Intel x86 considered harmful – survey of attacks against x86 over last 10 years

The PHP bashing on this site is untenable. PHP has no intrinsic properties which stop a good programmer from writing elegant code for web applications. It's a tired discussion, I know, but the most you can say is that it's frequently abused. The oft cited "Spectacle of bad design" essay has been credibly rebutted point-by-point by other authors.

When some insist to use C++/JavaScript/PHP/MySql/Mongo/etc (tools with bad design/complexity/bug-prone/etc flaws) with the excuse that is possible to use them "well" if only we are more "disciplined" and "pay attention"?

When bad tools are bad, discipline is not the answer. Is fix the tool, or get rid of them.

Why developers understand that if a end-user have a high-error rate in one program is a problem with the program but when that happend with a language/tool for developers... not think the same???

"Good programmer" is almost a keyword in this context as "someone with the experience with for workaround and avoid the pitfalls that a tool is giving to him, plus also do his job" when is better if "someone that can concentrate in do his job".

Of course, workaround the pitfalls of tools is unavoidable in a world where "worse is better" have win. But why persist on this?

It's hard to take seriously a statement about an article, where even the referenced title is wrong.

It's not nit picking - it shows how one didn't even took them time to read and understand the article; it's "fractal" of bad design, and it's named so for a specific reason.

>PHP has no intrinsic properties which stop a good programmer from writing elegant code for web applications.

Nor does x86 assembly. What is your point?

Actually, if you start with good measurements, many clear reasons appear that PHP is a terrible language. A nice write-up is here:

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

It's amazing how much has been done in what was essentially a pile of hacks on top of a pre-processor making it pretend to be an application language. That pro's avoid it and its wiser users almost always leave it eventually further corroborates the author that it's fundamentally bad. If anything, it's one option among better ones (Python, Ruby) for non-programmers to get started in web apps. Little reason to use it at this point with all the 3rd party components and communities around better languages.

> Of course, workaround the pitfalls of tools is unavoidable in a world where "worse is better" have win. But why persist on this?

Because the unstated alternative is a false choice. It would be nice if all of the code written in poorly designed languages would disappear and be replaced with code in better designed languages, but that isn't realistic. Migrating a large codebase to a different language is very expensive and introduces fresh bugs, less popular languages aren't supported by all platforms and libraries, and large numbers of people have made significant time investments in learning languages that are popular even if they aren't very good. So the old languages aren't going away.

Given that, it's better that we teach people the pitfalls of the things we're stuck with, and improve them with things like std::unique_ptr in C++ or safer SQL APIs that discourage manual parsing of SQL statements, than to pretend that there is no middle ground between continuing the tradition of bad code and the fantasy of rewriting essentially all existing code from scratch overnight.

Yeah, short term is the right thing. But I'm talking about why stay in the same loop DECADES? Because the pile of mud is bigger with each iteration. Eventually, I think, the cost of a clean start will be far less that push ahead.

I don't underestimate the problem (I work in the LESS progressive area of programming: Internal Business apps / apps for non-startups, non-sexy-games-chat-scalable-apps!) so I'm full aware...

But what drive me crazy is that is developers that defend their tools as "them are good! why bother!", not because them use the business/cost defense...

So, yeah... let's not rewrite everything that is working right now. But also, a lot of time we can choose what to use, special for new projects... at least pick well next time...

> Yeah, short term is the right thing. But I'm talking about why stay in the same loop DECADES? Because the pile of mud is bigger with each iteration. Eventually, I think, the cost of a clean start will be far less that push ahead.

The pile of mud has network effects. Even when you're starting from scratch, you're not really starting from scratch. The world is built around the things that are popular. Everything is better supported and better tested for those things. If you create a new language, it not only needs to be better, it needs to be so much better that it can overcome the advantages of incumbency. Which is made even harder when the advantageous characteristics of new languages also get bolted onto existing languages in a way that isn't optimal but is generally good enough that the difference ends up smaller than the incumbency advantage.

Which is why change happens very, very slowly. We're lucky to be essentially past the transition from Fortran and COBOL to C, Java and C++.

I don't think it's a nice write up, in fact it arguably miscalculates every point it makes. It's exactly the article I was referring to in my original comment as having been thoroughly refuted, in (correct) anticipation that someone would bring it up, since it seems to be the only go-to source for PHP bashers.

That's a troll comment if I've ever seen one with even less information than what was in the linked article. Your comment actually has no information: a mere dismissal.

On opposite end, my link was at least clear on attributes of a good language. These were specifically mentioned: predictable, consistent, concise, reliable, debuggable. The author gave specific examples showing PHP lacks these traits. An analysis of Python or Ruby show them to embody these traits much more while also possessing the supposed advantages PHP fans tell me including easy learning, many libraries, huge community, tools, etc. So, the evidence indicates PHP is a poorly designed language (or not designed at all) while some competitors are well-designed languages with most of same benefits.

Other authors say about the same about both philosophy and specific details showing why PHP is a pain to work with if you want robust software along with building skills a good developer should have.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-PHP-hated-by-so-many-developers

http://phpsadness.com/

https://blog.codinghorror.com/php-sucks-but-it-doesnt-matter...

Truth be told, though, the burden of proof is on you PHP supporters to show why PHP is a good language and people should use it. I claim it was a mere pre-processor that had all kinds of programming language features bolted onto it over time to let it handle certain situations. That's not design at all. Python and Ruby are designed languages with consistency, core functionality for many situations, extensions/libraries, and optionally the ability to pre-process web pages. World of difference in both language attributes and quality of what people produce with them. So, not only have you presented no evidence of PHP's alleged good design, I've presented evidence against it and for two competitors have better designs.

Feel free to back up your claims with some actual data rather than dismiss whatever data anyone else brings up. I mean, you want to dismiss the guys ranting feel free. Can even edit all that crap out to leave just the data and arguments. Same for other links. Resulting text still supports our claims against PHP. So, status quo among professionals should be "PHP Is Garbage" that leads to buggy, hard to maintain, insecure, slow software. It will remain until PHP's community proves otherwise and demonstrates their counter-claim in practice with apps possessing the opposite of those negative traits.