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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

A statement like this doesn't help anyone.

It doesn't help the productive PHP programmer get a better understanding of other (possibly better) tools that exist, what problems they solve, and how they can transition to those tools.

It also doesn't help the person making the statement convey their expertise in the subject matter. Instead it looks like an easily dismissed statement about PHP, without any real attempt to prove it.

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The problems of PHP have been well documented here: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de... I think its relevant that PHP does object and classes in terrible backwards ways and, among other things, a singleton will necessarily be rather ugly in this context. Learning about singletons won't help anyone get a better understanding of other tools that exist. Learn Ruby or Python if you want to do web programming.

It's like people in Ferraris yelling at people in Toyotas.

Except if Ferraris were also really slow in addition to having bad gas mileage.

You mixed up the references. But my point is that the argument is philosophical. And doesn't really matter.

People are out building and shipping stuff in PHP, .NET, Ruby, Python, C and foobar. And it all works. And users don't care.

If you believe all (heck most) PHP developers care that it's a fractal of bad design, then your view is way too narrow.

It's more like people in cars yelling at people who have attached wheels and diesel engines to horses.

What?

I think this quote sums it up: "Do not tell me that “good developers can write good code in any language”, or bad developers blah blah. That doesn’t mean anything. A good carpenter can drive in a nail with either a rock or a hammer, but how many carpenters do you see bashing stuff with rocks? Part of what makes a good developer is the ability to choose the tools that work best."

  > "Part of what makes a good developer is the ability to 
  > choose the tools that work best."

Is an article that insults the intelligence of PHP developers best tool for convincing them to switch languages?

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