Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something

Re:Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something by ars on Saturday January 17, 2009 @11:14PM (#439005)

Exactly. I upvote if I think it's interesting, even if I also think it's wrong.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something by maxwell on Sunday January 18, 2009 @12:23AM (#439066)

I upvote if I think the discussion is or might get interesting, even if the link isn't. And this isn't meant as a criticism, but boolean judgments in general don't seem to carry much data; when I read a submission, and I don't think I'm alone, I update a (lazily loaded) mental hash table with any new information on a particular key (or, less often, I add a new one). For efficiency I periodically cache this in hardware by reconfiguring neurons.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something by giles_bowkett on Sunday January 18, 2009 @02:49PM (#439576)

yeah but that's what bothers me. you've got a site founded by the guy who wrote "The Python Paradox" and everybody there thinks it's interesting to discuss PHP. come on! it doesn't matter if it's wrong or not. there is nothing interesting about PHP. there's nothing to learn there. there's no story. even my rant was just Economics 101.

trying to extract lessons from the design of PHP is like trying to win the lottery by wearing a trucker hat because you saw some dude in a trucker hat win the lottery. there's nothing there! you might as well be reading tea leaves. which is what I said in the rant, but you didn't get the point. you might as well be posting a picture of some tea leaves and then having a discussion about that.

yes a good enough conversationalist can extract something meaningful from anything, and that's the real challenge I was after when I wrote the rant, but if your goal is to write something interesting about what you saw on Hacker News, let me tell you, Hacker News does not make it easy for you by talking about PHP.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something by tlrobinson on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @12:35AM (#441418)

The original premise of this was "why is PHP so popular?" (not "let's talk about the merits of the PHP language"), which is an interesting question precisely because many of us (yourself included, apparently) don't think PHP is a particularly interesting language.

Despite being a technically uninteresting language, it still became incredibly popular. Why?

That's why it's on Hacker News.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something by ryanwaggoner on Sunday January 18, 2009 @08:31PM (#439909)

there is nothing interesting about PHP

Obviously people in this community feel that there is something interesting there worth discussing. If you disagree, perhaps that implies that this community isn't a good fit for you.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Hacker News Thinks PHP Won Something by Xichekolas on Sunday January 18, 2009 @09:34PM (#439965)

Just because he disagrees doesn't mean he should go away.

There are lots of people that disagree in 'challenging ways', but if everyone here saw everything the same way, there would be no discussion at all.

[ Parent | on HN ]