I don’t know if it’s due to over-exposure to programming memes but I certainly believed that no one was starting new PHP projects in 2023 (or 2020, or 2018, or 2012…). I was under the impression we only still discussed it at all because WordPress is still around.

Would a PHP evangelist like to disabuse me of my notions and make an argument for using PHP for projects such as Kbin in this day and age?

  • farizer@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I know it sounds childish but PHP is lame as hell same as java. Rust or go would have definitely been a cooler choice. I mean PHP gets the job done, but still…

        • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
          4·
          1 year ago

          In a way though he’s right, picking a language because it is “cool” is the wrong reason to pick a language. You should be looking at other things like performance, scalability, security, functionality and see if those facets align with the requirements for your project.

          • Hexorg@beehaw.orgM
            2·
            1 year ago

            When doing a project where those things matter - sure. But if it’s your hobby protect you can do anything

              • Hexorg@beehaw.orgM
                2·
                1 year ago

                I think the challenge arises when your hobby project gets funding and thousands of people start using it… But at that point the codebase is likely locked into many previously made decisions. Locked in as in - it would take too much effort to change it.

                • PJB@lemmy.spacestation14.comEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Yeah. People really should be allowed to make things in whatever technology they prefer, but at the same time I can’t help but wince when I see infrastructure such as Mastodon or Matrix Synapse being written in slow inefficient languages like Ruby and Python.

                  It’s really bad for the strength of decentralized networks like Fedi when I have a friend telling me “I wish I didn’t set up Mastodon because my tiny instance needs multiple gigabytes of RAM”. I might have set up a Matrix homeserver myself by now if Synapse wasn’t Python and notoriously slow. I immediately discarded Kbin as a choice (among other reasons) because it’s PHP and Lemmy is Rust.

                  Always easy to say “hindsight is 20/20”, but still.

                  • Hexorg@beehaw.orgMEnglish
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    Well you can’t know what you don’t know. So if you start a project and foresee thousands of people use it in scalable manner - yeah you’ll use something faster but then your project might die before getting “in the wild”… but if you’re just nerding out with your friends you just want to have fun… and then suddenly thousands of people want to use your project… there’s just no winning

      • aksdb@feddit.de
        11·
        1 year ago

        No it’s not. If I work one something in my free time / voluntarily, I want to have fun. I want to enjoy it. If PHP pisses me off but Rust thrills me, of course I choose Rust. That’s the freedom you have if you start a project. That there are more maintainers and even a bunch of contributors underlines that it was the right choice.