Well, if you assume ternary operations work the same in PHP as in c and attempted to write the code demoed by this meme. You would end up with unexpected behavior. Maybe I should have said unexpected behavior instead of unsafe behavior.
PHP is the only language in existence with a left associative ternary operator. Ignoring PHP, the operator has worked exactly the same way for decades. And even PHP has now fixed the operator.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to avoid a very commonly supported pattern just because a single badly designed language implemented it wrong.
Okay, even if I give you the unexpected behavior point. The readability problem remains. Switch statements or tables will work just fine and are easier to read.
To be clear, I am fine with single ternary operations. I think nested ternary operations are harder to read and follow.
I agree you should use a switch where applicable, but ternaries are the expression equivalent of if-else statements. If I have two conditions and a default, and each branch simply evaluates to a value of the same type, I’ll probably just use a ternary.
In the given example I’d probably use a switch / match expression, but ternaries are usually more flexible than switches and I don’t think it’s an issue to write a nested ternary instead of if else statements.
Which is bad for readability because the reader need to manually compute it to see whether it’s doing simple switching or not. Also it adds the question of “Why did the author use a nested ternary instead of a switch? Was it meant to do more but it got left out unintentionally?”
But if you code like a moron the code should still behave as expected. People who code like this deserve a special place in hell, next to languages that behave like that.
I say that php breaks math entirely, and is therefore bad. “” == null returns true null == [] returns true “” == [] returns false.
In more recent versions it gets worse, because it has 0 == “any text” return true, “any text” == true return true, and 1 == true return true So indirectly 1 = 0, and now math is more directly broken.
I just tested these out out of curiosity.
0==“text” returns false in PHP 8.2 as I’d expect.
The others make sense in the way that php juggles between types. An empty variable can type-juggle to null, but an array can’t be directly compared with a string.
(Although you wouldn’t really want to compare an array with a string, PHP just treats an array as greater than other variables. So weirdly, ([] > “”) == true.)
If you’re trying to directly compare different variable types in any language without strong typing, you’re going to have edge-case results which you might not expect.
My “coding like a moron” message still stands. PHP isn’t a strongly typed language and it doesn’t tell you off for trying stupid stuff like comparing a string with an int. Nor do other languages like JavaScript.
How about “php enables me to code like a moron”, or even better, "php breaks common conventions and forces me to think about every little detail and special edge case, slowing me down if I don’t want to accidentally ‘code like a moron’ "
Nested ternary operators emerge because of the lack of if/switch expressions (which is C fault), so they are “useful” (they shouldn’t be). However, PHP is the only language that treats it as left associative. This has 2 problems:
You are forced to use parenthesis. Some (insane) people might do: (cond1) ? “A” : (cond2) ? “B” : “C” And it makes sense. Its ugly af, but it makes sense. But PHP now forces you to use more parethesis. It’s making you work more.
It breaks convention. If you come from any other language and use ternary operators, you will get unexpected results. After hours of banging your head against the wall, you realize the problem. And now you have to learn a new edge case in the language, and what to do to actually use the language.
“But you shouldn’t use ternary operators anyway! Use if/switch/polymorphic dispatch/goto/anything else”
True, but still, the feature is there, and its bad. The fact that there are other alternatives doesn’t make the PHP ternary operator worse than other languages’ ternary operator.
PHP works against you. That’s the problem. The ternary operator is not a good example, since there are alternatives. But look at something so simple, so mundane like strpos.
If strpos doesn’t find returns false. Every other language returns -1. And if you then use this value elsewhere, PHP will cast it to 0 for you. Boom, your program is broken, and you have to stare at the screen for hours, looking for the error.
“BuT yOU sHoUlD AlwAyS cHEcK tHe rETurN eRRor!”
And even if that’s true, if we all must check the return value, does PHP force you to do so? Like checked exceptions in Java? Or all the Option & Result in Rust? throws, throws, throws… unwrap, unwrap, unwrap… (Many) people hate those features
Show us on this doll where php hurt you. Php is great, especially in the later versions. I rarely need to know the position of a substring in a string, most of the time str_starts_with(), str_ends_with() and str_contains() is what I really need.
Hating on php is one of the reasons i left reddit. This is just people who don’t use php hating php for some reason. You can do dumb examples like this for any language. Low effort and funny for children.
Hard sell. Calling people you know nothing about “bad developers” because they don’t like your tool on the other hand, that was cringe as hell and just made you look like you somehow tied your self-worth to php. “If my tool gets criticized; that means I’m being criticized!”
If you don’t give in to that, you start to see “Oh, that bug wouldn’t have happened if I’d been using [x]” and you become a better developer
When a woodworker cuts iself with a bandsaw, people who do what you do scream “He’s a bad woodworker!”
And while they’re screaming, we invented guardrails
There are reasons to dislike a language, but there are no reasons to hate a language, certainly not one that is as ubiquitous as PHP. There’s no argument you could make for why someone hates a programming language.
I took this more as a light-hearted poke at a silly edge case. As someone who used to build static analysis software for various languages, including PHP. This gets a chuckle out of me as it takes me back to having to deal with these exact types of edge cases.
The title of this post is calling php a “meme” did you read that part? Then it just uses some stupid ternary example no one does and that other languages exhibit so what is the point other than purely hating on php?
Your feelings are valid. I wonder though, would you put up this level of defense for posts making fun of arbitrary parts of non PHP languages?
You are not your favorite language. And I find most criticisms of most languages to be very valid. I don’t think the intent of OP is to insult all PHP programmers. It’s okay to like a language that has problems. All languages do.
Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. This is the first post I have seen pointing out a flaw in PHP on Reddit or Lemmy. If you ask me JavaScript gets it the worst out of all of the languages. I don’t see those guys whining.
What I will say is that the majority of PHP developers I interact with on this post has led me to believe that there is a number of PHP developers that take things way to personally that they really shouldn’t. Seriously you guys aren’t doing your language any favors. No one’s going to want to join the whine club.
I’d wager prevalence is part of their problem. Jokes get tired after a while, but that doesn’t always mean they stop.
PHP, like any language, has its problems, but it seems to get poked at a lot more often. But making the same joke over and over has been a problem long before reddit was a thing.
I get hating on PHP is a meme, and the language certainly has faults, but I feel like it’s no more arbitrary than how JavaScript behaves. And just like JavaScript, if you follow modern standards and use a modern version, it’s a much better experience. The language is only as good as the programmer.
I didn’t mean it as a flex. It was a commentary on how the most commonly used programming language in current days is just as flawed as the most commonly used programming language in the past (in web development). Bad programmers are going to write bad code, regardless of the language.
I’d like to think Typescript does a lot of heavy lifting where JS fails when it comes to web development. On the otherhand there is no fixing fundamental flaws in PHP.
Sure bad programmers write bad code, but if a language tolerates something so obviously janky via implicit unseen magic, it’s just encouraging bad practices. PHP makes this worse by tweaking core behaviours in weird and wacky ways that can easily lead to security vulnerabilities.
A high level language should make coding easier. If it doesn’t why not just code in assembly, or even build an ASIC? And no, allowing you to fuck yourself by accident isn’t making your life easier even if it seems simpler at the time you write the code.
Why not just use a good language though? Most of them are decent. It sounds like typescript is getting used a lot, at least - although it then gets turned into JavaScript for the browser.
Yes, there’s a lot of lock-in with JavaScript. The first step would be designing a Python-based browser or whatever and getting people to use it. I know less about PHP.
That was more of a “why if you had the option”. I’ve use JavaScript too for exactly this reason.
Ever wondered about the array_fill function? It can be baffling. Try filling an array with a negative index:
array_fill(-5, 4, ‘test’);
Many languages would throw an error, but PHP? It’s perfectly fine with this and you get an array starting at index -5. It’s like PHP is the Wild West of array indexing!
Absolutely, many languages do allow negative indices. The intriguing part about PHP, though, is that its ‘arrays’ are actually ordered maps (or hash tables) under the hood. This structure allows for a broader range of keys, like our negative integers or even strings. It’s a unique design choice that sets PHP apart and allows for some really interesting usage patterns. Not your everyday array, right?
I’ve been working with PHP for two years now (not by choice) but I still sometimes forget the weird behaviours these not-arrays cause. Recently I was pushing/popping entries in a queue and it fucked the indexing. I had programmed it like I would any other sane language and it wasn’t until I was stepping through the bug I realised I had forgotten about this.
I hate PHP for so many more reasons. It baffles me why anyone would think it was a good idea to design it this way. Thankfully my current job involves actively burning it down and preparing for its replacement.
Is $a equal to 1? If so, we’re “set” to the value on the left, which is “one”, if not then we’re set to the value on the right, which is $a == 2. $a is not equal to 1, so we’re set to the right value, $a == 2.
This replaces the relevant part, $a == 1 ? “one” : $a == 2, with $a == 2. So we’re left with:
$a == 2 ? “two” : $a == 3 ? “three” : “other”
Next, is $a equal to 2? If so, we’re set to “two”, if not we’re set to $a == 3. The comparison is true, so we’re set to the value on the left, “two”. The relevant part here is $a == 2 ? “two” : $a == 3 only, so it replaces it with “two” cause again, PHP is only associating with its immediate pair. So now we’re left with:
“two” ? “three” : “other”
Finally, is “two” truthy? If so, we’re set to “three”, if not we’re set to “other”. Since “two” is truthy we’re then left with “three”.
If you think PHP is weird, go look up ZZT-OOP, the scripting language from Tim Sweeney’s first game.
(No, a scripting language for game characters doesn’t need integers. If you need to count, you can do that by moving blocks around on the game board. It’s halfway between LOGO and Minecraft.)
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