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Comment by matthiaswh | Hacker News Reader

PHP is akin to, I don't know, the Subway (fast food restaurant chain) of programming languages?

You don't hear too much about it. You almost never notice it unless you're actually looking for it, unlike McDonald's with its ostentatious golden arches.

It's popularity is waning. But it's still everywhere. [0] There are a hundred other sandwich chains that have tried to do it better but none have managed the ubiquity of Subway.

People like to look down on it and espouse the alternatives, but when it comes down to it fast food can only ever be so good.

I guess that means that JavaScript is McDonald's?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_fast_food_...

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> It's popularity is waning.

I don't think that applies though. If anything, laravel is pushing PHP into another "golden age" not seen since code igniter 2, with again a framework that does things not quite how they should be under the hood, but definitely how people need them to be to be fast and efficient, except this time backed up by a proper package management system, a much better and stronger language and an ecosystem based on reusable modules.

Does it have the favor of the modern hype or new language seeker or anything like that ? No, absolutely not, but when has PHP ever had that ?

There will be no golden age for anything using node.

With this analogy python would be the Ikea. You can go for the fast food (site scripting) or you can get really invested and build out your ML modules with it at scale ( remodeling a decking out your kitchen)

That's a fun list.

Of over 100 I have only heard of 1/3: 35 in total.

I have only ever been into and eaten anything from half of those.

So fully 2/3 of the list I've never even heard of. Interesting.

> I guess that means that JavaScript is McDonald's?

My first reaction to this was that it's actually very accurate insofar that I genuinely wonder how one can like either of these and why they're so popular. At least JavaScript has the obvious excuse that it's the only thing that runs in a browser, so it's still more logical than the popularity of McDonald's.

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