PHP - Why Learn...

Why should you learn PHP when there are two many "better" languages available? It's easy to learn. You can build practical web apps within a week of starting. Finally a huge number of legacy web apps such as WordPress, Drupal, and many of the open source projects that you download were coded in PHP. To be a professional you'll need to have 5 or more languages under your belt, and although PHP may not be the one you end up preferring to use, it's a good one to be comfortable with.

[@elithecomputerguy]

Go to www.elithecomputerguy.com to copy/paste code samples

[@zakuarbor]

Thanks for coming back to IT topics. I remember watching your php videos back in grade 11 and was fascinated by how easy php was and the whole concept of dynamic web pages. In my school, we only learned C programming and it was much harder to create something (at least for me). I picked up a book and learned php and sql in less than 5 days. I proposed to my teacher to let me create a more realistic version of our final project using various web languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and SQL). The final project was to create a store using C programming and using files to store data. So I quickly learned PHP, SQL and some Javascript and submitted my final project in a week. The company I am currently interning at still use PHP for their internal tools and requires maintenance. There are quite a number of companies that use very old tools and programs. Many companies are slow and reluctant to rewrite their tools for various reasons. And Eli is right that we don't marry to languages. I had to pick up many languages throughout the years and keep up with new technologies.

[@makers_lab]

The low barrier to entry is a mixed blessing; yes someone with minimal experience can learn to slap PHP code together in a few hours, but they won't learn how to write secure web applications in that time, and chances are they never will. Web applications rife with security holes is the ever recurring consequence.

[@KohenChia]

I fully support this move back to IT topics. You are great at explaining technical concepts and I learned a lot from your networking videos. Keep doing these please.

[@andreasbaumann6943]

Php is part of LAMP, so it's one of the cheapest and wide-spread options for a programming language to use in the web. Java, Ruby, whatever hosting is far scarser to get or more expensive.

[@fer31fer]

Thank you for teaching it again. It suits you much better

[@ariefbudiman1544]

did I see Larry Ullman's php for the web? Thats the book I used to learn php.. after some decent basic python and html/css/js under my belt, the book is really really helpful explaining the environment that makes php differ from python and or javascript.

[@adrianjord]

Cobol was used and is used by a tremendous amount of financial institution, it doesn't mean we should continue using it. I understand, it may be a good idea to learn different languages for legacy applications, but that doesn't mean we should continue using those languages for newer applications or even continue using it in existing code bases. Isolate the ugliness of your legacy application, have it call newer code through RDP services and APIs possibly. One of the biggest reasons Python has been growing so much in the past few years is it's ease of use and ease of learning. Personally I don't find any reason to learn PHP over Python for scripting, or possibly even Bash, AWK, and sed. If you have to learn javascript, html, and css anyways to write a php web application, why not just learn javascript, html, and css? ES6 and TypeScript have presented a fantastic eco-system for dynamic web applications and if you need more, you can use frameworks such as Angular, React, Aurelia, Vue, etc.. So the only reason I see to learn PHP or Cobol for that matter, is legacy applications.

[@rickdg]

F5-based development is pretty good and nobody seems to be interested in competing with PHP 7 on that level.

[@juanjoseaguero6539]

Thanks for your great information!!

[@rogernevez5187]

Why PHP is still so popular? Because it is simple, consistent and efficient?

[@Maxjoker98]

I don't think PHP is any of the words you used to describe it. I would like to know how you came to that conclusion.

[@rogernevez5187]

I would like to know why do you think it is not.

[@Silentsouls]

@@rogernevez5187 Because it is not simple When i use a function that returns the position of a character in a string, i can get a boolean response. making my code more complex. when i have a variable i can put in a string, later i can make it an int, or number, and later a boolean making debugging far worse then it should be. there goes your efficienty and consistency as well btw. The biggest problem with PhP is not the language, but the community that thinks it is simple consistent an efficient, and try to make enterprise application with it.

[@rogernevez5187]

@Silentsouls > "string, later i can make it an int, or number, and later a boolean" Mathematica language also has this feature and the community enjoy it. However, if you really consider important to declare variables, you can turn on the error reporting: // Reporting E_NOTICE can be good too (to report uninitialized // variables or catch variable name misspellings ...) error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE);

[@Silentsouls]

@@rogernevez5187 error reporting will not suffice, it makes it just more tedious to work with, The fact that it is possible to write a good program with it does not make the language a good language. It just tells the mental gymnastics the programmer must make to make it a descent application. distracting from the task at hand. If anything the error reporting will make me less efficient, because i need to use the log file to see if i made a mistake.

[@pollysey6577]

Thank you for the video.

[@miroslavisikiyski4876]

You are only scratching the surface.. PHP evolved to a full blown OOP general purpose language. with 7.4 now it can be used as static language. It is super fast as well. Frameworks like Laravel are also a huge thing to have in mind. Also PHP is really good for adtech, telecommunications and even fintech recently. People who trash talk it have never used it or they might have seen old versions php embedded in html poorly written and thinking "woah this shit is the PHP?" Also It has a vast community, not going away any time soon.

[@DastageerHC]

Pls do a video on the importance mathematics in programming

[@ko95]

not marry language and is very used, thank you eli

[@abdullahalammar9245]

thanks for all of your very helpful lessons.. but I have one question.. I am a network engineer and I have knowledge about system administration and routing and switching.. my question is whether it is easy for a person like me to learn ethical hacking?? because I do not know programming and its languages

[@joecool5640]

I am a late comer to programming in web and I have gone through your 11 PHP lessons. I realized the PHP lessons were created sometime in 2012, about 6 years ago. Since then, I believe there will be better programming language like Python and the likes, I suppose. I intend to develop (from scratch) a comprehensive Financial and accounting system which should be web responsive. I have done this some 18 years ago using MS Visual Basic and MS SQL Server 2000. Today, I would like to learn a simple but useful and popular web language to design the same. Should I learn Python as a starter? Otherwise, please advise. Thanks.

[@khangle6872]

3 years late but i dont think you want to use python if you PRIMARILY do web stuff

[@bmoney9711]

Thanks Eli

[@ManWhoSoldTheWorld01]

great video as usual

[@LuisCeladita]

Please turn on the captions

[@chrisspencer6502]

Django web2py flask it's hard to keep track of python web frameworks

[@alberto148]

miaaaaaaoo! rossmans cat says hi

[@imranabdalla5330]

I like when you wear your jail clothes.

[@juanjoseaguero6539]

Eli, please could you introduce us to Skype for Business ?

[@ko95]

yes

[@vrino223]

i mean you can always divorce php hehe

[@Silentsouls]

I think you should learn just enough about Php to know that it is bad language to be programming in, and enough to be able to read it, so that you can convert the application to a better platform. for the rest learning php is a waste of time. the more people that know it the longer it stays alive. wich in this case is a bad thing.

[@Grizzzzzzzzz]

out of interest, what makes it 'bad'? What language is 'better'? Why is that language 'better'? What version was the last time you used PHP? When was the last time you used PHP?

[@Silentsouls]

@@Grizzzzzzzzz This week. 7. something this video of Eli eplains a couple of aspects : kzbin.info/www/bejne/hZeukHuOqLOhiM0

[@Grizzzzzzzzz]

@@Silentsouls Thanks, I'm familiar enough with PHP to know the generic reasons people say PHP is bad, I was looking for more specific reasons than "Bad coders can write bad code" which is true of any language. In a perfect world it would be fantastic to swap to the 'best' language, but considering something like 70%+ of the web is built on it I don't see how learning PHP is a waste of time.

[@Silentsouls]

@@Grizzzzzzzzz That is the only good reason to know some php, thats for sure. But when you stik to what is already there and not evolve to use something better, things will not change.

[@ojsojs6004]

@@Silentsouls what is the last version of php that you used? Have you ever used php symphony and laravel?

[@subvind]

"To be a professional you'll need to have 5 or more languages under your belt", huhhhhh?

[@bas3q]

He’s not wrong...once you learn the fundamentals of programming, it’s relatively easy to pick up other languages anyway.

[@SunilKumar-ws3ll]

depends how versatile you want to be in work .. for some simple integrations GK is good to have

[@computernerd8157]

When you are trying to become a professional, you have to learn a programming stack. I enjoy being able to use more then one coding language anyways. My favs are Java, C#, HTML5,C++ and bootstrap for JavaScript. When its all said and done, the only thing that changes with most languages is syntax.

[@Maxjoker98]

PHP is a curse. Seriously, I've had more than one person come to me just to check out their PHP site, just to have them owned in minutes. The argument that PHP is used in the real world does not hold up. In the real world you will also find computers running windows 98 as a fileserver. That does not mean that this is ok. I would recommend staying away from web development entirely in the beginning - you don't want your server sending spam(or worse), and be responsible for that, but that is inevitably what happens if you don't _exactly_ know what you're doing - and few PHP developers ever do. And besides, I don't think the claim that PHP is that easy to learn holds up. As said in the Video, to be just barely useful you'll need to learn HTML, and if you actually want to write software, you'll need to learn another language(JS) that is capable of replacing PHP in itself(And I'd argue that nowadays nodejs has filled the niche that PHP once claimed). IMHO, if you're not that interested in learning programming, learn a scripting language like python. If you are interested in developing a real application that others might want to use sometime, learn a real language, preferably C or C++.

[@khangle6872]

Based on your ideals, anything not written in Assembly is bad, "unreal" code lol

[@tylerking4227]

Yeah..... AWS certs and "serverless" is what every company is looking for. To anyone trusting this guy in regards to what to do to grow your career, just know that real professionals in the field get paid by being in the field, not by making 'self help'/youtube videos. Reach out to a local recruiter, have them determine what you qualify for, your areas of improvement, then execute. Go get any type of Azure/AWS/GCP certification.

[@khangle6872]

Serverless doesnt mean you throw away the backend

[@Lambda_Ovine]

PHP sucks. The argument that PHP should be in use because it's being currently used does not justify its use enough. We need to get rid of it, so we need to stop using it little by little. If you really need to learn it, the do it, but you should avoid using it as much as possible.

[@Silentsouls]

They actually tried to make it a better platform, PHP 6. but well that one got ditched.

[@ojsojs6004]

@@Silentsouls clearly you are a troll and no nothing about php. There is no php 6, but there is php 7. Php 7 with benchmark is 3 times more faster than Python. Php 7.4 will be released in dec 2019. Php 8 will have jit. Have you ever used php frameworks like Laravel and symphony? Have you used phpreact and php swoole?

[@Silentsouls]

@@ojsojs6004 Not a troll, but i might not know the whole truth about php 6. still, Google : what-happened-to-php-6

[@ojsojs6004]

@@Silentsouls who cares about that. There is php 7, which is great. You don't even know there is php 7.

[@pkrockin3923]

shutup hipster