Cited on HN 4 times, 2019–2020, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN uses it as the primary source for PHP's origins as a templating system for C and for the story behind its inconsistent function design.
Rasmus Lerdorf marks 25 years of PHP at phpday 2019 with a look at the highlights and lowlights of the language. He argues for upgrading PHP versions, covering performance, static analysis, zero-cost profiling and dead code elimination.
“have a look at this talk[1] by Rasmus Lerdorf about its creation.” (HN, 2020)
This is tangential but this channel frustrates me to no end. They shamelessly rip other people's content, stripping their videos of author information, conference information etc, AND add their own title card so that it appears like they are the publishers of the video. Why is this acceptable! Anyway, here is the original source [1], that this time was NOT in their video description. [1] [this video] And this is the last time I commented about this channel [2] [2] [link]
PHP certainly works just fine when used well, but what in particular makes it a great introductory language? (As for what's (arguably) wrong with it, have a look at this talk[1] by Rasmus Lerdorf about its creation. He intended it as a quick and dirty templating system for C programs. Because it was never designed to be a programming language, but somehow organically grew into one, it lacks (in the eyes of some) the elegance of a purposefully designed language.) [1] [this video]
Lerdorf on PHP's origin as a templating system for C
Rasmus Lerdorf has talked about it in other videos but this is one [this video] Basically, groups of functions are consistent: string,array etc. Their parameter order was usually based on whatever the underlying C API was.
Lerdorf explains PHP function parameter order inconsistency
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.