[billpatrianakos]

We get it, man. PHP sucks, you're cool/smarter/better because you use something else, and you need to remind us all about it by jumping in every time the letters P-H-P are seen in sequence to let us all know how it sucks by retreading the same old lines used by the last fifty guys who said the same thing but to your credit you really tried to be clever about it.

A good portion of why people like to mock PHP is due to the way people end up using the language rather than the language's ugly parts. This guide is a great step toward pointing people in the right direction with the language. PHP has come a very long way and continues to improve. A big chunk of the battle is having decent guides to replace all the crap that's out there showing new PHP devs the wrong way. So why not talk about the merits of the guide rather than taking an easy opportunity to shit on PHP. It's really gotten old.

Hey, remember when JavaScript was like the worst language ever and everyone felt the need to remind everyone about that constantly? I do. And now all of them are writing blogs about how awesome node.js is.

[gbog]

I used PHP for five years professionally, I consider myself as well positioned as many to have an informed opinion about PHP weaknesses and strengths. My diagnostic is that PHP weaknesses are structural, and no amount of guidance can fix that. If facing the choice, one should not choose PHP over other solutions. (It happens also that I am working in Chinese tech sphere, where many startup choose PHP just because it is used by Facebook and Wikipedia, which is really sad.)

However, I appreciate very well the need for such a guide when you have no other choice. I did not read all of it, but it is certainly necessary to have strong coding conventions and a defined set of "must do/musn't do". I remember we had even built a code checker that was forbiding the use of many php functions and syntax, and had a set of wrappers around basic functionalities like string functions or date functions.

[jasonlotito]

> I used PHP for five years professionally, I consider myself as well positioned as many to have an informed opinion about PHP weaknesses and strengths.

Yeah, that doesn't mean anything. In fact, to be frank, when I read that, I fill in the underlying context:

"I used PHP for fives years professionally, and the code was horrible. Granted, it was code I wrote because PHP let me write code that way..."

or

"I used PHP for fives years professionally, almost a decade ago..."

> I remember we had even built a code checker that was forbiding the use of many php functions and syntax, and had a set of wrappers around basic functionalities like string functions or date functions.

Yeah, that didn't do much to change my mind.

[andyfleming]

He doesn't defend PHP as a language.

He is sharing some useful guidelines to approach it more properly and help people that are still using it.

I, for one, am a fan.

[dlitz]

> A good portion of why people like to mock PHP is due to the way people end up using the language rather than the language's ugly parts.

Are you really going to trot out that old lie?

Why not read this, instead? http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...

[corford]

Because huge swathes of that blog post have already been debunked ad infinitum (here on HN, no less).

[phillmv]

Well… Javascript does suck. No one in their right mind defends the language.

[simonbrown]

They do.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html

http://skilldrick.co.uk/2010/09/why-javascript-is-awesome/

[wilmoore]

It is actually a very strong language with a few very well known warts (like every other language on the planet has). The problem is that people try to use it as if it were Ruby, PHP, Python, Java. One can do that, but just know that it is an exercise in futility. It will cause frustration and one will come to the conclusion that JavaScript sucks when in fact, it is just that most people don't really take the time to _understand_ JavaScript.

JavaScript could stand to be a bit less verbose (look into CoffeeScript for some relief if you value your sanity and time) in some areas and type coercion should just go away; but if you use strict mode and strict equality, a huge amount of pain is alleviated.

If one take the time to learn about constructor functions, the prototype chain, and own properties; they are 70% there. Most people can get by on just that.

[mikeash]

Yes, how dare he talk about the problems with PHP in the comments on a site dedicated to talking about how to avoid problems with PHP. Seriously, WTF? Are people actually offended that discussion of PHP's defects take place in a conversation about PHP best practices?

[pixelbath]

Offended, no. Weary of rehashing the same arguments against using PHP at all, when that is clearly not the point of the discussion...absolutely.

[Getahobby]

I think it is because we (as a community) should be past the piling-on stage and on to the constructive discussion stage. Snark doesn't add to the discussion.