Well said, and I agree--mostly. I think that on the whole, the community centered around PHP has a larger propensity for producing and promulgating poor practices. The language is, and yet is not, at fault, both at the same time.
What I mean by this, is not to point at the language's design or usefulness as a tool (it's actually pretty good IMO). Rather, I mean the positioning of the language. It's in a popular space, where there is a low entry barrier--thus by far a larger proportion of new, and/or inexperienced developers will be there as opposed to more difficult languages or languages in smaller spaces (eg. assembly, erlang, C++, even Java--but less so because of popularity). You find lots of blind-leading-the-blind--some guy figures out a problem and 1000 guys copy him, regardless of how good a solution it is--because none of them have enough experience or taste to know different. I think this is where the stigma comes from, and it's not entirely undeserved, just not for the reasons most people try to use to demonstrate their point. Javascript is in exactly the same position. Javascript is, IMO, an even more superior language than PHP. It's essentially a LISP with C syntax. There's a handful of developers using Javascript that understand that and produce beautiful code using the language's full potential. The rest just copy and paste whatever they can find that works for them. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
