PHP Developer Life

Original author: Jonathan Kuperman
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Introduction from the translator: I have been developing PHP for a very long time. Although I am familiar with a number of other technologies and see some of the disadvantages of PHP, I am generally happy with it, and it seems unfair to me that this programming language is most often attacked. Recently I found an article just on this topic, I think the position of the author is close to many php-programmers, so I am publishing a translation. I tried especially for the corporate blog of our project on payment services Web-payment.ru . By the way, if you need to connect payment on the site - please contact . Well, then the translation:
The subjective perception of programming languages ​​not only creates discussion among bored programmers. It also affects the adoption of important decisions - hiring and financing.
This phrase made me seriously think about how the community perceives PHP.

In a recent JavaScript release, Jabber made a couple of great comments about how reprehensible people are when it comes to technology choices and how trend chasing distracts from working on cool and cool stuff.

Although Javascript is actively occupying the PHP niche, especially for beginner developers, there are several reasons why new developers choose PHP:
  • You want to make a site or application on a shared hosting.
  • In all books and videos that you buy, they somehow work with the LAMP stack.
  • All jobs for beginners are for PHP developers.

See how negative PHP is in the programming community:

Quotes like this are everywhere: "Those who learn PHP need to be isolated from society."

Translator's note: and Habr is no exception .

After this, you ask yourself a question - but have I chosen a bad language?

Everything is written in PHP


You may even begin to doubt yourself because you put on the wrong horse. After all, everyone seems to like Clojure, Haskell and JavaScript, but no one likes PHP.

Let's look on the Internet which projects do use PHP:
  • Facebook
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Wikipedia
  • 4chan

A significant proportion of the world's largest sites are written in PHP. It seems certain that PHP is a decent and practical language for building web applications, but we digress.

Now is not 2004


A lot of criticism of PHP is based on things that were not in the language when the critic last looked at him - at the beginning of the 2000s.

There are classes and normal OOP in PHP today. There are great frameworks like Laravel and Symfony .

PHP has a package manager that works with a huge archive of open source packages.

PHP has great testing frameworks: for example, PHPUnit for unit testing, Behat, and Codeception for BDD.

Some of the complaints in the above articles are well founded. There are inconsistencies in the language, and, of course, there are languages ​​in which there are fewer problems, but PHP looks very personal, given its age, flexibility, and why it was created .

How does this affect developers


It is terribly disappointing when you are not taken seriously as a developer despite working in serious projects. Such an attitude seriously harms the community.

It often seems that PHP developers are trapped in closed micro-communities. Due to the fact that they are not welcomed in larger communities, they often organize their own meetings, user groups and conferences.

Funny story


Sometimes this constant condemnation really exhausts me. Although I know that PHP is a great language, I often think about quitting writing completely, just to no longer deal with prejudices.

When I was younger, I looked strange: with dyed dreadlocks, with a piercing on my face and in patched clothes. I really liked to look like that, but it was very tired.

Everywhere - during college, during an intern interview, when I started my own company - my appearance was a constant distraction. At best, they told me that for someone who “looks like this,” I am “surprisingly professional.”

10 years have passed, but the problem is the same - only another distracts. “Surprisingly, you know computer science for a PHP developer.” Phew.

Unfortunately, I do not see any progress in solving this problem. Often people complain about PHP simply because it is fashionable. But, unfortunately, there is no end in sight.

It is very sad. We found ourselves in a chicken-and-egg situation: if PHP developers are constantly humiliated, they will leave the community and there will be less and less good PHP programmers in it.

The article has been translated specifically for the corporate blog Web-payment.ru - a project that will help you connect to the site accepting payments or mass payments. Contact!

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