I don't think it's "bad"; it's damn simple and works well for what it is, and contains no unnecessary complexity. No dependencies on some other huge framework, multilayered overengineering, or excessive generality. The same can't be said of the many other clones of it that were attempting to be "better designed" rewrites.
As for "maintainability" or all that other software engineering stuff: this board script doesn't really need to be maintained, because it works, and if anything needs to be changed, it's so simple that the changes can be made easily. Along the same ideas as http://suckless.org/philosophy
http://may.2chan.net/27/futaba.htm
(that's their board for cat pictures, the most SFW one I could find, but the banner ads are probably still NSFW, so keep that in mind)
I think you're thinking of tinyboard: https://github.com/savetheinternet/Tinyboard
extract is one of those moronic things though that only exists to create security holes and other bugs.
OMG, it's horrible :D
None of which the 4chan code actually uses.
I've never seen the utility of extract -- it's the recommended way of getting wordpress plugin parameters, but to me, just using whatever array you're extracting from is always a better solution.
1. It's written in PHP. Finding a good PHP developer is nigh impossible (there are exceptions, like always). 2. I expected worse, to be honest.
And NodeJS is bad ass rock star tech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkRVzciAZg
Right tool for the right job. You can use qualifiers like "serious" and "modern" but you're deluding yourself if you think they mean anything when the pool of PHP developers is so staggeringly high.
Of course, right tool for the right job. PHP has specific use cases but that's another discussion entirely.
Ive also seen much worse in Java world, with JSPs and all kinds of taglibs and action-handlers mashed up to create a soup which would make you crave for PHP.
People here love to poke fun at WordPress. I'd love to take any of them out of startup-land and make them work for a full week in a 10 years old corporate piece of software, written pretty much in any language.
A "serious PHP developer" is an oxymoron.
Yep. Worked as a sysadmin in a company who had a product in PHP before. That was not fun. The bug count grew with each release in my time there.
"extract($_POST); extract($_GET); extract($_COOKIE);"