5 Reasons Why Your Ex Is Like PHP

Here's a little humor for your Monday. You have a love/hate relationship with your ex. You used to love him, but now you hate her (or him). At the same time, you can’t get her out of your mind. In fact, certain things trigger thoughts or memories. It may surprise you to know that your programming language can make you think of your ex as well. In fact, your ex is a lot like PHP.

Bad on the Inside

You left your ex for a reason, and that reason probably had to do with the fact that you didn’t like what was on the inside. The same can be said for PHP. Developers spent years building on top of what began as a simple language. The end result is a language that accepts bad code. So just like your ex could use some cleaning up on the inside, PHP could as well.

Scatterbrained

You could never count on your ex, and the same is true with PHP. A lot of people refer to this as a “scatterbrained” web language. Anyone can jump in and start coding, bending the rules when necessary. That makes it a very hard language to maintain. It runs off in a lot of different directions, just like your ex. If you want to hold someone’s attention and get them to focus, you probably wouldn’t go to your ex. The same is true for PHP.

Been There, Done That

You’ve dated your ex and you’ve moved on. The same can be said about PHP. When you work with PHP, there is a good chance that someone has already built a similar project. The code is already out there if you need to take a look. While that can be attractive, it kind of feels like someone is dating your ex. That’s fine, but you don’t really want to see it. You are ready to put the old code behind you and see what the future holds.

Community Support

When you left your ex, you found out that he had all of the community support. The Facebook friends went with him, leaving you in the cold. Your ex isn’t the only one with community support. PHP is known for community support as well. The open source software community acts as a great resource. Best of all, the community members won’t leave you when your ex packs up his things and leaves town.

Inconsistent

It was likely hard to count on your ex when you were together. He might have even flaked out when you needed him most. PHP is also inconsistent. The inconsistency is most visible with function names and argument ordering. This isn’t just frustrating when it comes to your ex. It’s also frustrating with PHP.

Just like your ex, there are good and bad things about PHP. If you can overlook the bad things, you can get along with PHP just fine. If you don’t want another bad dating situation, though, you might want to check out Ruby on Rails.