6 ms·

I am far from an elitist (mainly coding PHP for a living prevents that anyway) but I never thought I'd see posts like this on HN with a decent amount of upvotes

I am far from an elitist (mainly coding PHP for a living prevents that anyway) but I never thought I'd see posts like this on HN with a decent amount of upvotes. It seems that anything involving PHP bashing gets upvoted instantly lately.

gridmaths 13y ago
Can we compare PHP and node.js without it appearing as bashing ? Im critical of PHP, my impression is it has no advantages apart from being more established. I've written code in both, to do similar tasks so feel I can compare them fairly. My impression is PHP is more messy, with no real advantages to balance out what I would call 'legacy syntax cruft'. I really see node.js as a natural evolution from PHP. To be fair, its well known that Javascript has some bad parts, some of its own legacy syntax crud, but you can write in a modern style that avoids most of that - so I think its an order of magnitude less cruft in practice than PHP, and small code size reflects this assertion. I know modern PHP in OO style can be more readable, more amenable to programming in the large than old-skool top-to-bottom PHP... but I think the lispy functional features of Javascript lead to more readable 'code as thought' : map/reduce, passing functions in variables in practice is more useful to me than OO is, it leads to simpler code. A lot of people feel emotional attachment to PHP, if you love it use it. But all the things I do love about PHP, I love more about the node.js/javascript combination. You might like it too.
- soulclap 13y ago
  Sure we can. And Node.js definitely shows off some functionality that PHP should be jealous of (referring to that 'PHP is meant to die' article). I am probably going to experience it myself soon when tapping into Node.js territoriers. But it's not a proper comparison if you put plain old basic PHP up against an ExpressJS project instead of using a current PHP framework such as Laravel 4.
- krapp 13y ago
  Having worked with both php and javascript I can definitely see how the syntax alone with node.js would be a breath of fresh air to someone used to PHP. Modern frameworks like Laravel do a lot of good to smooth things out but PHP's implementation of anonymous functions, for instance, feels like such a kludge compared to javascript.

gridmaths 13y ago

Can we compare PHP and node.js without it appearing as bashing ? Im critical of PHP, my impression is it has no advantages apart from being more established. I've written code in both, to do similar tasks so feel I can compare them fairly. My impression is PHP is more messy, with no real advantages to balance out what I would call 'legacy syntax cruft'. I really see node.js as a natural evolution from PHP. To be fair, its well known that Javascript has some bad parts, some of its own legacy syntax crud, but you can write in a modern style that avoids most of that - so I think its an order of magnitude less cruft in practice than PHP, and small code size reflects this assertion. I know modern PHP in OO style can be more readable, more amenable to programming in the large than old-skool top-to-bottom PHP... but I think the lispy functional features of Javascript lead to more readable 'code as thought' : map/reduce, passing functions in variables in practice is more useful to me than OO is, it leads to simpler code. A lot of people feel emotional attachment to PHP, if you love it use it. But all the things I do love about PHP, I love more about the node.js/javascript combination. You might like it too.

soulclap 13y ago
Sure we can. And Node.js definitely shows off some functionality that PHP should be jealous of (referring to that 'PHP is meant to die' article). I am probably going to experience it myself soon when tapping into Node.js territoriers. But it's not a proper comparison if you put plain old basic PHP up against an ExpressJS project instead of using a current PHP framework such as Laravel 4.
krapp 13y ago
Having worked with both php and javascript I can definitely see how the syntax alone with node.js would be a breath of fresh air to someone used to PHP. Modern frameworks like Laravel do a lot of good to smooth things out but PHP's implementation of anonymous functions, for instance, feels like such a kludge compared to javascript.