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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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 45 points 2 weeks ago (18 children)

Where I live, I still see people in a horse-drawn wagon. So, I guess horse-drawn wagons never died? It's only used for tourists and weddings, but that counts, right?

According to Tiobe, PHP was the programming language of the year in 2004. In 2010 it was number 3 in the top 10 programming languages. It's now out of the top 10 entirely. There really isn't a language that has completely disappeared. Mainframes are still programmed using COBOL, Scientists are still using FORTRAN, even Lisp, which has been around since the 1950s, is still going strong.

Maybe Actionscript counts as truly dead, since it was tied to Adobe Flash, and Flash is truly dead?

I have a lot of bad memories of PHP. It was, for a brief time, the main language I used, but it was so ugly and inconsistent. The only thing I loved about it, at the time, was that it wasn't Visual Basic. As bad as PHP was, at least I wasn't making web pages in that pile of hot garbage. But, I never felt joy writing something in PHP. At best it was a slog. At worst it was like pulling teeth.

Just about every other language has given me moments of fun. Original Javascript was a mess, but it already contained scheme-like features. It was sold as being an interpreted version of Java, but it had features that Java wouldn't have for at least a decade. C is a brutal and unforgiving language, but as long as you're not working with strings, it's great to have such low-level control over everything.

Maybe PHP has evolved like other languages, but I still am not interested in trying it out. Everything it was good at can be done better by other languages, and those are languages that give me joy, not pain. I hope it keeps dropping in the rankings so that people aren't exposed to it as one of their first languages.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 8 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Laravel brought life back to PHP for me. It's elegant. I feels like speaking.

And PHP 8 is light-years away from the garbage I grew up on.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I took a look and threw up in my mouth a little. That's not how backslashes should be used.

Instead of writing their frontend templates in PHP via Blade, many developers have begun to prefer to write their templates using React or Vue.

So... the only thing that PHP is really good for should be replaced by React or Vue Javascript / Typescript?

To each their own, but for me that's a no.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Tell me you haven't looked at php in 15 years without telling me you haven't looked at php in 15 years

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago

I just looked, that was the basis of my comment. It's bad, in particular that "Laravel" thing was awful.

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