The signal:noise ratio is better in Javascript, Perl, and Java? I can't possibly agree with you there. There's a lot of bad PHP out there. But that's also because there's a lot of PHP out there. I wouldn't say the ratio is any worse. Any respectable PHP developer nowadays uses a decent framework, and there are many. It's pretty easy to discern who's legit and who's not by whether or not they use/understand these frameworks.
edit Why the downvotes? Am I not contributing? Or is this just typical irrational PHP hate? I'm not apologizing for it, I'm just talking from experience here.
In case of many programming languages, there's certain culture built around them - with its own hierarchy of values, its own idiosyncrasies, approach and so on.
Like the tendency of overengineering and devotion to design patterns in Java world.
Now, the idea behind PHP is to "just get it working".
This philosophy is perfectly summed up by PHP's inventor, Lerdorf:
"I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say 'Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that.' I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests. "
Of course the qoute may be tongue-in-cheek, but I'd say the mindset is real.
You're getting down-voted because people probably disagree. (don't worry I threw you a bone...but for the future, pls don't ask why you're getting downvoted)
Anyway, IMHO the signal:noise ratio is MUCH better in Rails. Are there bad Rails people out there? Absolutely, but to the OP's point, there is a much large proportion of Rails developers who take their job seriously as a professional than those who do it for small freelancing gigs, for the lulz, etc. Furthermore, many of the issues that you have to teach traditional PHP developers, are "solved problems" by those in other languages/frameworks (Laravel/Symfony are good examples of where those problems are solved).
> Any respectable PHP developer nowadays uses a decent framework, and there are many. It's pretty easy to discern who's legit and who's not by whether or not they use/understand these frameworks.
This is exactly the OP's point. It's not that "any respectable PHP developer" doesn't exist, it's that weeding through all of the shitty ones to find them is much harder than people who specialize in other technologies.
It was merely a reminder of this portion of the site guidelines[0]:
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
Guidelines are important for online communities and sometimes worth explicitly reminding people of.
Personally, I think asking "why am I being downvoted" is better than just complaining, because sometimes it elicits a useful response. It would also be nice if the guidelines were more clear on whether downvotes should be used for disagreement or more like "this comment was made in bad faith".
Not necessarily, because there's no objective way to define 'bad' here.
The existence of different frameworks allows for a competitive environment where new ideas can be tested or old paradigms moved away from, and different programming styles or needs can be catered to. If you're working with a language community for which there is only one canonically accepted framework that someone decided was 'the best', well, you're just kind of stuck with that.
Granted, since pretty much anyone can hack together a basic framework in PHP (I have one that will never see the light of day) most of them are likely to be pretty bad. But it also stands to reason that most of the ones that get used aren't, because there are always alternatives.
edit Why the downvotes? Am I not contributing? Or is this just typical irrational PHP hate? I'm not apologizing for it, I'm just talking from experience here.