One thing you have to say for Daniel Abernathy is that he’s not afraid of the heavy lift. He’s got a post that presses the claim that PHP Is the Right Choice in 2022 and Beyond. It’s hard to find more people than you can count on one hand who will admit to liking PHP but, of course, its popularity gainsays that popular wisdom. Still, it’s fair to say that PHP is the Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages.
Even Abernathy admits the post’s title may be a little overstated but he does make the case that there’s a lot to like about the language and ecosystem and that it’s not like it used to be.
Manuel Odendahl seems to agree but some reddit commenters are less obliging. One comments that “As much as I despise java, at least a group of allegedly competent engineers took the time to actually design the language and its type system, as opposed to hacking together a bunch of stupid shit workarounds on top of an already hacked together brain-damaged non-designed crap, which is the case of php.”
I’m completely agnostic on the matter because I don’t know the language at all. I’ve written exactly one line of PHP and that was because of exigent circumstances. I only got away with it because it’s sufficiently C-like that I could fall back on my mental muscle memory.
Regardless, hating on PHP is well entrenched and nothing Abernathy or Odendahl can say will do much to change that. That’s why Abernathy’s fearless, if ultimately futile, defense of the language has earned him a coveted spot on Irreal’s Red Meat Friday.