalar even though it's not.
- For a long time, OOP was an afterthought.
- Unlike other scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and Perl, PHP can't figure out which files to include for you when you reference something outside of the current file. Instead, it offers a global facility called an "autoloader" that allows you to write your own code to tell it how to find it, which completely breaks when multiple libraries have competing autoloaders trying to pick up two different classes with the same name.
- Library functions display no consistency whatsoever. Some are camelCase, some are under_scored. Some search functions put the needle before the haystack, some the other way around.
- Some operators are funky: Values can be equal without being the same thing, for example.
- A significant number of errors, instead of generating exceptions that can be caught and handled, generate fatal errors, which crash your application no matter what. By comparison, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Java allow you to handle almost any error.
I could go on, but the point is there's real reasons for hating PHP.
You could go on forever. Every day that I work on PHP code, I discover another absuridity in this moronic language. Here is today's: take the php function intval, which is meant to parse a string and return an integer:
- if you pass it an object, it emits an E_NOTICE and returns 1
- if you pass it NULL, an array(), and perhaps other things, who knows, it returns 0
- if you pass it a garbage string that is not a number it returns 0
- if you pass it a number with garbage appended it returns the number (e.g., "123aaaa" returns 123)
- if you pass it an overly large number it returns MAXINT
Apparently it did not occur to the people designing this that using valid return values to indicate error conditions is not a good idea.
Add to this, the fact that to know what a PHP API function REALLY does, you often have to read the comments under the API documentation page so you can find out of all the weirdnesses and special cases that the documentation does not mention.
Python, Python is my favorite language, however it isn't that good for web.
The standard for making a python application interact with a web server is wsgi, you can run it inside apache with mod_wsgi or run it in a dedicated server such as uwsgi. Or if you want to go asynchronous you can try tornado.
Better then 'Moose knuckle' (camelToe's fat ugly sister).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How is it hard to find replacement programmers for Ruby on Rails?
If you hire actual programmers that have not only domain knowlege but understand computation they will pick up both Ruby and Rails quickly.
Hire programmers, not programming language/framework end-users.
When you are writing a web app you can use whatever you like and there are a lot of good options:
Perl
Python(with or without the various framworks)
Ruby(with or without Rails or Sinatra) & JRuby
Smalltalk
Haskell
Lisp & Clojure
Ocaml
Scala
Erlang
Javascript(node or Rhino, maybe a few others)
even C++ has web frameworks if you really want C++
I am sure I missed about a dozen of so viable candidates
The only reason to use PHP is ignorance of the craft.
it also makes you look like an idiot who can't form their own opinions.
So does using the "but everyone else is doing it" argument.
I've used all kinds of languages for different purposes and the only thing I can say nice about PHP is that it is nearly as ubiquitous as Perl. Otherwise it is neither as capable or well thought out as it's competitors. My personal pet peeve is the inconsistent error handling (some functions just return true/false, some use NULL and false interchangeably, some write their error messages to STDERR, some to STDOUT, most give you no way to programmatically capture the error in a reasonable manner, and a few actually use the built exception functionality (though I still saw a handful that just used a generic exception with no details about the failure). The top failure of the language that gets the majority of my venom is their poor use of the __FILE__ macro and the maintainers refusal to recognize that they are the ones doing it wrong (translates links rather than giving you the raw value like every other major language).
Really the biggest problem with PHP is not the language itself, however, it's all the bad information out there about how to use it. Many of the helpful examples (especially for form processing or database work) are so full of security holes it's not funny. Sadder still is that it's the newbies that don't understand such concepts that read this bad advice as gospel and then continue to promote it by posting it again in their turn. All languages have their holes and flaws, but PHPs are more visible because of it's ubiquity (e.g. anyone can get a cheap hosting account that supports PHP) and because it drives the majority of the UIs on the web.
Yeah, only idiots use PHP -- that's why it's only used by 80% of the web
While I agree with your point about language snobbery, popularity doesn't imply user intelligence. There was a time when 80% of the web was written in Comic Sans with green text on a yellow background ;)
Disclaimer: I actually do like PHP, in spite of the inconsistencies that do admittedly plague it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
> you're a fucking idiot.
FTFY
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Python and Ruby are strongly typed, unlike PHP which doesn't even rise to the lofty title of weakly typed, stupidly typed is more accurate.
I am more familar with Ruby, so I will comment based on that, but my recollection of Python isn't much different. An object in Ruby is a specific type and will never be a different type, you can not coerce it(although you can get the object to return its representation in a different object: to_s, to_a, etc) to anything else and has no casting. You can't get much safer than that.
It also provides a mechinism that it cares more about what an object can do(the real point of OO) than what it is(Kingdom of nouns-profound misunderstanding of OO) unlike Java that requires so much verbosity to achieve the same effect.
Or are you referring to static and string typing Java style? You might want to know that many Java frameworks go to extreme contortions to get around its verbose and broken type system.
So does using the "but everyone else is doing it" argument.
That's not the argument I'm making :)
PHP is ubiquitous. That's certainly an advantage as far as maintaining it's share of the web. However, that didn't happen overnight. PHP is ubiquitous today because it did the job it was designed to do better than competing languages. This is still true today, as evidenced by several "superior" fad-languages failing to gain any ground. If PHP was garbage that no professional would touch, it couldn't have possibility achieved such an astonishing share!
You can criticize any language you want. With enough effort, you can make C appear to be the worst language ever improperly designed. (Just poke around the usenet archives and you'll see what I mean.) PHP has it's share of warts, no question, but it's not the worthless pile of garbage that language snobs have made it out to be.
Really the biggest problem with PHP is not the language itself, however, it's all the bad information out there about how to use it.
You'll find that's true of all popular programming languages. (You should see the nonsense out there about JavaScript -- written by respected professionals!) Though I'll admit that it might be a bit worse for PHP due to the large number of beginners the language attracts due to it's astonishing ease-of-use.
Really, I think that ease-of-use is exactly why we see so many "PHP is garbage" comments on forms like this. Developers are (undeservedly) considered by the general public to be brilliant-- a bit like MD's. The difference, of course, is that anyone can become a computer programmer in their spare time -- even children. Hell, I'll bet that the majority of Slashdot users were writing games for their home micro before the age of 12. It's an easy skill to learn -- and everyone developer knows it. Being insecure, the last thing they want is some easy language out there that's easy to learn and use. If their little secret got out, no one would think they were brilliant! They'd just be another nobody -- their worst fear!
Languages like PHP are a huge threat to those insecure developers. I'm not surprised that they bash it at every opportunity.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Not quite what I meant -- see my other reply. Apparently I can't communicate ideas today.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Here's a much more useful and accurate review of PHP.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
The sad part is that both of the two big languages for web development are like this (with JavaScript) being the other one. When you need to write software that's reasonably maintainable, flexible and secure, having a language that's consistent and predictable is pretty much required.
And don't forget his follow-up: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/07/28/quick-doesnt-mean-dirty/
Its pretty interesting reading. However he used a carpenter analogy which renders any argument invalid. If he had used a car analogy I would have believed everything he's written.
"JSP Oracle is the bad guy right.
Don't have to use JSPs and don't even really have to go near Oracle. There are fully open source Java stacks.
"ASP Microsoft is the bad guy right."
Truly skilled high quality professionals don't care about fanboyism, they just use the best tool for the job. If that's ASP.NET then so be it.
"Perl The 1990's called and they want their programming back."
I'll let you have that, though I'd argue that Perl is both of a higher quality design in that it's been built with sound academic understanding at it's heart, and more thoroughly tried and tested. It's certainly not worse than PHP that's for sure, though I'd agree there are probably better alternatives now.
"Ruby on Rails, good alternative however it will be hard to find replacement programmers."
Not really, I guess it depends in part what level you're hiring at. Any senior developer or upwards worth his salt will be at a point in their career where you can throw a new language and stack at them and they wont care what it is, they'll just get on and work with it being up to speed in no time at all. It may be harder at junior levels or normal developer levels perhaps but I'm not convinced it would be any more an impediment than companies face hiring say, iOS or Android developers for example though admittedly not as easy as finding Java, C# and PHP developers (though purely PHP only developers tend to be low calibre so you should be asking if you really want them working on your software anyway).
"Python, Python is my favorite language, however it isn't that good for web."
Neither is PHP but that doesn't seem to be much of an impediment to people choosing to use it. I'd argue Python is better because it's learnt from many of PHP's mistakes in this respect.
I'm in the same place having worked on large PHP projects.
It doesn't mean it's a good technology though, it's still shit and if you're starting a project rather than taking one over then there's always a better option to choose than PHP unless the client stubbornly mandates it.
It really is high time PHP was phased out, there's just too many better alternatives out there, which if you're as experienced in other languages as you say I'm sure you already know.
I don't think anyone is saying don't use it if it's where the money is, but if you have the option then advise against it or outright opt for something else if the decision is yours.
Actively choosing it, nowadays, is outright negligent, and that's the problem.
That's nice. You are comparing lightweight interpreter (PHP) to a Scala which runs on beast called JVM and consumes a lot more memory just to start and print Hello world.
...) it's hard to not think about building a website in it. You get everything others have (MVC model, great ORM or other database layer, migration framework, etc.) and you can host it practically everywhere. It's cheap for testing and small sites, and reasonably priced for bigger sites.
... so there is no need to argue scalability, because PHP is scalable and fast enough for majority of web applications. From security aspect, modern PHP isn't any better nor worse compared to alternatives.
You can literally run tens or even hundreds of small PHP websites on a 512 MB VPS or even a few larger. You also shouldn't forget about shared hosting, where most of PHP websites are hosted (albeit those are small sites, but they represent majority of all sites written in PHP).
Nonetheless, PHP language is improving and with the number of powerful web frameworks (Yii, Laravel, CodeIgniter, Symfony, CakePHP,
Not everyone will create next Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google,
Just let people choose whatever language they are most comfortable with or fits theirs needs.
Python, Python is my favorite language, however it isn't that good for web.
Go home, comment. You're drunk.
Django, Pylons, Bottle, Flask, TurboGears, Zope, Web2Py...
And that's just some of the popular frameworks..
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Agree... the snobby sophomoric programmers come out and jump on the bandwagon against what is probably the most widely used language to develop websites with, and claim it's not a good language to develop websites in... it's laughable. It's surely not my favorite language, but it does what it needs to do, it does it relatively simply (that seems to be their problem - if it's easy it can't be good), is well supported. When I switched my website scripting from PERL to PHP it was fantastic; now I use python, and I like python a lot better, but I have no problem maintaining my older code, or helping the other developers here with their PHP projects. My hosting service only supports PHP, too, although I don't do a whole lot on my personal site.
We're a media company and some of our internal sites are quite complicated, and yet were done quite easily with PHP, despite my preference for other languages. Good programmers, here - better than me; the code is clean and easy to follow.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Agreed. Are there any languages that nobody complains about, anyway?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No - people without a chip on their shoulders understood exactly what you were implying.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I like Django... that's my preference for new projects, but I have a lot of older PHP projects, and some of the developers here are still creating and maintaining PHP sites, and I have no problems with them, either. PHP works well for what it was designed for; I love Python, but we've managed to do some pretty complicated and, more importantly, working sites in PHP. I have no problem with it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Please tell us how PHP rocks to handle Unicode...
Also, the simplest way of using that data structure is "array(a,b,c,...)", not "[a,b,c, ...]" like everyone else.
So? Does this gripe have any practical implications?
Yes there is: without syntax highlighting, I can't tell at a glance whether I'm looking at a data structure or a function call, I have to read it more carefully.
- All variables start with $, in imitation of Perl, but don't use the @ or % prefixes the way Perl does, instead just pretending everything's a scalar even though it's not.
Again - so what? You presumably learned how PHP variables work, so you're doing OK. Don't worry about Perl when you're using PHP.
It's harder for me to tell at a glance whether I'm dealing with a numeric array, an associative array (what the rest of the world calls a hash), an object, or a scalar value (e.g. a string or integer). To make matters even more challenging, the culture of the PHP community tries to make it so you can hand it any of those and it will try to convert it, sometimes correctly and sometimes not. If you're going to use type indication symbols, they actually need to indicate a type.
Instead, it offers a global facility called an "autoloader" that allows you to write your own code to tell it how to find it, which completely breaks when multiple libraries have competing autoloaders trying to pick up two different classes with the same name.
And, more importantly, why are you using libraries with their own autoloaders?
Because most of the major frameworks and libraries have them. For example, SwiftMailer is a popular way of sending out email, and it has its own autoloader so that you can easily reference its classes inside your code.
A fatal error means that something is seriously wrong with your application - the "recovery" should be fixing it, not pushing it under the rug.
Or sometimes not: For example, I tracked down a fatal error that was occurring because a default argument (an array) was being manipulated inside of a function. It turned out that what PHP was doing was treating that default argument as a static value the first time, and the second time the function was called it was crashing because it was trying to access the first run's value on the stack. I was able to work around it, but that's not a bug in the program, that's a bug in the PHP interpreter.
The comparison to other languages is to point out that there are viable alternatives that don't have the problems PHP does. I can compare and contrast Java and Python too (both languages I like), even though they make some very different kinds of choices, and don't have the same reaction of "Java is wrong" or "Python is wrong", because they're both right in different ways: Python creates very compact and powerful code, Java creates very well-defined and explicit code.
Also, PHP isn't my chosen tool. It's my employer's chosen tool. I can wrangle it to do what I want it to do, but that's different from other languages that I actually enjoy writing in.
I am officially gone from
Honestly, I don't understand what all the complaining is about. It just seems like a lot of language snobbery to me.
Ah yes, the mark of an amateur. Dismissing concerns about good language design principles as snobbery or elitism.
Only in the amateur world of PHP and in the GOP are things like education considered elitism and should be shunned.
PHP is never the right answer as folks from Facebook learned the hard way. http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/Why-did-Quora-choose-Python-for-its-development/answer/Adam-DAngelo
Or sometimes not: For example, I tracked down a fatal error that was occurring because a default argument (an array) was being manipulated inside of a function. It turned out that what PHP was doing was treating that default argument as a static value the first time, and the second time the function was called it was crashing because it was trying to access the first run's value on the stack. I was able to work around it, but that's not a bug in the program, that's a bug in the PHP interpreter.
Wouldn't the value change of the array not matter because it goes out of scope? Every time the function runs it would be default again.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
+1 to this.
She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
That's what you might think, but (in at least this version of PHP) this crashed the application (apologies if /. screws up the formatting):
class Foo { ...
public function bar($arg=array()) {
$arg[] = 'bar';
}
}
While this worked fine: ...
class Foo {
public function bar($arg=null) {
if ($arg === null) {
$arg = array();
}
$arg[] = 'bar';
}
}
I definitely read that as a bug in the interpreter, not a bug in the application.
I am officially gone from