Taking PHP Seriously - Slack Engineering

What I like about PHP

PHP is weird for me. I don't really get to use it outside of work, and it's not approprite for any of my projects. But I can't shake this love I have for the language. Like, it's a tool that just works. It doesn't try to multitask and do everything. It just has all the bits and bobs I need to make a simple website that's fast enough.

If I ever need to augment it, I can just use system calls. That's what I do for this site. You think I want to wait for synchronous HTTP requests? I exec() out to a Rust binary. It's fine. I don't call it a ton. Even if I did, it's still going to be faster than blocking the main process with synchronous code.

Because despite all the shit PHP gets, and its inapropriate lack of modern tooling, the language is fine. It's actually fun to write PHP. You don't have to think about what database library you should install. Or if my compiler is set up with the right bundler targeting the correct standard so I can import functions with keywords instead of with other functions. It has types, that you can totally avoid or get super deep into. It has union types, which are one of my favorite things that hardly any languages really implement. And, its got the best implementation of object oriented programming of any modern language. How did PHP get so stellar. And where the fuck did they find the balls to just stick with it. These new languages are all about optics. PHP doesn't give a shit. It just works. Like, there's no drama. It's a beautiful tool when used correctly. Like a lathe, or a grindstone.