PHP In this day and age

morningreis

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
1,574
Hey there, I am thinking of continuing teaching myself PHP. I have a bit of experience with it and I code in PHP just to learn and challenge myself. Last time I left off working with it though was maybe 3-4 years ago.

Is PHP still a very popular format for web developers?
 
Popularity polls vary, but PHP is still a common and developed language.
 
Hey there, I am thinking of continuing teaching myself PHP. I have a bit of experience with it and I code in PHP just to learn and challenge myself. Last time I left off working with it though was maybe 3-4 years ago.

Is PHP still a very popular format for web developers?

Dunno. I still use it the same way i did four years ago.
 
There are quite a good amount of PHP positions available, at least where i'm from. But if you're just looking for the most popular language nowadays, i'd have to lean towards MS, a lot of shops getting set up are going that route.
 
There are quite a good amount of PHP positions available, at least where i'm from. But if you're just looking for the most popular language nowadays, i'd have to lean towards MS, a lot of shops getting set up are going that route.

MS?
 
.Net just got a huge boost by Microsoft coming up with LightSwitch 2011 where it becomes substantially easier for non-developers to create basic apps.

It's already common place that folks who work with Microsoft Office will do some GUI and logic development just to fit their own needs in how they process data in Office. LightSwitch (although an unfortunate name imho) does take it a bit further in allowing for the creation of actual apps.
 
If your going to get back into PHP, make sure you take full advantage of the 5.3.x branch. Object oriented PHP is easy to get the hang of and will make managing complex programs much easier. I'm very glad I didn't have to suffer writing any code for PHP 4, but now that I have to work one legacy programs written in PHP4, I'm surprised the language made it this far.
 
If you are looking for a career, I'd go with ASP.NET. I ended up learning PHP and ColdFusion, and while useful for odd jobs and gigs, most career-type jobs I see want Microsoft.
 
The more you code the more you realize there's always going to be something new to learn. PHP has and continues to show it's robust and scaleable nature. Facebook runs off a PHP hybrid (lots of c++ as well believe it or not). The trendy language is ruby (on rails) thanks to it's simplified syntax. If you can learn and understand PHP, you could pickup Ruby. I personally believe MS is a dying web development platform. It may persist for years but it's not where any innovation is happening. This message board, Facebook, twitter, google. None run off an MS platform.

If you're really serious about PHP, start learning a sweet Framework. I highly recommend codeigniter. Great docs and vibrant community of developers. http://codeigniter.com/

Sitepoint also publishes awesome books and ebooks http://www.sitepoint.com/
 
Not to be a total asshat, but how long does it take to learn PHP? When I took it up (way back around PHP3) I read through the documentation for two days and that was pretty much it. Sure, they've bolted on OOP and some functional ideas like anonymous functions, but it's hardly an advanced language. There's a wider API nowadays for sure, but you don't have to memorize all that.

If you already know other imperative languages you should be able to learn PHP in days, if not, well... it's not like you're throwing time away, you'll have to start somewhere.
 
Not to be a total asshat, but how long does it take to learn PHP? When I took it up (way back around PHP3) I read through the documentation for two days and that was pretty much it. Sure, they've bolted on OOP and some functional ideas like anonymous functions, but it's hardly an advanced language. There's a wider API nowadays for sure, but you don't have to memorize all that.

If you already know other imperative languages you should be able to learn PHP in days, if not, well... it's not like you're throwing time away, you'll have to start somewhere.

I picked up the basics of PHP in a couple days myself, but it took much, much longer to learn how to build efficient and secure applications with it.

Truth is, PHP's low entry bar encourages a lot of sloppy, inexperienced developers to write some scarily insecure code without even realizing it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen $password=$_POST['password'] when looking at somebody's PHP code.
 
I picked up the basics of PHP in a couple days myself, but it took much, much longer to learn how to build efficient and secure applications with it.

Truth is, PHP's low entry bar encourages a lot of sloppy, inexperienced developers to write some scarily insecure code without even realizing it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen $password=$_POST['password'] when looking at somebody's PHP code.

Exactly, and that is how I started out about 8 years ago. I thought I was so badass making a login system until someone experienced undid all my work in a matter of seconds with injection attacks and XSS. Then I also had an incident where I was writing an app that was used in shared hosting. It was not resource efficient and the host decided to suspend the account until it was fixed or removed.
 
I would love to see php get the boost it deserves. There was suppose to be a php6 but that just got stopped for some reason. The main advantage of php is that it's free and runs on an open source platform natively, so you can code a full blown php web app and it will cost nothing to deploy it other than hardware and/or hosting.

Despite the fact that it's no longer being developed, there are tons of php scripts out there and continue to be more. (message board systems etc) so while the language itself may not be under development anymore, there is still a big active use of it, and it's not going anywhere.
 
I picked up the basics of PHP in a couple days myself, but it took much, much longer to learn how to build efficient and secure applications with it.

That's what I'm saying. Learning PHP should be quick, but learning to program is a life's mission.

Neither security issues (like not trusting user input, proper escaping, resource permissions, etc) nor performance considerations are specific to PHP.
 
The main advantage of php is that it's free and runs on an open source platform natively, so you can code a full blown php web app and it will cost nothing to deploy it other than hardware and/or hosting.
I'm sure you can think of more important qualities about PHP than simply the openness of the (implied) host operating system... Or you're just trying to incite some ColdFusion devs ;)
 
.Net just got a huge boost by Microsoft coming up with LightSwitch 2011 where it becomes substantially easier for non-developers to create basic apps.

It's already common place that folks who work with Microsoft Office will do some GUI and logic development just to fit their own needs in how they process data in Office. LightSwitch (although an unfortunate name imho) does take it a bit further in allowing for the creation of actual apps.

ive been playing around with LightSwitch for a few months now and I still scratch my head when people say its non-developer friendly. I cant think of many situations where you wont have to get into the code and do some nontrivial programming.
 
ive been playing around with LightSwitch for a few months now and I still scratch my head when people say its non-developer friendly. I cant think of many situations where you wont have to get into the code and do some nontrivial programming.
All depends on the application. The way I look at LightSwitch is that it is meant to replace VBA macros and apps which are written by Microsoft Office users in an ad-hoc type of fashion rather than by actual developers.

The benefit of LighSwitch is that those basics are no longer just "hacked" but actually standardized so it's significantly easier (and safer) to deploy an app Joe Schmoe wrote in some branch office across the entire company.

The other benefit I see is that non-developers can create the look and feel of the app and then leave it to devs to enter the business logic that may require more coding knowledge.

I am pretty sure that anyone who uses Excel at work has written a macro (and probably struggled with it) to do something or other. LightSwitch allows those who are interested to take it a step further without having to be a developer. It's really more of a productivity tool rather than a developer tool.
 
I would love to see php get the boost it deserves. There was suppose to be a php6 but that just got stopped for some reason. The main advantage of php is that it's free and runs on an open source platform natively, so you can code a full blown php web app and it will cost nothing to deploy it other than hardware and/or hosting.

Despite the fact that it's no longer being developed, there are tons of php scripts out there and continue to be more. (message board systems etc) so while the language itself may not be under development anymore, there is still a big active use of it, and it's not going anywhere.

What?

5.4 Alpha3 was recently released.

PHP 6 has been postponed (probably permanently), largely due to perf/memory issues with their approach to adding Unicode support everywhere (engine, extensions, api). That doesn't mean there won't be a new PHP 6 (or PHP 7) in the future.

Here's the PHP release process.
 
What?

5.4 Alpha3 was recently released.

PHP 6 has been postponed (probably permanently), largely due to perf/memory issues with their approach to adding Unicode support everywhere (engine, extensions, api). That doesn't mean there won't be a new PHP 6 (or PHP 7) in the future.

Here's the PHP release process.

Well that's good to know. I had the impression it had been abandoned by the devs as I have not heard anything official in years.
 
The more you code the more you realize there's always going to be something new to learn. PHP has and continues to show it's robust and scaleable nature. Facebook runs off a PHP hybrid (lots of c++ as well believe it or not). The trendy language is ruby (on rails) thanks to it's simplified syntax. If you can learn and understand PHP, you could pickup Ruby. I personally believe MS is a dying web development platform. It may persist for years but it's not where any innovation is happening. This message board, Facebook, twitter, google. None run off an MS platform.

If you're really serious about PHP, start learning a sweet Framework. I highly recommend codeigniter. Great docs and vibrant community of developers. http://codeigniter.com/

Sitepoint also publishes awesome books and ebooks http://www.sitepoint.com/

I disagree with your assessment of MS platforms. Many of the sites you list are trendy, or mainly web based companies. Enterprise applications won't be dying anytime soon, nor will the need to support them, and there is a lot more bread n butter there than those companies you listed. .Net and Java aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
 
I disagree with your assessment of MS platforms. Many of the sites you list are trendy, or mainly web based companies. Enterprise applications won't be dying anytime soon, nor will the need to support them, and there is a lot more bread n butter there than those companies you listed. .Net and Java aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I have to agree. While I love PHP and use it for my personal and small work projects, when it comes to the enterprise level stuff, it's .NET/C#. In all honesty, I love them both and am lucky enough to be able to use them both where I work.
 
I just left my corporate job doing .NET C# primarily, which I would agree is somewhat a standard internally at the enterprise level ... for a smaller shop Zend job.

PHP rocks, it's where I learned to program, and now I'm going back.

From what I've seen of Zend, PHP is at a new level from PHP3-4.
 
Have to pimp out Rails. As a framework it's not perfect, but as a dev in the Ruby world I can't imagine a friendlier industry, nor one I am more spoiled in.

If you are a competent engineer, Ruby (and most likely Rails, at least as a buzzword) is definitely a path you should check out.
 
There's so much crap PHP code out there due to its relatively easy learning curve.

If you're trying to build a moderately complex/secure website in PHP without using an OOP framework and ORM library, you're doing it wrong. PHP can and does work in the enterprise.

I'd recommend Zend Framework and Doctrine for a start.
 
PHP is very viable in business, I've been converting a lot of MS access apps to php/mysql.

My only annoyance is they keep changing it so much, every time there's a new release I end up having to review all code looking for depreciated functions.
 
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