PHP 8.2 Released With Readonly Classes, Random Extension

[mdedetrich]

PHP really became a nice language. It is quite performant and easy to work with nowadays.

This may be true, but a lot of other languages have evolved. In fact you can argue that other languages are far infront of PHP nowadays because they didn't have to spend a decade reverting brain dead design decisions and instead spent their effort on other things.

The only reason to use PHP nowadays is because of sunk cost reasons, i.e. only the programmer/s know PHP or the workplace is built around PHP.

But PHP is still far and widely used in entreprises because...
a) The amount of *workable* libraries is astonishing

Java/JVM ecosystem and Python has more libraries and the majority of them are not shit quality. Heck if even node.js has more libraries if we wan't to go down that low

b) You have a LOT of inertia in people being used to it and having (hopefully) improved their development skills while also following the improvements of PHP (well I must admit it's not always true but one can hope it's the majority xd).

Sunk cost fallacy

c) PHP has very little to envy compared to other languages: it has many tailored libraries, third party component management, testing libraries, different frameworks...

This is a massive non statement if I have seen one. The same can be said of many other languages.

Anyways, you're perfectly free to not like PHP, to each his own... But for your own sake you should maybe open your eyes, ridicule does not kill does not mean you should look for it, unless you're masochistic at core. ^^

I did whenever I had to help some family members on some Wordpress issues, its still largely bad just less so compared to a decade ago.

[Citan]

So basically you're judging the whole PHP ecosystem upon a few bad experiences with Wordpress. So much wisdom.

[jrdoane]

So basically you're judging the whole PHP ecosystem upon a few bad experiences with Wordpress. So much wisdom.

I wouldn't go back to using PHP either to be honest. I've been spoiled with the JVM ecosystem and the flexibility of a language like Clojure. Things likes readonly classes are cute when you use a language that emphasizes functional paradigms, immutable data structures, and homoiconicity. At the end of the day any turing complete language can solve a problem, but the question is how performant is it, how performant are the engineers who are using it, and what does it give you to enable you to scale? PHP has improved, but a pig with lipstick is still a pig.

[mdedetrich]

So basically you're judging the whole PHP ecosystem upon a few bad experiences with Wordpress. So much wisdom.

Have you tried other programming languages? If the only language you program in is PHP then your argument doesn't hold any water. I have at worst intermediate experience in 10+ languages in my career and I can say with near certainty
that if you are starting from scratch, every language solving the same problems that PHP solves does it better for a variety of reasons (Python, Ruby, Go and Kotlin being the most popular and prominent examples).

I have done my fair share work PHP nm the past, it's not just wordpress. Even with its improvements, it's still the McDonalds of programming languages. Very popular, but not exactly nutritious.