Rapid PHP 2018 Review

[Will Fastie]

My review of Rapid PHP 2018 is now available at https://www.fastie.com/article/rapid-php-2018/.

[pety]

You are a talented writer.

I like when you admit that RapidPHP needs dramatically improvements.
A lot of areas are stacked in the past.

But for small projects is very good, indeed.

[pmk65]

Great job. Very comprehensive and touches some of the important points.

[Karlis]

Thanks for an extensive and honest review.

A few of the "missing features" mentioned are something that we have in our roadmap, but just could not manage to make happen with the available resources, so there will be improvements in the future and your post certainly helps in this area.

[Will Fastie]

But for small projects is very good, indeed.

What do you mean when you say "small?" How big is "small?"

You are a talented writer.

Very kind.

[Will Fastie]

... touches some of the important points.

Well, now you have to tell me which important points I missed.

[Will Fastie]

Thanks for an extensive and honest review.

I try to be objective. We all have our biases and I'm as honest as I can be within mine. As for extensive, probably not but thanks anyway.

I'm laser-focused on PHP, which accounts for the absence of feature descriptions in many other areas. I probably should have talked more about HTML/CSS/JS editing but 90% of the time I'm editing PHP. As you can see from the few examples I put up, I have functions like tagTABLE(...) that format the HTML for me, so I don't even write direct HTML that much any more.

I don't know how your user base stacks up as far as server-side coding is concerned. In theory, PHP should dominate because it is almost universally supported by hosting plans at all price points and is thus an easy choice. After that I'd guess ASP/.NET and then Python. If I'm right, PHP continues to represent a key potential market segment for Blumentals.

I'm sure you tire of my constant references to FrontPage/Expression Web. While that market became less attractive to Microsoft, it is not a small chunk by any means. Something that can replace 98% of what EW can do definitely has a future, and only a smaller company like yours can do it. Sad as I may be about it, I know that I will have to give up two features of EW in order to move forward (DWT and Design View) but everything else has to be there.

You will definitely win hearts and minds if you can provide a path from EW.

I look forward to learning more about the roadmap and you are welcome to get in touch privately; such conversations will remain private.

[Shanahan]

I am asking from a career point of view. I keep hearing negative things like:

PHP is a dying language

PHP jobs are low-paying

PHP jobs mainly exist because of Wordpress

PHP means you're working with old legacy code

You get the idea. But from what I hear PHP has come a long way and frameworks like Laravel have positive remarks. PHP is also the most used back-end web language in the world.


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[Will Fastie]

PHP is a dying language

Development of PHP has been more active and organized in the past five years than at any time in its past, and I've been using PHP for 15 years.

PHP is also the most used back-end web language in the world.

It depends on how that is measured. Very few of the huge Web sites out there today use PHP server-side. However, PHP still retains its position as the most widely-deployed server-side language because it is included in almost every economy Web hosting plan and it is free.

PHP jobs mainly exist because of WordPress

I have no way to gauge that. WordPress is a very active environment today and growing, so consider that WordPress would not exist were it not for PHP.

PHP means you're working with old legacy code

That's what all the Python programmers say.

PHP may not be the most elegant server-side language in the world but it is probably the most practical, down-to-earth server-side language in the world. It was designed specifically to script for Web sites. That's not even true for Perl, which was adapted for use on the Web and was used before PHP proved itself a better choice. Neither Python nor any other major language has built-in Web support; it's always bolted on to the side.

I am asking from a career point of view.

My career advice to you is not to worry so much about the particular language and instead concentrate on becoming an excellent programmer, developing skills that will be valuable no matter which language is involved. I've programmed in about 30 languages in my career, being paid to program in about 15 of them. The excellent language I used in my first job no longer exists.

Some of the highest paid programmers in the world are 70-somethings who help companies support "legacy" code written in - wait for it - COBOL.