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I kept hearing these "PHP doesn't suck anymore" sentiments so in 2019, I started a new project in PHP. I read all the modern books, followed all the recent best practises, used all the sane configuration...

...and PHP still kinda sucked. Maybe it has improved between 2021 (when I last committed to that new project) and 2024, but I'm skeptical.

It was a huge disappointment to me because I really want PHP to be nice. PHP was the second language I learned for bigger projects after Perl, so some part of it still feels like home and evokes a beautiful naive feeling towards programming in me.

Alas, I'm unlikely to try it again in the next decade. I suspect it's slowly catching up to other languages, but at this rate I think more than a few years are needed until parity.



I keep hearing these "I heard PHP doesn't suck any more but I tried it and it still sucks" sentiments but they inexplicably never explain why


> ..and PHP still kinda sucked

Can you elaborate?


What do you use now instead?




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