I have administered WIMP (Windows IIS MySQL PHP), LAMP (Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP), FAPP (FreeBSD Apache PostgreSQL PHP) and similar "stacks" the last P is the biggest p.o.s. ;(

I also had the honor of working, for a time, with raindrift, who fabricated the double clawed PHP hammer (e.g. featured here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tychay/7159100286 also referenced here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/) raindrift, had worked at our mutual employer? Longer than I had, and I think continued to work there, after I had been terminated. Which is to say: raindrift knew the depths of the horrors of that PHP codebase more than most; and it was: awful.

Those attempting to continue to mitigate its shortcomings, as you write are clearly destined for some sort of software sainthood.

Thankfully, no one is paying me to lose more of my marbles in such realms right now!

(Meanwhile, I continue to volunteer my skills to downstream some LibreSSL updates to MacPorts for the CA certificates kerfuffle, because apparently when it rains, it pours.)

@cwebber I appreciate the work that has been done and is being done to maintain the PHP codebase, because I realise that, in the short to middle term, we need to keep a lot of systems running that are dependent on it.

I don't appreciate the people going round telling me I can't criticise PHP security because PHP just had a security problem. Thankfully there haven't been too many people doing that, but they're loud.

@cwebber
The scary thing about this is with unregulated AI, others may find such vulnerabilities in systems and not bring them to the right people's attention. AI really is a ticking time-bomb.

@cwebber I do not work in PHP or particularly enjoy large projects written in it, but I did go through my webserver to see which parts I needed to remove or rewrite if I wanted to remove the service. Looking at experiments or fun pages I wrote 15 years ago or more did hammer home the point that despite its warts – and it is probably better now than it has ever been – it was already at the time a tremendously efficient way of tinkering with web pages going only one half-step above HTML, with instant feedback loop and direct output.

@cwebber i didn't choose php, and i spent a lot of time resenting it when i first fell into a situation writing it. but stuff built on it has kept a roof over my head for almost 20 years now, one way or another, and at least some of that stuff has seemed like a net good.

(and if software & networks as a whole now strike me as probably a net negative, well, that has remarkably little to do with language particulars.)

You can not personally enjoy a thing and not choose it and yet still be grateful for the tough work someone is doing and recognize it as important to the world in the way the world is configured