PHP is the only language where I have seen development practices that are mind blowingly awful. I fully understand that you can write bad code in any language, but for some reason PHP devs manage to top any expectation of bad code one could have.
Let me give you 3 examples.
The switch statement (or equivalent) is available in many languages. It is fine to use. The paradigm is that you switch on a variable and each case is a constant. There are two languages I am aware of that do not enforce that constraint. javascript and PHP. There is only one language I have seen this constraint ignored. PHP. In multiple places in the code they used switch(true) and the case statements called functions. This was a well known company.
Using comments as code. I was trying to use a CMS developed in house (different company to the one above, not well known) and I was trying to figure out how to change which the main page was. I had to change part of a comment. I realise this isn't a default part of the language, so I guess the dev must have felt really proud of themselves.
Drupal 7 breaks PHP's raison d'etre. In my opinion PHP is a templating language for HTML. That's the best you can hope for it. Drupal 7 (maybe 8 is better, I don't know, I ran from PHP after this) is clunky, slow and confusing. But on top of that we had installed three themes, two were deactivated. Yet somehow a deactivated theme was able to interact with the active theme and break the templating it provided. Amazing. Why would Drupal allow deactivated themes to do that?
So, sure, you get bad programmers everywhere, but the frequency and severity which they occur in PHP means I am never going near it again. It is a bad language.
PHP is the only language where I have seen development practices that are mind blowingly awful. I fully understand that you can write bad code in any language, but for some reason PHP devs manage to top any expectation of bad code one could have.
Let me give you 3 examples.
The
switchstatement (or equivalent) is available in many languages. It is fine to use. The paradigm is that you switch on a variable and each case is a constant. There are two languages I am aware of that do not enforce that constraint. javascript and PHP. There is only one language I have seen this constraint ignored. PHP. In multiple places in the code they usedswitch(true)and thecasestatements called functions. This was a well known company.Using comments as code. I was trying to use a CMS developed in house (different company to the one above, not well known) and I was trying to figure out how to change which the main page was. I had to change part of a comment. I realise this isn't a default part of the language, so I guess the dev must have felt really proud of themselves.
Drupal 7 breaks PHP's raison d'etre. In my opinion PHP is a templating language for HTML. That's the best you can hope for it. Drupal 7 (maybe 8 is better, I don't know, I ran from PHP after this) is clunky, slow and confusing. But on top of that we had installed three themes, two were deactivated. Yet somehow a deactivated theme was able to interact with the active theme and break the templating it provided. Amazing. Why would Drupal allow deactivated themes to do that?
So, sure, you get bad programmers everywhere, but the frequency and severity which they occur in PHP means I am never going near it again. It is a bad language.
As an alternative, I find Django a lot easier to get into and use than Drupal.