Top all-time · #3183
Phil Sturgeon
Personal blog · philsturgeon.co.uk/blogprogrammingweb
Phil Sturgeon's personal blog at philsturgeon.co.uk covers programming and web. Since 2009, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “PHP 6: Pissing in the Wind”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Phil Sturgeon's posts on PHP internals, CodeIgniter's class loading and UTF-8 collations, and PHP hosting, mostly from 2009 to 2013, as background on PHP frameworks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
As a techie I write about pragmatic API design & development, systems architecture, and am increasingly trying to use tech and the tech community to help unf**k the planet.
Most-linked posts?
- PHP 6: Pissing in the Wind2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-26
- Benchmarking Codswallop: Node.js vs. PHP2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-12
- 2012: The Year of PHP Cloud Hosting2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-03
- T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM vs. Sanity2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-09-09
What Hacker News says?
recently(not quite) there was a talk in php internals about changing that. read this: http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2013/09/t-paamayim-nekudotayi...
Comment linking /blog/2013/09/t-paamayim-nekudotayim-v-sanity
on “HipHop VM: now at 98.5% PHP framework parity, 16% faster”Submitted Benchmarking Codswallop: Node.js vs. PHP as a story · 163 points
HN discussionThis was ported over from CodeIgniter which has a few crazy Hellers for this sort of thing. I wrote an article explaining the benefits: http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2009/12/Why-CodeIgniter-HTML-... Remember though, that class won't be loaded unless you want it.
Comment linking /blog/2009/12/Why-CodeIgniter-HTML-helper-functions-rock
on “Fuel - A simple and flexible PHP Web Framework ”Submitted Puppet or Chef? as a story · 94 points
HN discussionThere's many utf8 collations so you should specify something specific to default to. I recently read to use utf8_unicode_ci [0] is the best. [0] http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2009/08/UTF-8-support-for-Cod...
Comment linking /blog/2009/08/UTF-8-support-for-CodeIgniter
on “How To Use UTF-8 Throughout Your Web Stack”Submitted Packages: The Way Forward for PHP as a story · 92 points
HN discussionOop, here is the link about PHP PAAS http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2012/10/cloud-hosting-php-pip...
Comment linking /blog/2012/10/cloud-hosting-php-pipe-dream
on “PHP Fog to be discontinued on December 21st”Submitted PHP 6: Pissing in the Wind as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSure, I'll list off a few reasons: * One of the biggest contributors to the community edition left and wrote a nice blog post about it [0] * CodeIgniter uses some very untestable patterns [1] * The way it allows loading classes is horrible [2] * It feels like a first-generation PHP framework because it is a first-generation PHP framework * It tries to do almost everything. A framework should have the bare minimum, a…
Comment linking /blog/2012/12/5-things-codeigniter-cannot-do-without-a-rewrite
on “Show HN: Rails-Inspired PHP Framework”Submitted T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM vs. Sanity as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe "Phil" he's talking about in the first paragraph is Phil Sturgeon, and the original blog post is here: http://philsturgeon.co.uk/news/2010/10/what-happens-next
Comment linking /news/2010/10/what-happens-next
on “What just happened? ”Submitted 2012: The Year of PHP Cloud Hosting as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIMHO, PHP is hated and misconsidered because: Since a few years ago, it was mainly used by amateurs. The truth is that PHP, right now, is a very appealing and competing language. I know several companies that power their services with PHP and it just makes wonders. Of course: you need to know what you are doing. But the language itself is capable of doing almost everything, without drawbacks. Lot of people make clue…
Comment linking /blog/2013/11/benchmarking-codswallop-nodejs-v-php
on “Why so much hate for PHP?”Submitted PHP 5.5 did not lose JSON support as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWordpress, Joomla and Drupal are not good examples of "good" PHP code. They work, and are used extensively, but experienced developers who care about code quality blow a gasket when they look at the source code. To do proper PHP development you should have a local VM. I created something to help in that regard[0]. It's been fairly well received. There's also websites like PHP The Right Way [1] that act like a collec…
Comment linking /blog
on “What are the best languages for aspiring programmers in 2014?”Submitted Why some people hate PHP as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted PHP Packages | Image Uploads & Management as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted PHP 6: Pissing in the Wind as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Tribal Framework Mindset as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why do some PHP Developers love static APIs? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted "Laravel is Awesome" says famous Codeigniter Core Dev as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using CodeIgniter in Multi-site Set-up as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How To: Building a Decent API as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted PSR-2: The Tough Decision (PSR To Revert from Spaces to Tabs) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Most Important Conversation Ever as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bye Bye PHP 5.2 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Understanding Circumstance as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Packages: The Way Forward for PHP as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted 2012: The year of PHP cloud hosting as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted New CodeIgniter Documentation = Unicorn Party as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
