PHP and Me

I just finished writing a not-so-simple, not-so-complex PHP script. First, lemme say that I had a good time with it, since it isn’t either XSLT or Portal (my workplace’s homebrew) code. It’s kinda refreshing to look outside of my multi-month project. Exciting, in fact… despite how insignificant (in the grand scheme of things) it is.

I’ve got to admit, thought, that I don’t really like PHP. I’m not going to bash PHP outright (as I’ve heard MANY people do). It is a programming language, and it certainly has it’s place. I’ve used many things written in PHP. In fact, I feel bad about the way people dismiss PHP. That said, I still don’t like it. My problem is that I feel PHP is simply too verbose. There seems to be a function for everything. It is the total opposite of Scheme, where every function is a based on a handful of core functions. I have had to deal with a number of languages in my life, and I certainly prefer languages with as little syntax as possible.

I spend a lot of time googling the functions. And then the parameters. And then the return types. And then I run across another function that is kinda like the first one that I saw, but slightly different (maybe even described as more or less efficient!) And then I have to research the return types. I’m mostly bothered by the related functions. Just give me something I can use in different ways. Don’t give me the kitchen sink and tell me to choose the faucet type.

This is the same problem that I have with XSLTs. It is a rather verbose language (which happens to usually be interspersed in XML/HTML). This makes it hard to pick-up in a hurry, and makes it unintuitive. This is important. Unintuitive. I spend a major part of my work day making sure that all of the webpages, all of the components, all of the behavior… even the URLs of my work are intuitive. So I don’t like to accept much less from the tools I work with.

To extend the analogy slightly further… I have seen that when websites are unintuitive, that said websites can fail. Is the same thing the case for programming languages?