I used PHP for the past year. And honestly I still think it is not a good language. Just of the top of my head.
By far the biggest culprit. Arrays. This monstrosity is basically everything. Yes, it is fast but it only teaches bad habits. It is a weird combination of Arrays/Lists/(Dictionary/Hashmap) and you can’t know which one it currently is because there are 0 compile time safety checks. Also when used as a parameter it is passing a full copy instead. But the copy of course is only shallow. I have seen so many problems with that. And even worse when someone thinks the way to fix it, is to just json encode/decode the whole thing in order to get a deep copy before passing it.
Generics. I still don’t get why this is such a huge issue. Like I would rather have a half-baked optional compile time implementation then none at all. The worst part is that IDE tools support generics so you end up inplementing them on the comment level. I shouldn’t be forced to use generics through comments.
$ for variables. I know that this is just based on how the language grew. But god do I hate having to type it. It is not an easy to reach letter and just breaks my typing flow the whole time. You get used to it but still.
4 . The default functions. Yes. You will mostly use framework provided functions or your own stuff. But you still end up in contact with them and the naming schemes are still all over the place, so it is fast to just google it then hope you accidentally stumble upon it through the IDE. And some things are still straight up missing. Like the best way to deep copy an array is json_encode into json_decode. When I saw this the first time I was sure that must be wrong. But no. That is legit the way to do it.
Also I am stuck with PHP7 so some of my other complains seemed to be fixed in later versions. Also please don’t recommend DS for my first issue. I tried to push for it but it got vetoed because “it is too complicated for new devs”.
The language itself is not that bad. Especially the newest releases are really great, thought out DX improvements. What stinks are its legacy parts and how it needs to be run.
My biggest pain is that for it to actually behave like it should it requires some sort of an actual web server like apache or nginx.
Also, servers written in are actually request handlers - every time a request comes, the whole app is reinitialized, because it just can’t hold its state in memory. In many apps every request means reinitializing connection with database. If you want to keep some state, you have to use some caching mechanism like redis or memcached.
Also had one time when Symfony app was crashing, because someone forgot to close class braces, and everything was “working” until some part of code didn’t like it and was just dying without any error.
And one time when someone put two endlines after php closing tag at the end of the file, confusing the entire php interpreter into skipping some lines of code - also without warning, and only in specific php version.
Back in the day, the way it integrated with Apache was an evolutionary advantage to PHP. It found a strategy that worked in its environment and it thrived. That environment no longer exists, but PHP holds on vestigially.
We didn’t have AWS or other cheap, virtualized hosting way back when. It was all shared plans where you had a directory of your stuff, and it was there with a hundred other people on the same server and Apache instance. You could run whatever you wanted as a CGI, but that was even worse; it forks off a whole interpreter for the language, parses the code, and then used STDIN/STDOUT to communicate. Even if you implemented it in compiled C code (which had all the other problems you would expect), that fork is still expensive.
Projects like mod_perl and mod_python built an interpreter directly into Apache, but there was a problem with how it worked: it was too sophisticated. They could hook into the entire Apache API. That meant that there was no way to separate your stuff from every other thing on the same shared hosting plan. Any one instance would be able to fool around in all other accounts. That’s untenable, so your choices for those languages were to either get a dedicated plan at well over $100/month, or stick with a $5/month shared plan and put up with it being unscalable.
Enter mod_php. It builds the interpreter into Apache, but that’s all it does. Still have a parsing step, but it doesn’t have to fork. Doesn’t try do anything else. Its fast, and it can be hosted on cheap shared plans.
If you’re a startup at this time, operating on frozen pizza and office chairs from a thrift store, then you could get a cheap plan, develop it under CGI, and hope that you can refactor it later when you can afford a dedicated plan. Oh, and keep in mind that CGI doesn’t lend itself to converting easily to the Apache API or whatever else you’re going to use in the future. Alternatively, you could build it in PHP and it will be fast now and acceptable later.
It’s no great mystery why PHP was chosen at the time. There were limited options, and it was the cheap, get it done now option.
Not sure why you focus on arrays for deep copying. Deep copying objects is a problem in many languages and brings some challenges with itself that make it almost always necessary to delegate it to a library.
Simply because it was an issue that I ran into at work. And the reason I focus on arrays is because of the previously mentioned default behaviour of arrays being cloned when passed as an argument for a function. The issue here was someone unexperienced wrote a bunch of code and used only arrays (deep ugly arrays) and it ended up being a huge mess of some references staying the same while others changed. So the only solution was to deep copy at one place. That way later operations on these arrays didn’t affect the original structure. Not pretty but refactoring would have been too much effort.
$ for variables. I know that this is just based on how the language grew. But god do I hate having to type it. It is not an easy to reach letter and just breaks my typing flow the whole time. You get used to it but still.
I’m assuming you’re not using an English keyboard…? Shift+4 is an extremely key combination for me lol
The answer for the deep copy would seem to be a combination of a static recursive function to copy the array while cloning the objects inside, with setting the __clone() magic function in your objects to break the references, no? Granted it’s not a built in function, but not difficult to implement.
Arrays are passed by copy by default. Every scalar or array value is copied by value. Every other thing (objects basically) is copied by reference.
Passing array by reference passes everything it used to copy by reference.
Attempting to clone an array will result in an error.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array will do the same as if passed to a function by value.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array using the reference operator will do the same as if passed to a function by reference.
So, in order to deep copy an array, just reassign and recursively traverse the array calling clone on each object. Of course, this would break (or not, depending on the intended use) when the same object is referenced multiple times under different keys.
Sorry for being lazy so no sources for now. But based on my research back then. Using clone (on arrays) is actually slower then json_encode/json_decode.
So there are some cool optimization tricks going on in the background. But that doesn’t make it any more intuitive for me.
I used PHP for the past year. And honestly I still think it is not a good language. Just of the top of my head.
By far the biggest culprit. Arrays. This monstrosity is basically everything. Yes, it is fast but it only teaches bad habits. It is a weird combination of Arrays/Lists/(Dictionary/Hashmap) and you can’t know which one it currently is because there are 0 compile time safety checks. Also when used as a parameter it is passing a full copy instead. But the copy of course is only shallow. I have seen so many problems with that. And even worse when someone thinks the way to fix it, is to just json encode/decode the whole thing in order to get a deep copy before passing it.
Generics. I still don’t get why this is such a huge issue. Like I would rather have a half-baked optional compile time implementation then none at all. The worst part is that IDE tools support generics so you end up inplementing them on the comment level. I shouldn’t be forced to use generics through comments.
$ for variables. I know that this is just based on how the language grew. But god do I hate having to type it. It is not an easy to reach letter and just breaks my typing flow the whole time. You get used to it but still.
4 . The default functions. Yes. You will mostly use framework provided functions or your own stuff. But you still end up in contact with them and the naming schemes are still all over the place, so it is fast to just google it then hope you accidentally stumble upon it through the IDE. And some things are still straight up missing. Like the best way to deep copy an array is json_encode into json_decode. When I saw this the first time I was sure that must be wrong. But no. That is legit the way to do it.
Also I am stuck with PHP7 so some of my other complains seemed to be fixed in later versions. Also please don’t recommend DS for my first issue. I tried to push for it but it got vetoed because “it is too complicated for new devs”.
The language itself is not that bad. Especially the newest releases are really great, thought out DX improvements. What stinks are its legacy parts and how it needs to be run.
My biggest pain is that for it to actually behave like it should it requires some sort of an actual web server like apache or nginx.
Also, servers written in are actually request handlers - every time a request comes, the whole app is reinitialized, because it just can’t hold its state in memory. In many apps every request means reinitializing connection with database. If you want to keep some state, you have to use some caching mechanism like redis or memcached.
Also had one time when Symfony app was crashing, because someone forgot to close class braces, and everything was “working” until some part of code didn’t like it and was just dying without any error.
And one time when someone put two endlines after php closing tag at the end of the file, confusing the entire php interpreter into skipping some lines of code - also without warning, and only in specific php version.
Back in the day, the way it integrated with Apache was an evolutionary advantage to PHP. It found a strategy that worked in its environment and it thrived. That environment no longer exists, but PHP holds on vestigially.
We didn’t have AWS or other cheap, virtualized hosting way back when. It was all shared plans where you had a directory of your stuff, and it was there with a hundred other people on the same server and Apache instance. You could run whatever you wanted as a CGI, but that was even worse; it forks off a whole interpreter for the language, parses the code, and then used STDIN/STDOUT to communicate. Even if you implemented it in compiled C code (which had all the other problems you would expect), that fork is still expensive.
Projects like mod_perl and mod_python built an interpreter directly into Apache, but there was a problem with how it worked: it was too sophisticated. They could hook into the entire Apache API. That meant that there was no way to separate your stuff from every other thing on the same shared hosting plan. Any one instance would be able to fool around in all other accounts. That’s untenable, so your choices for those languages were to either get a dedicated plan at well over $100/month, or stick with a $5/month shared plan and put up with it being unscalable.
Enter mod_php. It builds the interpreter into Apache, but that’s all it does. Still have a parsing step, but it doesn’t have to fork. Doesn’t try do anything else. Its fast, and it can be hosted on cheap shared plans.
If you’re a startup at this time, operating on frozen pizza and office chairs from a thrift store, then you could get a cheap plan, develop it under CGI, and hope that you can refactor it later when you can afford a dedicated plan. Oh, and keep in mind that CGI doesn’t lend itself to converting easily to the Apache API or whatever else you’re going to use in the future. Alternatively, you could build it in PHP and it will be fast now and acceptable later.
It’s no great mystery why PHP was chosen at the time. There were limited options, and it was the cheap, get it done now option.
Not sure why you focus on arrays for deep copying. Deep copying objects is a problem in many languages and brings some challenges with itself that make it almost always necessary to delegate it to a library.
Simply because it was an issue that I ran into at work. And the reason I focus on arrays is because of the previously mentioned default behaviour of arrays being cloned when passed as an argument for a function. The issue here was someone unexperienced wrote a bunch of code and used only arrays (deep ugly arrays) and it ended up being a huge mess of some references staying the same while others changed. So the only solution was to deep copy at one place. That way later operations on these arrays didn’t affect the original structure. Not pretty but refactoring would have been too much effort.
I’m assuming you’re not using an English keyboard…? Shift+4 is an extremely key combination for me lol
Right alt + 4 for me lol
Aha, your complaint makes a lot more sense now lol
Holy hell as someone who still avidly writes PHP, this gives me goosebumps.
What is “DS”?
Can’t open the one response you got. So maybe someone already answered. But this here
https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.ds.php
deleted by creator
The answer for the deep copy would seem to be a combination of a static recursive function to copy the array while cloning the objects inside, with setting the __clone() magic function in your objects to break the references, no? Granted it’s not a built in function, but not difficult to implement.
Arrays are passed by copy by default. Every scalar or array value is copied by value. Every other thing (objects basically) is copied by reference.
Passing array by reference passes everything it used to copy by reference.
Attempting to clone an array will result in an error.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array will do the same as if passed to a function by value.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array using the reference operator will do the same as if passed to a function by reference.
So, in order to deep copy an array, just reassign and recursively traverse the array calling
cloneon each object. Of course, this would break (or not, depending on the intended use) when the same object is referenced multiple times under different keys.Sorry for being lazy so no sources for now. But based on my research back then. Using clone (on arrays) is actually slower then json_encode/json_decode.
So there are some cool optimization tricks going on in the background. But that doesn’t make it any more intuitive for me.