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Comment by debacle | Hacker News Reader

There is nothing wrong with PHP - it runs multi-billion dollar companies and it is the most ubiquitous language on the web for a reason.

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Because it has near-zero barrier to entry. That doesn't speak highly of PHP as a language, just on how its deployment strategy is designed.

I don't think Facebook or Yahoo chose PHP because it was easy to write.

you are incorrect.

Yahoo's rationale for choosing PHP:

"The short development cycles needed to stay ahead of the competition demand a web-centric scripting language that is easy to maintain and update."

http://public.yahoo.com/bfrance/radwin/talks/yahoo-phpcon200...

They didn't choose Python, or Ruby, or Java, because none of those languages are as expressive or shut-up-and-get-out-of-my-way as PHP. Just because a high schooler can write PHP doesn't mean it's a toy not also meant for world class engineers.

PHP is more expressive than python, ruby, or java. I see.

I think that is exactly why Mark Zuckerburg chose PHP when working on TheFaceBook back in 2003 and 2004. It was easy to write and deploy.

It's success is largely due to it having the correct execution model. The request based execution environment makes iterative development quick and easy.

However there are plenty of bad ideas in the language itself.

there's a lot wrong with PHP, here's a good place to start: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...

Just because PHP doesn't 100% doom you to failure, doesn't mean there is "nothing wrong with it".

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