Ask HN: PHP for Python programmers

not that I've written any python, but is PHP that much low level?

The team that makes PHP makes quality a higher priority than just about any other language; if something is built into PHP, it's pretty likely to work correctly. (For example, PHP and Python have the exact same problems with threads, and the PHP team says "don't use PHP in a threaded environment" and the the Python people say "come jump in the water is fine")

It's true that everything gets shoveled into one big namespace, but PHP lets you get a lot done with very little bull. There's a lot of crappy PHP out there, but there's a lot of crappy Java, Python, Ruby and C# too. If you approach PHP with some discipline I think you'll find it's an environment that never kills you with a showstopper flaw.

Don't worry about it. I was in a similar position a few months ago when I, a python programmer, was offered a perl position. Eventually you just get used to it, and you might even find things you like. I've stopped being as much of a language snob. Some features and most syntax are just decorative, and you'll adjust. The whole giant namespace thing would bother me a lot, but hey its worked for other people before.

You'll be be fine. I've found it very easy to switch from/between C/C++/PHP/Python. Perl on the other hand...

Can you learn PHP and be successful with it? Absolutely. Do you want to? As a Python programmer who's had to do PHP from time to time, I can say it isn't terribly fun. If I were to make a decision based solely on the programming language though, I wouldn't choose a shop whose main language was PHP. Again though, that's assuming that I was just basing it on language. I've found choice of programming language to be one of the less reliable indicators of how good a company would be to work for.

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Switching languages, for me, has usually been a matter of remembering syntax, some minor differences (such as how arrays work, what things are built-in, etc), and the patterns in each language that naturally arise from those two. Of course, things get more complicated if the language itself is structured differently (eg: Javascript), but there are a lot of underlying concepts that carry over (scope, stack, OOP, etc). In short, it just takes practice. If you're "advanced", you should be able to pick up on it pretty quickly.

To get a feel for syntax and how PHP works (especially == and reference/value), you should read the docs. They're a breeze and provide lots and lots of examples. The user comments are generally incredibly helpful and will notify you of caveats that you might need to be aware of.

You'll also want to start off by learning how to build objects in PHP, how associative arrays work (they are great), and how to use __autoload() to include classes on the fly.

Atleast at Facebook, the PHP code quality and abstractions are very very good, and getting better. Developing the compiler in-house has some advantages.

I think one of the main things is to go into it with a more positive attitude, i'm not criticising you or anything, but you seem to already view PHP with disdain.

Personally i'm a PHP dev and love it, sure its got its ugly parts, but what language doesnt. Its a very easy language to learn especially if you have prior coding knowledge, pretty much every single host out there supports it by default, and there is an excellent manual as well as a ridiculous amount of resources for learning it.

Personally i'd view learning any new language as a good thing, as at the very least it makes you a better coder in your own "native" coding language.

If `BigNameCorp` writes a lot of PHP seriously, you won't notice that many problems. It's not going to be PHP anymore. It's going to be Symfony, Zend, Cake, or something else (maybe even some proprietary, internally used framework). It isn't that easy to find pure-PHP code these days - it just takes too much time to write.

If you do however see an old-style "let's just include everything", "global variables are cool", "just shove it into $_SESSION" kind of code... well - good luck, you'll need it ;)

There's also going to be some forehead slapping as you discover what is not possible (like `function_returning_array()[0]` => syntax error)

I get to write PHP once in a while but normally prefer Python. It's easy to spot in the style of the code written... but otherwise, no problems. I'd just suggest changing the error reporting level to maximum - it's not hard to write a lot of PHP code that will both work correctly and report tens of warnings per line.

PHP has 3079 built-in functions.

That about says it all.

The Kohana PHP framework source (http://github.com/kohana/core) is a great example of well-written PHP code. You can definitely get a sense of the "good parts" of PHP from reading through the code.

It's pretty simple. Just switch off your brain and pretend you're writing really poor JavaScript.

I've had to use PHP even though I really love Rails because WordPress is built in PHP and a lot of my client work is with WP.

It's definitely not elegant when compared to Ruby or Python but it's not as bad as Java. Because you know Python, it won't be hard to pick up but you'll need to accept that you're working with a different environment and live with the tradeoffs.

The neat thing about PHP code is that it runs pretty much anywhere. This is not a big deal when you're building one app that is going to be used by a lot of users but it is a big deal when you have projects you're building that are open source and you want to foster a growing community.

As others have mentioned, a lot of your sanity levels will depend on what their current code looks like. If it's at a company like Facebook, I'm assuming their code would be at least decent or even nice. On the other hand, it could be a complete nightmare to work with bad code. A different way to look at bad code could be as an opportunity to do a lot of work and make yourself very valuable to the team. It just depends on whether you want to take on that type of role.

Now if money and distribution of your code isn't a biggie for you, I wouldn't take the job as you don't want to realize you've wasted a year on something you hate.

If you're like me, you'll never be happy using PHP. It's like being a piano player and having someone ask you to play their favorite song, but only if you cut off 9 of your fingers.

The result is a bloody mess. Find a different job.

I'm also a huge fan of Python, and I do believe that it (or other higher level languages like Ruby and Lisp) spoils you. I once took a well-paying job, but the main language used was ColdFusion - and not just ColdFusion, but a huge, complex, disgusting ColdFusion framework that the company had written themselves and was riddled with bugs. I figured I'd be fine because of the paycheck and the prestige of the job. Switching to a new language wasn't hard or anything, but I ended up only lasting a few months, then quit, taking a significant pay cut to get away from ColdFusion. I found that I just couldn't stand the stupid language.

I guess my point is, when deciding whether this is the right job for you, language is a very important factor. After a little time writing in a language you don't enjoy or respect, if you're like me, you're going to start to feel creatively and intellectually unfulfilled.

You are going to have to learn what the shifted '4' and the unshifted ':' keys on your keyboard do. You might start practicing to build up those muscles.

(I just learned Python to give App Engine a spin. All my usual languages use semicolons, I finally stuck a little clay on the key to alert my brain when I pressed the semicolon.)

When I started programming I was using Visual Basic and Pascal. I miss those days because I was focused only on building things and was not aware about "Which is the best language" blog posts.

My suggestion is to not pay too much attention to those blogs and focus more on building things.

I'm sure PHP is a good language to build very good websites.

Think of PHP as a really amazing shell scripting language. Just as shell scripts can be glue for all the powerful UNIX utilities, PHP gives you APIs for just about any useful library you might need for web work. You won't be able to use your fancy Python chops for things like generators or itertools, but with luck instead you'll be running a bunch of powerful well-designed existing C code with a few function calls. Of course, a significant project will require a bunch of data & logic in PHP...

Also, the PHP source code is quite readable, for those times when the good online reference manual doesn't help.

I'm a Pythonista who had to deal with a client's legacy PHP codebase earlier this year. One tactic I used was to try to write all new stuff, where I could, in Python. Tasks that could be separate processes from their existing PHP stuff. For example, command-line tools, automation, supplementary web apps, etc.

PHP is an okay language. I'd never choose it by myself, but most of the time it is bearable. The language is not the problem though - it's the people.

PHP breeds mediocrity in such a superb way, it's rivaled only by Visual Basic. It attracts many dumb people and, chances are, you will meet many of them on your new job.I won't go as far as telling you to stay clear of the job - just have that in mind when deciding.

Programming languages are tools of the trade and no different than tools in any other field. If it's a good job then it is a good job. If the job requires you to work with PHP, then that is a lesser consideration that is barely worth mentioning. Good coding can be done in any language even crusty COBOL or LISP. After you learn the PHP syntax, then you won't think about it anymore. In a few weeks time, you'll be surprised that you were worried about something so trivial as the programming language used.

I realize the question was about language specifically, but something that wasn't really addressed in all these comments is the totality of the environment PHP will be used in.

PHP using a decent framework with properly unit-tested and documented code, a team of mid-level and sr devs, version controlled, good comments, a build process, and reasonable development schedules would be a joy to work with vs hacked-up Python thrown together by various people who don't know what they're doing with no process, docs, version control, test, where everything was due 2 weeks ago and people just develop on live servers. That would, simply put, be a nightmare, regardless of the 'purity' of Python.

I recently took on a project based on Rails. I saw some code - there were tests - some of the models I inspected looked decent. My initial view was "it's Rails - how bad could it possibly be?". It was/is horrible. However, once we'd commenced, I realized a) it's Rails1 (and was still being developed in Rails1 as of March 2010), there's 0 version control, no external docs, few internal comments, and 95% of the tests are either auto-generated skeletons only, or at the level of "Add 1 to the inventory, save, then check the inventory has increased by 1" (not checking any logic, just db code).

Parts of the code are - yes - more expressive that they'd have been in PHP. But, overall, the project is an abysmal mess. It's painfully apparent the original dev(s) didn't understand how to build software. They could 'sling Rails stuff together', but that's about where it stopped.

We've made a not too painful decision to rebuild, just using the old code for reference as to how screens should look. Rebuilding is being done in Grails (fwiw), and we're using a bdd approach (easyb) to get started. I was on the fence about using Rails/cucumber, but my skills aren't very strong in that, and we've got a deadline to meet.

I understand PHP isn't perfect. Coming from other platforms, there can be many 'gotchas' which catch people off guard. I've found moving from PHP to other platforms you find similar gotchas. It doesn't make every 'gotcha' automatic proof that PHP is crappy (a few do, but not all!) But again, the language, while important, should not totally define your view of the job or the entire ecosystem.

Bookmark http://www.php.net/manual/en/.

I suspect that the quality of the code base will affect your happiness much more than the language itself will. I doubt that BigNameCorp belongs to the world where all database fields are VARCHAR(255) and elaborate code is required to ensure that '99' < '100', or where globals float about mysteriously. If so, heaven help you--but they'd probably write Python in the same fashion.

I started as a PHP programmer and transitioned to Python. I'm currently doing PHP at work, and it's not too bad, despite some of the warts that come with an application designed over 5 years by a single person.

Sure, I'd rather be hacking Python, but I'm not going to go kill myself or anything.