PHP the Amazing

I’ve been working on a new “app” that I hope can change the world. It’s starting to make me realize why PHP became so cool that it then became uncool. Or maybe the coolness of PHP changed with my level of exposure to programming concepts. Bear with me...

PHP was the ultimate language for making websites in about 2003. Since then Python and Ruby have become very popular for building sites quickly. What PHP had to its advantage is a huge user-base with many beginning programmers. Normally that would not be an advantage, but in the case where you are trying to put something together quickly, it can be. There was tons of help from “developers” who had enough extra experience to explain a topic, but not so much experience that receiving an answer felt like Moses talking to the burning bush. 

Now that I am working with Rails and Django, it makes me appreciate the level of support that was there when I first learned PHP. Django and Rails seem to be used by much more experienced programmers. Probably because they are better languages. Either that, or the N00bs just keep quiet so it appears that there are not many beginners. 

PHP has an “ace in the hole” for inexperienced programmers. It has magical, do-everything functions. They lend themselves greatly to thinking in a linear way, probably in much the way that any beginning programmer would think. Forget classes and encapsulation, PHP for the beginner resembles BASIC. It’s simple, straightforward, and requires no thought. I don’t think that makes PHP a good language though, but I think it makes it a suitable language to learn on—as long as you move on quickly to something that makes you think more.