The Toyota Corolla of programming

Java is more akin to the Corolla. Utterly insipid (by design), lacking in refinements compared to competitors like the Mazda3, and made for people who just see it as a way to get from point A to point B.

PHP is the Hyundai Elantra of programming. It used to be popular because of low adoption costs but was the butt of jokes for a long time because of its questionable design and poor reliability. But like the Elantra, it has come a long way and is actually decent these days.

PHP did well for ONE reason: it was really, really, really easy to deploy. This was, of course, underestimated by programmers in the know, but I remember first getting into web dev, and I could start putting real programs (!!!) on the web, in minutes!

I would say it was more like the bicycle. Cheap, no license, even a kid could be suddenly zooming around town with no ceremony, no red tape, minimal investment.

I haven't used it in well over a decade, but still remember fondly how great it was as a gateway drug to bigger and better things.

Other languages caught up with PHP.

As I remember it all the early languages that let you write code inline with the HTML were proprietary such as server-side Javascript built into Netscape's web server, ColdFusion, ASP, etc.

PHP was the first of these that was open source and basically competent which made it my #1 choice for making web applications in 2001. Compared to many other languages (say cgi-bin) it was pretty fast without a build step and had enough resource management that hosting firms could offer cheap PHP hosting plans which made world-changing open source products like Wordpress deployable.

It got long in the tooth quickly because people realized that to make quality web applications you had to have a part of your framework (a "router") which could serve different pages based on the inputs. For example, if you are doing server-side error handling on a form you either display a form that says "successful" or you re-display the form with error messages. You certainly can write PHP that does that if you have some discipline, but once you introduce a router you might as well write your "views" with some kind of templating system and after ruby-on-rails every language got frameworks, typically Sinatra-like, which were about as comfortable as PHP and that pushed you into having some discipline.

PHP is so hard for me to describe. I used it a lot in the late 90s when we were migrating off mod_perl because it was a great way to add dynamic data to otherwise static pages, and no one really knew how to develop large sites yet. We were making it up as we went along. But ye gods, the language was bad. “A poor craftsman blames his tools” and all that, but imagine a screwdriver with 2 handles and 3 tips projecting at random angles. Sure, you could assemble an IKEA desk with it, but would you want to? And would you look suspiciously at anyone who claimed to love that weird screwdriver when the equivalent of a Snap-On was available for free from the same place they got the weirdo?

I think that’s the root of much of the horror. No one would bat an eye at using PHP to add little bits of server-side content here and there. It’s great for that! But then you see the giant castles of non-Euclidean horror built with it, and people pointing to them and saying “see what you can built with that weird screwdriver?”, and parts of the castles randomly fall off and kill their owners. No! While that’s impressive, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the screwdriver, or in the people who keep using it to build things larger than it was clearly able to do well. But heaven help you if you point out that there are saner screwdrivers. “You’re just being close minded and out of touch! We added another handle to it and removed the razor blade so it’s much better now!”

Maybe so, but wow, it’s still one hell of an odd screwdriver.

The article loses impact due to the way the author keeps self-conciously mentioning how the "PHP haters" are wrong instead of just explaining the possible usecase for PHP better.

I've never really used it but it would have been somewhat useful to know why anyone would choose this language for a greenfield project in 2025, given the choices available. The reasons given are pretty unconvincing to me.

The author makes a fair point that the language is no longer the fractal of bad design it was in 2009, but doesn't make the case for starting a green field project with it in 2025.

What does it do better than other languages? The article mentions features that sound like parity with other modern languages, but nothing that stands out.

I think the allure of javascript is the idea that you can use sparse server resources and have your software mostly run on the client side.

I’m resistant to using php, because I really don’t want to have heavy server resources, but if I were building an app that used heavy server resources anyways, I would be open to php.

I’ve used PHP for more than 20 years. It’s my “go-to” language for the backend. I’m not a server programmer, and PHP is fast, well-supported, and, if you’re a decent programmer, you can write robust, secure, performant servers in it.

I also really don’t like the language. I’ve never warmed to it.

But I think it will still be around, as a principal backend language, for the next fifty years.

I feel like this graph says it all: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...

I call it "The Fishtank Graph," for obvious reasons.

There's few programming environments I hated more viscerally than PHP. Yes, it got the job done. But thank God I never had to maintain that giant kludge of duct tape and elastic bands.

I think the author means the Nissan Versa of programming. Corollas are quite a bit more expensive and hold value longer. But both are very useful.

I've written more shell scripts than any other language for close to a decade now. The reason is simple: I'm not writing web apps. I mostly do system programming (that is to say, tasks needed to build or maintain a system or are generally user-focused yet non-interactive). You don't need more than a shell script for most of that.

My contemporaries will, of course, pooh-pooh a shell script on general principle. If it's not using a more "advanced language" it must be unreliable or unmaintainable or ugly. Yet the practical experience of writing programs in multiple languages over years leads me to the same conclusion: literally any language will do. You could use BASIC for system programming. You could use ASM. It will work. People will argue over whether one language is "better" than another, but who cares if it's better or not? If it works it works. But that's because nearly any language works for that kind of program. Other kinds of programs need advanced features, so you need a more advanced language. But for simple tasks? It doesn't matter.

To go back to the car analogy: you can use literally any car to pick up groceries. You can't use any car to pick up 3,000lbs of sandbags.

If we were scientists and not craftspeople, none of these discussions would be relevant. We'd pick up the tool designed for our specific purpose and not bicker over our personal preferences or idealistic principles. But our languages, and our approach to using them, is anything but scientific. We're just a bunch of tradies talking shit at the water cooler.

Aren't Corollas reputed to be functional and reliable? Seems like a weird analogy.

PHP is a DeLorean. I think I encountered 10 segfaults in it within 1 year which is a complete joke. This was only two years ago.

It also includes breaking changes in point releases which is a nonsensical maintenance strategy - this is in stark contrast to the reputation of stability in a Corolla.

While PHP may have some strengths, it immediately fails this particular comparison.