Lies in education [was Re: The "loop and a half"]

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:07 AM, Bill <BILL_NOSPAM at whoknows.net> wrote:
> Mikhail V wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> [...] I'm not here to "cast stones", I like Python. I just think
>>>>> that you shouldn't cast stones at C/C++.
>>>>
>>>> Not while PHP exists.  There aren't enough stones in the world...
>>>>
>>> PHP seems (seemed?) popular for laying out web pages.  Are their vastly
>>> superior options?
>>
>> Python? Superior syntax for sure
>
>
> I believe that.  What accounts for the popularity of PHP then?

It's popular, therefore people use it. It's purely self-perpetuating.

There was a time (a time forever gone) when you could get extremely
cheap web hosting with PHP support, but other scripting languages were
only available if you paid more. That created a culture of low-grade
sites gravitating to PHP and MySQL, which meant that software aimed at
them (WordPress, various forum software, MediaWiki) would be written
in PHP. And that means that anyone who wants to mod them (WordPress
particularly) has to learn PHP. It's an endless cycle.

But since it's the lowest-end sites that have traditionally driven
that demand for PHP, there's a general tendency for low-grade
programmers to gravitate to it, so there's a lot of really REALLY bad
code out there. Yes, someone's going to chime in with (a) "You can
write good code in PHP" and/or (b) "Big sites like Facebook and
Wikipedia use PHP, so it must be fine". I don't care. About either.
They're irrelevant to someone who's looking over the job postings...
the chances that a PHP job will involve bad code are far higher than,
say, Haskell jobs, which will be rarer but much less hit-and-miss.

There's basically no reason to use PHP unless you're working in
existing PHP code (as mentioned, things like WordPress plugins).

Also: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/are-you-down-with-php-

ChrisA