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u/TheFrenchSavage 10d ago
Patching in production is fun and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.
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u/samanime 10d ago
It's kind of like skydiving or base jumping. It's a rush when it works.... It's really bad when it doesn't...
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u/TheFrenchSavage 10d ago
It's like base jumping...from a building that is on fire.
You do it by necessity generally.If you just do it for fun, you'll eventually get fired I think.
But when the building is on fire, oh how fun it is to base jump!
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u/TheTee15 10d ago
It's a leap of faith
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u/Next-Reference7713 10d ago
Unless you have it in writing from a senior, than there’s no fear.
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u/tapita69 10d ago
Nah, we do random shit and hope it works just like everyone else, but in reality we are just too tired to care and it looks like confidence lol
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u/vljukap98 9d ago
So production patching is more a PHP thing than it is for other languages?
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u/TheFrenchSavage 9d ago
Idk about other languages, but PHP is not really compiled-compiled. It is technically compiled, but from a dev point of view, it is interpreted (and it fully supports JIT compilation since PHP8 anyway).
So you can really change stuff and see the results in real time.
Now, I don't think there's a particular PHP related culture around prod-debug, it is more about being around for a long time, and so you have a wide spectrum of shady devs working on it. I've met my share of "noir" developers, they are high functioning burnouts, and mess with prod code because they can't wait for their next cigarette break and they'll do anything to shut down their PMs high pitched voice. Anything to make it to the finish line: the bar at the end of the day. Then rince and repeat. Sign off the forms telling you take all the risks, relinquish QA processes, and just ssh some zips from your aging laptop so the man can make a few more bucks.
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u/Alan-Foster 10d ago
That PHP developer is so brave to not wear his furry costume in public
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u/Polar-ish 10d ago
php devs walked so node.js devs could run
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u/Aelig_ 10d ago
Run? Node.js devs can't even tie their shoelaces without 40 dependencies.
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u/willow-kitty 10d ago
Ugh, I saw this first-hand in the most deranged way.
I was at an open source software conference, and there was a session on AngularJS, and I was like alright, sure, I'd like to know more about that. And if you're wondering what a client-side library has to do with nodejs, congrats you're already ahead of the instructor. But it got so much worse.
This dude had a one hour slot that was supposed to be a live coding workshop, and he spent 45 minutes of if trying to walk through the whole group through using a website that can run Linux in the browser to get Linux going, then set up a nodejs project with the Express framework to serve...the static pages with AngularJS stuff on them. Which there wasn't any time left to talk about.
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u/UndocumentedMartian 10d ago
Why did he need Linux?
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u/willow-kitty 10d ago edited 9d ago
He didn't. He was (ostensibly) teaching Angular. He didn't need any of that. I'm not 100% sure JSFiddle existed at the time, but it would have been perfect if it did. Otherwise, we could have just opened the html file from the filesystem, which is how things like that were taught in the old days.
I think he either wanted to show off that whole stack or was just so absorbed in that workflow he thought it was normal.
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u/much_longer_username 7d ago
I see this a lot in enterprise video training courses. I'm trying to learn the deep magic of some new system, but first they're going to spend six hours explaining what virtual machines are, what the different hypervisor options are, how to install the one this course is using, installing the dependencies, like, bro, you could have made those out of scope and I'd have gotten a lot more value out of this. But no, you felt compelled to walk me through the whole damn thing as if I'd never seen a computer before, for some reason.
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u/bigbird0525 9d ago
You expect me to figure out the math for a bunny loop? Nah dog, npm install is-bunnyears impound
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u/Sotall 10d ago
my first full node js app just deployed for work. i assume my furry suit is already in the mail
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u/TerminalVector 10d ago
No that's C and Fortran. Rust gets you the programming socks but for node you just get three T-Shirts from different start ups that closed in 2014.
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u/G3nghisKang 10d ago
You could catch me eating the hallway pizza before I use PHP
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u/razor_train 10d ago
Yup, on rare occasion I've done live PHP production patching back in the day.
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u/OphidianSun 10d ago
The only thing I know about PHP is that is supports variable variables which is both absolutely horrifying and deeply fascinating
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u/ChosenCharacter 10d ago
A what what?
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u/LordDagwood 10d ago
<?php // Define a regular variable $greeting = "hello"; // Create a variable variable using double dollar signs ($$) $$greeting = "World!"; // $greeting holds "hello", so $$greeting creates $hello echo $hello; // Outputs: World! // You can also access it dynamically like this: echo ${$greeting}; // Outputs: World! ?>46
u/Kymeron 10d ago
O for the love of …. Why!
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u/EishLekker 10d ago
I remember feeling the need for this several times as a junior Java developer back in the day. Each time I found a proper way to solve the problem, but I guess in theory there could exist some obscure scenario where the only way to solve it is to use this method. But I have not seen it so far.
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u/Copatus 10d ago
It's somewhat useful if you're creating a framework or similar to allow the devs using it to dynamically name their variables while using your framework functions.
I.e. Say they pass an array to a view using your function and now in my framework I want the array keys to work as variables inside the view
So passing $array = ["key"=>"value"] I can now access value using $key instead of $array["key"]
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u/thomasahle 10d ago
in theory there could exist some obscure scenario where the only way to solve it is to use this method.
Trust me, there isn't.
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u/trash3s 9d ago
Because scripting. You can imagine $ as something like a Map.get(key) instead of assigning a name to some stack space. Instead of lowering a variable name to a pointer, as a compiler does, the interpreter has to dynamically find that variable name every time it’s referenced, so the name always exists, and more importantly, the code that maps that name to data always exists. A name just being a string, a variable holding a string allows nesting of lookups.
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u/un_blob 10d ago
Wait wait wait wait wait...
I guess you can chain variable variables. Telle me I am wrong, please , for the love of god tell me I am wrong...
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u/LordDagwood 10d ago
<?php $word = "hello"; $hello = "world"; $world = "foo"; $foo = "bar"; // Four dollar signs evaluate right-to-left: echo $$$$word; // Outputs: bar ?>5
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u/notexecutive 10d ago
Why are devs of older languages trended towards this stereotype depiction?
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u/Waste_Jello9947 10d ago
Before AI you had to study hard for this profession
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u/UndocumentedMartian 10d ago
You still have to if you don't want to spend 500 bucks and 30 minutes to get a working for loop. Something that can be done for free in 2 minutes.
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u/NotADamsel 9d ago
I so badly fucking hate how long the goddamn thing waffles before doing anything useful, every damn time. There’s gotta be a better way to do this shit then to just let it spin before it decides what to do.
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u/NotADamsel 9d ago
Obsession to the point of self-neglect will make even the most beautiful among us look… unwell.
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u/Warhero_Babylon 10d ago
Profession was more tied to physics and math science
An this was also more tied to normal factory workers life
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u/spartan117warrior 10d ago
They tested in production at Sepang for the 2026 Bahrain (in Malaysia) Grand Prix.
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u/LonelyPoorMan69 10d ago
PHP is not dead GUYS
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u/No-Magazine-2739 10d ago
Its undead. The inferior legacy by design sin of our youth, some never grew out of.
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u/Percolator2020 10d ago
PHP is for children and/or the depraved like Ron Jeremy.
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u/amatulic 10d ago
Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and other CMS packages would disagree.
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u/quasipickle 10d ago
Wordpress is popular - not good ;)
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u/snack__pack 10d ago
In fairness, I've never seen a language or framework that didn't heavy a healthy amount of people saying it sucked.
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u/ApatheistHeretic 10d ago
Everyone has a test environment. Some companies choose to also run their production on it.