@nixCraft
1998: IRC is dead, use ICQ
2002: IRC is dead, use MSN
2006: IRC is dead, use Skype
2010: IRC is dead, use Facebook Chat
2014: IRC is dead, use WhatsApp
2018: IRC is dead, use Discord and Slack
2022: IRC is dead, use this filter bypass script on Roblox
Anyone who has worked on a well-developed product knows that you can't replace old working tech like PHP or COBOL in an instant because it will cause more problems than solving them. Not to mention, it always involves heavy costs. The famous bank wanted to replace COBOL with new tech; the upfront cost for a year project was over 1 billion. The big vendor questions said they can't provide a 101% guarantee of the project's success. That is how complicated things are...
@nixCraft It’s common knowledge that many systems were not documented. This complicates the transition to newer code. We also forget many programmers have long passed with that knowledge.
Remember, we are dealing with people's money here and not some phone, toy, or laptop that can change CPU arch and everything else. There are specific industries like medical tech or finance regulated heavily compared to, say, Apple or Google phones. Central banks can revoke banking licenses or halt new customer onboarding for non-compliance with laws or any misconduct.
@nixCraft I truly hope no-one in medical or fintech introduced PHP for crucial services, though.
I'm afraid it's there. And convinced in several cases even doing it's job fine. But PHP isn't, and never has been, the best choice for critical infra that requires precision, predicability and stability.
though also, php is pragmatic and continuously improving - in security, performance and usability, while a lot of newer tools are chasing hype and trying to be the coolest kid on the block.
PHP just got shit done out of the box from day 1, at literally any level of expertise, which is why it makes up most of the web to this day and is still the No 1 choice for new projects if you want it to quickly and reliably develop something, and have a lot of skilled developers available.
@nixCraft
I work for a small company that sells scientific instruments for US $20 -80K
some of these we sell a 1,00 units a year (which is why so $, the RnD cost isn't amortized on volume)
the cost of switching *anything is prohibitive unless the we get that almost end of world news from one of our vendors:
COBOL is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. [...]. Most programming in COBOL is now purely to maintain existing applications; however, many large financial institutions were still developing new systems in COBOL as late as 2006.
@nixCraft I remember a conversation in the 90s where I was a young programmer extolling the virtues of Cold Fusion and the older programmer I was talking to just laughed at me and said not to bother with it. I never saw CF in the wild again and he was totally right.
@nixCraft Sometimes I wonder what happened to the .asp guys who took over my PHP users’ group in 2002 and forced me out. They probably moved on to .NET and left higher ed and make 3x what I do, come to think of it
@nixCraft@briankrebs Everybody misunderstands the phrase “PHP is meant to die." What it means is that PHP was conceived around the concept of doing a task and ending. Dying, if you will.
It wasn't supposed to be more than a way to pep up static pages, but it's just so darn useful, despite all of its warts.
@nixCraft
Haha 😃 yeah, the same applies to #Wordpress, I think.
The reason is simple: because both #PHP and WP are relatively simple, they get things done... and they are under active development and have very good developer documentation and community.
BTW I wished that cheap webhostings would offer a wider variety of back-end languages and CMSs, but it is like it is 🤷
@nixCraft Rasmus Lerdorf when he creates a crime against humanity of a programming language, admitting he has no idea what he's doing, and it's still one of the most popular web languages after 30 years
@nixCraft I used to joke that the point of PHP--the entire point--was to recapitulate all the design errors of perl. Sadly, perl is dying, but PHP keeps going with the same mistakes.
@nixCraft How many new PHP projects have heard about? Eventually enough existing PHP applications will have died/been converted that PHP will not be well supported (looking at you GWT).
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