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0 pointsDarmody4y ago0 comments

It's incredibly hard to find good PHP developers.

I just inherited a PHP project that it's a nightmare. It doesn't make any sense. It works on PHP 7.3 but the quality is worse than the old PHP 4 stuff.

It is so easy to write good PHP code nowadays but most devs don't do it. They just go for the old ways, with spaghetti code, no clear architecture, etc, because it just works. They don't have to think, just type. Thats why people hate the language. They see the bad code and they think the language is poorly designed.

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lowercased4y ago

> It's incredibly hard to find good PHP developers.

But... is it much easier to find good devs in any other tech stack? I don't see it, personally. My ruby friends complain it's hard to find ruby devs at all, and harder to find good ones. I do see a lot of JS/node folks that get accepted as 'good', but when the rubber hits the road, the code is often still... meh - cut corners, SO copy/paste, etc.

I see bad node and bad js and bad python... but somehow the languages and stacks get a pass and "it was just a bad developer". But if you see bad PHP, people think "the whole language sucks". Completely inconsistent.

DarmodyOP4y ago

You don't see as much bad python code as you see bad PHP code. PHP has no entry barrier. You can just start typing and things start working.

Compare that with deploying a hello word website in python, java or elixir.

lowercased4y ago

I don't see much python code period, in my day to day work, but what I do see often... doesn't seem demonstrably 'better' by any metrics than run of the mill code from any other stack. But it sometimes comes with some sense of smugness about being 'pythonic'. Standard Java I don't get that sense, but do from some Kotlin advocates I know (usually the ones that are new to programming in general who feel they've found some new magic bullet that will overturn all the bad PHP out there).

hparadiz4y ago

These days if you're not using PSR4 configured auto loading with all your code in the src or tests directory and a separate public folder then you're not really qualified to work on PHP at a professional level.

I highly encourage using this template for all new projects

https://github.com/thephpleague/skeleton

DarmodyOP4y ago

I just had my worst PHP dev experience in 5 years of coding. Literally. I just had to leave the office. I'm on my way home and still feel fatigued.

The project not only doesn't use composer (well, it does now because I needed some components) but it has the same third party components duplicated or triplicated around the application. It looks like they downloaded them Everytime they needed them. Some of them are modified to make them work on newer versions of PHP. And the views and the logic are mixed together in big 4k lines files with no functions. Html, js, PHP, tens of SQL queries on loops, all mixed together.

It's so bad it looks that it was made like this on purpose.

The funny thing is a pretty important project for a pretty important and unique customer.

tored4y ago

Classic. Absolutely fabulous when this happens.

Just want to nuke everything to oblivion.

But there is hope, sometimes it can be better to inherit badly written repetitive & copy-pasted code, rather than badly written abstractions.

Badly written abstractions can be really hard to get out of years later because it tends to be viral all over the project, however when there are no abstractions at all, you can decide them right now, you are in charge. Bit by bit you can unwind this mess to something grander, to your own creation. Good luck. Praying the PHP prayer for you.

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Zelphyr4y ago

Yes, for all the warts of the language, the worst thing about PHP is the illegible code that gets written by someone who glued together a bunch of solutions they found on StackOverflow. The good news is, in my experience, most of those people have moved on to JavaScript.

Note that I enjoy both PHP and JavaScript immensely. But, my God, some of the code that I've seen in both languages...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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lowercased4y ago

> It's incredibly hard to find good PHP developers.

DarmodyOP4y ago

You don't see as much bad python code as you see bad PHP code. PHP has no entry barrier. You can just start typing and things start working.

Compare that with deploying a hello word website in python, java or elixir.

lowercased4y ago

hparadiz4y ago

I highly encourage using this template for all new projects

https://github.com/thephpleague/skeleton

DarmodyOP4y ago

I just had my worst PHP dev experience in 5 years of coding. Literally. I just had to leave the office. I'm on my way home and still feel fatigued.

It's so bad it looks that it was made like this on purpose.

The funny thing is a pretty important project for a pretty important and unique customer.

tored4y ago

Classic. Absolutely fabulous when this happens.

Just want to nuke everything to oblivion.

But there is hope, sometimes it can be better to inherit badly written repetitive & copy-pasted code, rather than badly written abstractions.

1 more reply

Zelphyr4y ago

Note that I enjoy both PHP and JavaScript immensely. But, my God, some of the code that I've seen in both languages...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse