PHP 7.4 Released With FFI, Typed Properties, Arrow Functions, Better Performance

[starshipeleven]

Isn't the problem poorly written apps? I.e. they have used non standard ways to do stuff? Did PHP really deprecate that much between versions?

Of course the app was poorly written, in most cases the apps running on a company server are poorly written in the dark by the lowest bidder in half the time they needed to make a decent job.
Or so it seems to me, given the type of issues they face when deployed (for example, at least twice a year some new custom software I load on a server breaks after some use, I get into troubleshooting and I find out that they can't deal with names or paths with spaces, which is quite frankly a bit concerning for something that was written in 2019, I don't even want to know if they sanitize their inputs)

But this is a constant, regardless of the language. People developing in Java or C# aren't fundamentally different from PHP developers, nor the applications do different things, yet I get less issues.

Which is why the language is a factor.

The language puts down rails and rules and features that help the developer. The more they can shoot themselves in the foot the more they will.

Apparently PHP is the worse of the bunch in the languages of choice. Java runs like garbage but it does not cause so much issues. Yeah it did break functionality when updating major VM versions, yeah I still despise it for a bunch of reasons, but it is not as bad as PHP applications are.

EDIT: Full disclosure: Most of these applications aren't pubblic, they are for internal company use or offered as a service to client companies, so many things that would be completely unacceptable in a public application/website/service will be mitigated with user training of course.

[Citan]

I second this. PHP is just bad, there is no excuse for those that keep using it for their software.

Sad reading as usual...

Whatever efficient or not a tool may be, it's the mind behind that makes the quality of a project.

The main flaw of PHP is that because it's permissive by default it's easier for a badly lazey developer to write awful code.
It also (for now) still has some limitations compared to others, (big one being inferior polymorphism compared to Java) but it perfectly allows you to write maintanable, secure and performant web apps.

Also, you're right, sysadmin are much more than "janitors" and I disapprove of the mindset some devs have that "sysadmin is easy, dev is the true skillzz" because it's just wrong.
With that said, I'd hazard that if you have relational problems with your colleagues, the cause may rather be found by looking at a mirror.

Typical myopical self-centered view of developers. You never realize that who makes your shitty applications actually work in the field is someone else.

I'm a sysadmin, I don't get to choose what crap the clients want to install in the servers, so yes I'm entitled to hate on the language and all its users indiscriminately and whine profusely about it on forums.

The funny thing is, it has nothing to do with language quality. It just so happens that PHP is the most popular languages since years, the most light weight to accustom to, the easiest to install and make work to create dynamic webapp (js servers now become easy enough too, but there is the inerty of hosts) so obviously the quantity of users that have half-mastery (equates none) and as a consequence whine for help for even basic things will be considerably more than users setting up Java apps.

The self-center is not necessarily where you think it is.

[royce]

Yeah sure, more developer elitism bullshit. "enable developers to do their stuff" like I'm a fucking janitor.

Let me put it this way. Your job is there because the company has developers writing software, and not the other way around. But is by no means necessary. A lot places I've worked at over the years have done away with sysadmins entirely, and some of them have indeed gone further and work 100% serverlessly.

as it is with shit like Joomla or Wordpress.

These aren't frameworks, but CMS systems. A wordpress developer is not a PHP developer, even if wordpress is written in PHP. You're probs working with old school webmasters, not software developers.

[royce]

Isn't the problem poorly written apps? I.e. they have used non standard ways to do stuff? Did PHP really deprecate that much between versions?

It's usually pretty obscure and broken stuff that's deprecated between versions. PHP has some of the best BC in the industry.

[starshipeleven]

Let me put it this way. Your job is there because the company has developers writing software, and not the other way around. But is by no means necessary.

Boy the superiority complex is strong.

A lot places I've worked at over the years have done away with sysadmins entirely, and some of them have indeed gone further and work 100% serverlessly.

You sound like one of them. They are all good at impressing businness-types with big words, meh at delivering a decent product.

"serverlessly" is the bullshit jargon to impress sheeple, you are using cloud infrastructure and someone is managing it and providing support if you can't get it to run your stuff.

It's better than dedicated or hosted servers though, as there at least the client can't just come and ask for bullshit runtime versions or custom hacks to workaround their software's shortfalls. You have runtimes at version X, Y or Z, chosen at the start, your application does not work with them? You need a custom hack to restart some service that breaks regularly every X time? Well that's a damn shame, but it's not my problem because your app is in a read-only container and not in a true OS. Now go fix it, chop chop.

If you think this means less sysadmins, think again. This just means you have less sysadmins per application or per server. The amount of applications with this model has exploded.

These aren't frameworks, but CMS systems.

I didn't claim they are frameworks. I just used them as an example of well-known PHP applications that have the "vulnerability of the week", because well, they do.

A wordpress developer is not a PHP developer,

Wordpress users you mean. I can't even find the courage to call them webmasters. Point and click is not developing. Hell I'm a sysadmin and I write more code than them (shell or powershell on Windows servers to automate stuff).

[starshipeleven]

Whatever efficient or not a tool may be, it's the mind behind that makes the quality of a project.

Tools do play a significant part. This isn't art.

The main flaw of PHP is that because it's permissive by default it's easier for a badly lazy developer to write awful code.

I think this is also what I said.
The problem is that it isn't C, so you aren't trading off this dangerous nature for extreme speed.

if you have relational problems with your colleagues, the cause may rather be found by looking at a mirror.

Developers are not my collegues, they work for my clients. Guess where I work.

The funny thing is, it has nothing to do with language quality.

This contradicts what you said above. Language quality is a significant factor.

It just so happens that PHP is the most popular languages since years

Ok good point, this is also a factor, given the above premises.
But still, if the language quality was higher it would not be as bad as no matter how noob you are, if the language does not allow something you aren't going to do it.

[Citan]

Tools do play a significant part. This isn't art.

But still, if the language quality was higher it would not be as bad as no matter how noob you are, if the language does not allow something you aren't going to do it.

Good program isn't all about the writing itself. It's also about architecture.

With the level of verbosity and restraint a language like Java imposes, plus the fact it's full-object from A to Z, it's *very* easy to create uncomprehensible mess of classes because striking the perfect balance between granularity and simplicity is hard (and also people may have different target points from one another which doesn't help if there is no regular discussion ^^).

As for tools... Yeah, they do play a significant part. But they are still overall irrelevant as to the final quality.
PHP like other languages has several tools for testing... But in PHP as in Java, nobody puts a gun on developer's head to ensure they write tests for code (or even simply that they write testable code).

PHP like others has IDEs to help, but no tool will ever force you to follow a logical and coherent structure and nomenclature for the functional features you make.
I'll largely prefer a program written by a good developer, without any tool, in PHP, than a program written by a newbie developer in Java even if you give him the best preconfigured Eclipse or similar.
Because tools only carry you so far. They cannot decide all the really important things for you, just help you deal quicker with many little things *you would have taken care of anyways IF you're a good developer*.

Java is slightly harder to mess with because the compilers can point out the most blatant errors. It won't help much if your code is impossible to understand by anyone else, or if your code works but is so sluggish it's effectively useless to end-users.

[gggeek]

starshipeleven in my own experience, Java BC between versions has always been, regardless of the promises of Sun/Oracle/$vendor, much, much worse than PHP's. Which was always an ironic twist on the 'enterprise-readyness' of software as marketed by its creators...

No chance in hell that one could ever get two biggish apps from separate vendors to run on the same JRE. and I'm not even talking about custom-developed-code here, but about commercially available software.
It is not a mystery that this was eminently resolved by having each java app ship with its own JRE/JDK bundled in - this happens up to this day (eg. with phpstorm, my favourite php ide, which is written in java).
In php-land the trend has become, instead of bundling the php interpreter within each app, to bundle the whole server, ie. run apps in containers.
Is that much different?

As for permissive languages allowing more bad code to be written: I might agree or not. PHP is not chosen for it's ability to force users to write safe code. It is generally chosen because it makes developers orders of magnitude more productive than C and Java (anecdotal experience here, but I am sure there are stats out there corroborating this).