So much PHP hate and uggh, it’s cold

Every time I talk to other developers about how I have done work in PHP, there is always some kind of eye roll or “aw hell nooo gurl” reaction going on. And yes, I do have a soft spot for the language. When I was first fumbling around with web development (so 2006-ish?), I picked up PHP because I wanted to develop for WordPress. It was easy to learn and it got the job done. Cue the “WordPress sucks, it’s so heavy and has more holes than pantyhose” rant. Regardless, I like WordPress and I still use it. I’m not a fangirl, I swearrrrr.

PHP server-side till I die!

(Please don’t shoot me)

Back to the main point: why does everyone hate PHP? Here are some reasons:

It has inconsistent built-in function names.
There is no lexical scope.
The operators are inconsistent.
The data structures are meh.
Errors don’t provide stack traces
Although influenced by C++ and Java, the OOP aspect of the language has a handful of limitations

To be honest, I don’t get too bothered by such issues and others. No matter what language I’m using, there’s always something I hate about it. It’s inevitable. But obviously, there are languages with more problems than others. I used to really hate on Java because of how it handled garbage collection, iterators, and it’s lack of value types.

Working as a freelance developer and doing internships for consulting firms has forced me to deal with the nuisances of many languages and frameworks. I think that’s better than sitting around and complaining about how much something sucks.

That being said, I still hate Java for those reasons. But whatever, I can bring myself to get work done with it. The same goes for PHP; though I don’t have strong feelings as I do with Java.

Now for something I can justifiably complain about! The weather! This is the first time I have processed in my mind in the 21 years I have lived in Toronto (so forever) how cold Canada is. Winter seems to feel less cold when you’re younger… The weather has been around -30 to -20 degrees Celsius and I feel like one day I’m going to blow away in the wind. Though it was mostly my fault; for the large part of winter I was walking around with a Spring/Fall leather jacket. SSSH. It’s been unusually cold this year. Strangely though, I have not gotten sick at all. I haven’t caught anything yet from those coughing commuters on the subway. Huzzah.

I need to go somewhere with mild temperature and less PHP haters 🙂

Here are some songs I have recently been listening to on repeat.

Be bold, take flight — tryangles!