Gadgetopia

The discipline of PHP: This is over a year old, but it’s a nice rant on people who complain that PHP makes for messy code.

[…] PHP doesn’t dictate a development methodology (unlike Zope or J2EE); so it’s entirely up to the developer whether he wants to be sloppy, or methodical and precise (I don’t mean to suggest Ian is sloppy - this is just an example). PHP has the same philosophy as C and C , where the language is designed to be open-ended. PHP doesn’t care how you structure your code or whether you choose good names for your variables or not.

A common phenomenon of failed projects is to blame the tools. The programmer rarely blames him or herself for lack of initiative or discipline. […]

I’m sure this sort of blaming your tools happens in the PHP world too. As others have mentioned, PHP has low barriers to entry, and continues to be just as easy to use in PHP5 (despite the trolls who claim that PHP5 looks and feels like Java). A little bit more hygiene, a regular shave, and lots more discipline is the answer.

I couldn’t agree more. PHP can be coded well or poorly, depending on the experience of the coder. The difference from other languages is that PHP is flexible enough so that you can go both ways — Model 1 is just as easy as MVC, in most cases.

For much more, see this post: PHP: The Camaro of Programming Languages.