Pure PHP

010101

Okay. I love Flarum. I like SPAs. I love the way modern coding does things even though I don’t fully understand it sometimes.

Having said that. Does anyone think PHP is advancing enough or will one day advance enough so that one could build a platform like this with pure PHP and it still perform well and be scalable? Not necessarily a single page app, but a modern looking, well-performing forum which is mainly pure PHP and basic JavaScript?
I know Flarum is “PHP” but, as most know, it requires a certain dev setup and steps to be able to customize. You can’t just go in and start editing PHP or adding JavaScript.

This wave of how “modern” websites are done is great for developers. Since they are the only ones many times who can make things this way and customize things in this “modern” way. But, the spirit of getting online and just making things gets harder for the average person.

Remember MySpace when everyone started to become a coder in a sense by customizing their profiles with CSS? That’s a cool World Wide Web.

I’m sure modern developers will disagree with me and average website owners will either disagree or possibly agree with me. But, barriers have been erected since... I don’t know, about, 2010, which sometimes mean only developers can make stuff.

luceos

I have some thoughts about this, but it has to be day for me to put them in writing 😂

010101

luceos Fair enough. This just popped in my head too... Remember pure Adobe Flash websites? I think that’s a good relatable example. You could only make pure Flash websites if you had the Adobe software to do it. There was a barrier for average or even slightly above average webmasters.

Flash died.

This is a compliment: Developers are so smart that they will come up with new ways to do things and it may seem better... but is it?

I feel like there are two sides. Make web coding so that only developers can do it. Or, make web coding so that, not necessarily everyone, but so that web enthusiasts can do it.

010101

I promise I won’t bump this thread again after this. But yet another way to look at what I’m talking about is how “complex” (if you want to call it complex) HTML4 was. Or XHTML. When HTML5 came it (thankfully) simplified HTML again. It got rid of all the gibberish at the beginning of HTML files and got rid of the need to use a slash with tags like <br>.

Point? I’m nervous really smart developers are over engineering the web. KISS. Keep it Simple ....

Maybe absolutely no one here will agree with me. But, just like HTML5 simplified HTML again, I for one wish for a day when you don’t have to use yarn, npm, fluffle mcguffle, to make a nice web app.

luceos

It's hard to structure my thoughts on this one. Some randomness then:

Using raw PHP is great, but using frameworks like Laravel is even more awesome because they accelerate development immensely.
Using a frontend framework (like vuejs, angular, react or mithril) is great from a UX perspective, even though the opinions on that seem widespread. They do allow for a form of scalability where frontend nodes can be separately scaled from backend nodes. On the other hand, the complexity in the tech - as you've pointed out by mentioned npm - should not be underestimated.
Even though I have gained some wisdom over the years to keep it "stupid simple", each of the techs have their own use. One of the techs I have been most excited about since it became mainstream has been websockets, I have been using pusher since its inception years ago with great appreciation.
For those that do not open up to a new technology, it's easy to create personal objection against it.

Personally, I'm quite glad that the web technology is moving. It offers new opportunities.

tankerkiller125

I'll make some of my own points here:

Laravel and other frameworks boost productivity so much that it would be a crime not to use them
Frontend Frameworks can make building a UI really simple, easy and and responsive, further when working in a enterprise environment having UI components clearly defined and setup with their own unique HTML element makes consistency across the group and re-use of previous components easier.
NPM is awful for JS package management (notably slow, doesn't always build platform binaries correctly, etc.) and several times authors have pulled packages that then end up causing massive problems. However this problem exist across all package management platforms.
New stuff like Websockets, WebRTC, IndexDB, PWAs and Web push are incredibly powerful when used properly. Personally I've been using websockets a long time, WebRTC has always interested me and I've actually discovered some really awesome uses of it (distributed p2p video streaming is awesome), IndexDB is something we've used at work a number of times now for some interesting projects (NDA, no talky), PWAs are just convenient, and Web Push is awesome when used responsibly. The problem is a lot of people don't use Web Push responsibly.

Also on the note of

010101 Remember pure Adobe Flash websites? I think that’s a good relatable example. You could only make pure Flash websites if you had the Adobe software to do it. There was a barrier for average or even slightly above average webmasters.

The difference here is that the web technologies we've named are 100% free for everyone, available for anyone to play with, work in any IDE or device and there is a massive amount of documentation on it. Adobe Flash died because the IDE was expensive as hell, the platform was riddled with bugs and performance issues, and had so many zero day exploits in it that not even Adobe could keep track of all of them. Plus it was not a standard. WebRTC, Websockets, IndexDB, Web Push, etc. are all standardized RFCs.

matteocontrini

tankerkiller125 NPM is awful for JS package management (notably slow

Is it? It's become quite fast now. I would say Composer is extremely slow in doing anything.

datitisev

matteocontrini I would say Composer is extremely slow in doing anything.

Not sure why, but composer runs like 10x faster on Linux for me. Tested on the same drive that I develop on Windows, so 🤷‍♂️ no idea. Same version too.

010101 Does anyone think PHP is advancing enough or will one day advance enough so that one could build a platform like this with pure PHP and it still perform well and be scalable?

I don't see what advanced PHP has to do with anything. What are you trying to do? PHP runs on the backend. It can literally do anything except for changing the frontend without a page refresh - no iframe tricks (obviously it has more restrictions when it comes to the browser, e.g. localstorage and stuff, but that'd be accessed through JS so 🤷).

Not necessarily a single page app, but a modern looking, well-performing forum which is mainly pure PHP and basic JavaScript?

Plain PHP forums exist. And they can scale well. That's just not the direction Flarum took.

But, the spirit of getting online and just making things gets harder for the average person.

How, exactly? You can still make stuff with the same technologies from 10 years ago, basically. However, if you want your site to be fast, modern, optimized, etc... you gotta live with the times and learn new technologies.

which sometimes mean only developers can make stuff.

There are many CMS's and website builders out there.

What is "make stuff"? Make websites? Applications?

010101

datitisev I guess you helped answer the direction my brain was going. You can build a nice (non-single page loading) website (forum/community) using very basic PHP code, which can be edited on the fly right online with no compiling or local dev environment (obviously at least doing this with a staging site first - I know you all would yell if I suggested editing live, production files in an online editor). 😉

I think that’s what I was trying to argue. I can’t afford to buy a new computer right now (which I would need) and don’t have a ton of time to set up a dev environment (with 2 little ones and my real job). And so, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I wish there was a way to advance coding and be able to edit files directly online, in the cloud vs. locally with all the compiling or whatever it’s called. Now, this could start a whole other tangent because I know there are ways to do it in the cloud and I’ve kinda sorta been able to compile a copy of someone’s Flarum extension in the cloud with no local dev set up. It worked. But, it’s cumbersome.

I guess, even though serious developers disagree, I like the idea of running a forum, and at any time from anywhere (with a staging version) be online live editing files with no composer, yarn, npm, etc.

Example, sometimes there are bugs, but I can create a basic Flarum extension (depending on your opinion) the “wrong” way, right online at any time using a text editor. I cannot do that if I want to create an extension “the right way.” I can however do that if I want to create a WordPress plugin.

So, I guess my argument can end with acknowledging that it’s just not the direction Flarum and many modern web apps have gone. And I get it being easy for a real developer to say, “you just gotta get with the times man!” 😝

But, I’ll probably always prefer being able to easily create things online even from just a Chromebook or iPhone (which is all I have right now) versus anything else. I know that means I’ll never be able to create something like Flarum. But I don’t want to do that. I just want whatever I’m running to be customizable online, in a live staging environment, if I want to.

tankerkiller125

010101 There is a way to edit the code directly online, kinda it's called Gitpod and it's not that expensive, or if you have your own VPC you can even host it yourself for free 😉

(If you self-host I would actually recommend something like https://theia-ide.org/ (which Gitpod is based on) over Gitpod for easier setup honestly)

010101

tankerkiller125 Extra tools. Versus live editing in a text editor. Look I get it. No one here will agree with me. 🤪

Pollux

010101 I for one wish for a day when you don’t have to use yarn, npm, fluffle mcguffle, to make a nice web app.

In principle it would be possible to create a forum software like Flarum with simple PHP in the backend and Javascript for the frontend. But nobody has ever done that and probably never will. Why?

If you look in the vendor directory of a vanilla Flarum installation, you will already find almost 40 subdirectories and in these even more packages with software written not by the Flarum developers but by third parties. Why reinvent the wheel? Now you need a way to easily install, update and remove those third-party components. Here we come to packet managers. And if you depend on software written by others, you need to make sure you update it reliably without causing trouble for your own project. You can and want to use the updates of some of the packages and can't use the updates of others, and you need a tool to manage that. That's what Composer does.

Without third-party components, it would be unrealistic to expect an open source project to develop to a maturity like Flarum's.

010101

Pollux I agree. Maybe it’s just the compiling part I don’t like? And can someone confirm the right term? Is it compiling? You know, the fact that you have to use npm or yarn and convert the JavaScript. It’s an easy step. But, it causes a need for a tool that a novice like me doesn’t have.

Or another example, and again, I know you should never edit core files and stuff like that. But, if someone wanted to just tweak a line of JavaScript in some file. Depending on the file, you can’t without breaking things. Because you have to have the original JavaScript and recompile.

But, I guess that’s another point... just don’t mess with core files and leave the developing up to the developers. I should just focus on using Flarum and content creation. But, I like playing with code. 😋

Sanguine

010101 I do agree 🙂 however, I don’t think anything can be done about it. Humans are builders and tend to expand in every possible direction. From science to law to technology. A lot of stuff gets added and very little gets removed, resulting in ever growing complexity.

People try to counter this with abstractions. Modern cars and phones have their complexity beautifully abstracted away. It is a blessing, until something breaks. Twenty years ago, every village had a mechanic that could repair every car. Today, very few people are able to repair a Tesla.

Complexity makes stuff more fragile. As people specialize, they tend to get more dependent on each other. A predictable and relatively simple virus was able to trash global supply chains this year. Millions of people lost their job, because someone on the other side of the globe ate the wrong pangolin. This would have been unthinkable just 50 years ago.

Complexity increases in society and as you all illustrated, also for web development. As technologies are added to the potential web stack, it becomes harder for an individual to master all of them. So modern software has many dependencies and abstractions in order to get anything done at all. It then may work until it breaks. Google “npm leftpad” for a hilarious example.

My day job is in IT Security. As complexity expands, so do bugs that can be exploited. I won’t be out of a job anytime soon 🥳

PS I’m very cynical about the world, yes. I believe society will eventually collapse because of this growing complexity. There’s nothing I can do about it myself, except to not buy a WiFi enabled dishwasher.

Sanguine

010101 And respect for asking this on a forum full of technologists 😂

tankerkiller125

Sanguine As an IT guy my job is very much taking the really complex and ever changing IT landscape and abstracting it all away for end users so that they can just click a couple buttons to do really complex task, or in some cases removing the complex task entirely from end user view by automating the whole thing.