Worst programming language

Orc · 07-06-2009, 05:09 AM

I was surfing StackOverflow.com, and I happen to come across this question someone had answered:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9...ed-with-closed

What would be the worst programming language, well I happen to see the first entry would be PHP with 143 "ups"

Quote:

* Inconsistent function names and argument orders
o Because there are a zillion functions, each one of which seems to use a different naming convention and argument order. "Lets see... is it foo_bar or foobar or fooBar... and is it needle, haystack or haystack, needle?" The PHP string functions are a perfect example of this. Half of them use str_foo and the other half use strfoo.
* Non-standard date format characters
o Take j for example
+ In UNIX (which, by the way, is what everyone else uses as a guide for date string formats) %j returns the day of the year with leading zeros.
+ In PHP's date function j returns the day of the month without leading zeros.
* Still No Support for Apache 2.0 MPM
o It's not recommended.
o Why isn't this supported? "When you make the underlying framework more complex by not having completely separate execution threads, completely separate memory segments and a strong sandbox for each request to play in, feet of clay are introduced into PHP's system." Link So... it's not supported 'cause it makes things harder? 'Cause only the things that are easy are worth doing right? (To be fair, as Emil H pointed out, this is generally attributed to bad 3rd-party libs not being thread-safe, whereas the core of PHP is.)
* No native Unicode support
o Native Unicode support is slated for PHP6
o I'm sure glad that we haven't lived in a global environment where we might have need to speak to people in other languages for the past, oh 18 years. Oh wait. (To be fair, the fact that everything doesn't use Unicode in this day and age really annoys me. My point is I shouldn't have to do any extra work to make Unicode happen. This isn't only a PHP problem.)

In the past, I've read many complaints about PHP, stating it had no Namespace ( which is in 5.3.0 now... ) support for one matter, and the most is the first question which I've grown use to, and I can remember a ton of the functions right off the back, just because of this so called inconsistency, as for arguments, well needle and haystack argument names seem to only reside in the string library.

As for the second question, I have not used Unix so I have no idea

For the third question, what is Apache 2.0 MPM?

And the last he answers it himself...

So what's the deal with all the hate of PHP? Or is this just a matter of trolling, which in this case, related topics aren't trolling...

zxt3st · 07-06-2009, 11:00 AM

Quote:

So what's the deal with all the hate of PHP? Or is this just a matter of trolling, which in this case, related topics aren't trolling...

they lack MOTIVATION. :P

CoryMathews · 07-06-2009, 01:13 PM

Personally I have a love hate relationship with php. It really is terrible when you look at it compared to a language such as c#. There are so many reasons, The main one for me is because there are so many functions that do the same damn thing. for example just look through http://www.php.net/quickref.php really that many? They need to go through and clean up php it has become a mess. A second thing I hate about php is that since there is a million functions and thus a million ways to do anything and reading others code can be such a pain, especially because there are so many crappy php developers.

On the flip side, php is really easy to pick up and roll with if you have any experience with c style programming. I cannot say the same for coldfusion, and god forbids anyone to use ror.

Village Idiot · 07-06-2009, 02:20 PM

Is PHP a great programming language? No, the things they named are true. Is it the worst? Hell no. ASP (not asp.net) is 10x worse than PHP could ever be, coldfusion is crap There are so many worse languages out there, it is nothing short of idiocy to call PHP the worst of them.

zxt3st · 07-06-2009, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Village Idiot

Is PHP a great programming language? No, the things they named are true. Is it the worst? Hell no. ASP (not asp.net) is 10x worse than PHP could ever be, coldfusion is crap There are so many worse languages out there, it is nothing short of idiocy to call PHP the worst of them.

agree on this...

there are things, that a single language is good , and it do also have a disadvantages on its part ;)

but in terms of web development, i guess PHP does the great work :)

ScottRiley · 07-06-2009, 03:13 PM

Haha, gotta love elitist coders, PHP certainly has its flaws, no doubt about that, but I think it really does get an undeserved bad rep.

I think PHP certainly has it's place, and it's definitely my favourite language to code in. I think people bag on it because they want to feel special for NOT using it, because it's that widespread.

I think best and worst are useless words in the world of programming languages, a language can either do what you require of it to get the job done, or it can't, the rest is down to the proficiency of the coder.

Having said that, I never ever want to see Pascal, Basic, FORTRAN or COBOL again in my life!

knight13 · 07-06-2009, 05:29 PM

I read that lots of big sites are built with php, and those sites are doing good, i think people just likes to complain and they choose php to complain about. And a lot of people on forums just want to start problems by saying something that will get a rise out of a certain group of people, because they have nothing better to do with their day.

ScottRiley · 07-06-2009, 06:49 PM

Haha, well here isn't the most objective place to debate it, as we all use PHP and I'm guessing the majority of people here enjoy using it too, it's like going to a guitar forum and starting a thread quoting a blog post that says guitar is the worst instrument ever, I'm not criticising you Orc, I'm glad you posted it, I got a good laugh from some of the bog responses :D

Yep, some people just prefer talking crap all day instead of just coding in their preferred language, human's do love a good complaining session!!

adamdecaf · 07-06-2009, 07:01 PM

PHP is simply complex, the function naming scheme(s) are what annoys me the most. Other than that I find C++ easier to understand and use than PHP, but I also find more complex things easier than simple things.

ETbyrne · 07-06-2009, 10:11 PM

PHP is one of the easiest languages to learn, but it still provides the power necessary to build complex applications. I agree it isn't perfect, but I believe it's the best solution for building web apps out there.

Btw most of the people that voted that up are probably RoR fan boys...

cecilia · 07-06-2009, 11:05 PM

Ive only worked with a few different languages but I think I like PHP for web stuff. I cant think of which is the worst among the ones Ive touched, I just look at it as it depends on the situation. Theres always a use for something...

There is a ton of functions, but I prefer to have more options. I guess its bad but I prefer to have something that I cant use now but might use later than to have nothing at all when the time does come.

I miss pascal, was the first one I learned on my own.

adamdecaf · 07-07-2009, 06:26 AM

Can we define Internet Explorer as it's "own" language? Haha...

ETbyrne · 07-07-2009, 02:00 PM

From what I've worked with, I would say Perl was the most frustrating language I've used and it doesn't have any features other languages don't.

Orc · 07-07-2009, 06:17 PM

One thing I love about PHP is the ability to customize it, e.g. PECL extensions. That's what I would do if PHP didn't have a certain feature, I would just make a PECL extension.

Normo · 07-07-2009, 09:28 PM

I don't really like Delphi much, vb.net isn't too bad. I like PHP... there i said it! We were all thinking it!

jcorradino · 07-10-2009, 02:56 AM

php is indeed a great language, but as has been said already... there are better ones. The one MAJOR flaw of PHP is the inability to compile and cache without hacks. I do, however, have to say that it is one of the best documented languages I have ever worked with. MSDN is good, sure... but there is a lot more information for PHP out there.

Enfernikus · 07-10-2009, 03:16 AM

MSDN has some of the best documentation available, I'm sorry - my first language was PHP but when I started learning C# it was much more...defined, Cannot think of a word for it.

Village Idiot · 07-10-2009, 03:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enfernikus

MSDN has some of the best documentation available, I'm sorry - my first language was PHP but when I started learning C# it was much more...defined, Cannot think of a word for it.

While the PHP documentation is excellent, the .net documentation is probably the best I've ever seen. Microsoft does kind of have the advantage of being a highly funded company though.

zxt3st · 07-10-2009, 07:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Village Idiot

While the PHP documentation is excellent,

Microsoft does kind of have the advantage of being a highly funded company though.

Well said! :)

James · 07-10-2009, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Village Idiot

Is PHP a great programming language? No, the things they named are true. Is it the worst? Hell no. ASP (not asp.net) is 10x worse than PHP could ever be, coldfusion is crap There are so many worse languages out there, it is nothing short of idiocy to call PHP the worst of them.

True, but considering PHP isn't a programming language, their whole arguments are invalid. PHP is awesome