PHP just sucks and there's no getting around it

15 Jun 2015 11:12 | php | development

There are many reasons why PHP is a shit programming language, many of which are discussed at length in this article:

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

But the main thing that bugs me is how inelegant it is. You can get things done with it sure, and you can do good work in almost any language, but that doesn’t mean other languages aren’t inherently nicer. Take for example my “usify” script which I use to automatically derive use statements for Symfony2 classes. This is the PHP version:

https://github.com/m4rkw/env/blob/master/bin/usify.bak

And here is the ruby rewrite:

https://github.com/m4rkw/env/blob/master/bin/usify

I haven’t even refactored it to really take advantage of ruby’s features yet and it’s still 76 lines shorter after a straight rewrite, and the code is much cleaner, easier to read and more expressive. PHP just feels like you’re constantly kicking a dead whale along a beach.

It seems that the old adage holds true - “If you could reason with PHP developers there wouldn’t BE any PHP developers.”