Hrmm, #rustnationuk24 it's only 10:15 and one of the speakers already dunking on PHP 🙄 I thought the #rustlang community was supposed to be welcoming, but apparently not.
@asgrim With people most of the time, with crappy designed language, less.
But one should not be emotionally invested on that aspect : you are not the tool you use, and many great stuff have been done with poor tools.
@webshinra @asgrim Lovely sentiment in theory, but language communities really are communities, of people. Investing in a community is what people should do.
Add to that, the constant pissing on PHP harms many devs ability to find jobs, even outside of PHP, if they have a PHP background.
And that much if not most of the criticism of PHP... were fixed long ago. It's like criticizing JS for not having classes.
@Crell @asgrim We should learn to criticize our tool, even (especially) if we like them.
I agree some stuff have been fixed in PHP, but far from «most», especially compared to language with strong static analysis capabilities. You cannot «fixe» (as C++ know) a fundamentally flawed approach, but improvement is always desirable.
I am doubtful about the difficulty for a PHP dev to find a job given the current PHP market share. Dev in general are in a very privileged situation on that aspect.
@webshinra @asgrim Several very prominent, highly skilled PHP devs recently spent a lot of time getting told "you used PHP? Eh, not interested." I don't know if that's a trend, but it is a thing.
I agree Rust's static analysis capabilities are second to none, and as a PHP dev I'm envious. But PHP also has some of the *strongest* typing among major scripting languages, the result of thousands of hours of work by many dedicated people.
@Crell @asgrim Being competent, smart, and putting a lot of work into something does not make it good.
PHP is now the java of the web, taking the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect in consideration, I'm not worried for php dev.
@webshinra @Crell @asgrim There are plenty of PHP jobs at marketing agencies for people who build WordPress and Drupal websites. Few of them pay industry rates for senior software engineers who have spent most of their careers building applications at product companies.
@ramsey @webshinra @Crell @asgrim Realistically one should learn more than one language.
@ramsey @pies @Crell @asgrim If your obsession get in the way of your carrer, make a choice.
It's very strange to be in the perpetually moving world of software engineering and wishing it to stay still and aligned with your unwavering preferences.
Hype languages always move from the shining edge of «put it everywhere» to the swamp of «needed because of inertia».
@webshinra @pies @Crell @asgrim Who said it was an obsession?
@webshinra @pies @Crell @asgrim Sorry. I tend to think of an obsession as a negative thing, so it sounded more like you were insulting me.
@webshinra @ramsey @pies @asgrim It's not just a question of "obsession" or preference.
Many of us have 20+ years invested in the PHP ecosystem. Technology, professional networking, social connections, maintaining projects, leadership positions, stuffed ElePHPant collections, etc.
Regardless of the tech or its "quality," that's hard to leave behind.
(My company is pushing me toward Kotlin now, so I'm feeling this hard.)
@Crell @ramsey @pies @asgrim It's very understandable, our path are all different. But conscient choice or external constraint, the result is the same : social and technical specialization on a technology in decline.
«Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?»
@Crell @webshinra @ramsey @asgrim I'm 20 years in on PHP too :) But also 9 years JavaScript/TS, 1 year Java and now learning Go, which I find very cool, not to mention all the languages I've learned as a hobby (I wrote Lua World of Warcraft plugins for example) and the ones I've already forgotten - looking at you, Delphi. Don't they me wrong, PHP has it's place. But we're very unlikely to start any new projects in it.
@pies @webshinra @Crell @asgrim That’s not really the issue, from my perspective. It’s more an issue of what I want to program in and focus on, and it’s becoming harder to find places where that can be PHP, while still offering growth opportunities.