Yep, PHP is turning 30 this year! Wondering if "PHP is still relevant?" Ever since we have been hearing that PHP is dead. It was “dead” 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and “is dead” today. But somehow - it isn’t. Anyway... happy birthday!

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[–] lime@feddit.nu 41 points 2 weeks ago (22 children)

my entire way of reasoning about programming languages changed when i read on article about how hating on php was misogynistic. i clicked on it because it just sounded like yet another ragebait, but it made sense.

basically, since php is simple, and integrated with html, the vast majority of php devs started out as designers who later got into code. since php has always been a mess, nobody wanted to build mainstream tooling for it except the people actively working with the language. this means that mainstream ideas about language and tooling design didn't percolate down to php like it has done to most languages. so php devs, when exposed to tooling the rest of the world takes for granted, are usually overwhelmed because not only is there a lot of it, nobody in php-land uses tools like that. so they get called bad devs of a bad language. some of them, who really like to code, push through this massive difficulty spike, while others just assume that "actual programming" is too hard and go back to design, even though tooling usage has little to do with your skill as a programmer.

the kicker, of course, being that web design has more women than most other dev specialisations.

[–] Tonava@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 weeks ago

That tracks, without any background in coding php is very simple to get into. I'm not a woman, but as a personal anecdote I've never done anything outside some self-taught hobby-level web designing requiring html and js, and I only know some php because it's what was easiest to learn by myself to get the stuff I wanted done.

I've looked into actual programming languages a couple times, but I never get far since I don't need them for anything and all the tutorials start super boringly and won't tell about the possibilities you could potentially do; it's assumed you already know. With php I just knew what I needed and did some web searches and found the answers, and that kinda spiraled into leaning along the way. There's no way to do that if you don't even know where to start

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