The author of the article wrote on his site that he has twenty years experience. That seems like enough time to disconnect one's identity and self-worth from PHP.
The large group of programmers who use PHP don't qualify as a "community" to me. Programmers can share and learn from each other, and criticize tools and express opinions, and that has some value, but it falls short of what I would call a community. It seems fake in the same sense that the BMW motorcycle rider rallies I used to attend seem fake -- all we had in common was owning a brand of motorcycle. "Contrived" maybe describes the hollowness better than "fake."
I’m the author actually :) I certainly don’t identify as a PHP developer, but it’s the one language I use relatively often that gets an intense amount of condescending hate in the US.
I also was referring to users of a language more so than communities, although I am certainly part of php channels and entire php slacks, just as I am part of devops slacks or common lisp and rust and react discords. These certainly feel like communities.
The situations I am referring to more broadly is say, the inevitable onslaught of “PHP is hot garbage” comments on anything mentioning PHP. How does that make people write PHP for a living feel? What’s the point? The only thing I can do as a user is to ignore the troll and feel slightly worse for my day. I wager that people writing those comments don’t lead the most fulfilled lives either.
Please, criticize the latest language RFCs and the performance of the interpreter and the use of globals, criticize the proliferation of copy-paste wordpress plugins, how you dislike a certain CSS style. Show how clojure tackles things differently and what there is to be gained. That is very different, it shows respect to other people, and it opens up a dialogue where both sides can gain something.
If anything, I would say that writing such comments is the author defining their identity as “not a PHP user”, since that is about the entire information contained in such a statement.
> The situations I am referring to more broadly is say, the inevitable onslaught of “PHP is hot garbage” comments on anything mentioning PHP. How does that make people write PHP for a living feel?
I use PHP and have for 20 years. Comments like that don't make me feel anything. Either the person making the comment has something useful to say or they don't. Calling a successful language and its ecosystem "garbage" (which I have seen plenty of times) communicates ignorance or maybe insecurity, but it doesn't affect me emotionally. I don't feel any worse about myself knowing that trolls and ignorant people frequent online forums.
If someone wants to define their identity in terms of a programming language they love, or hate, they can of course go ahead and do that. I don't understand why someone would choose such a trivial thing to hang their identity on so I'm not going to let them get under my skin.
That would indeed be the ideal, but I know enough people for whom statements like these have a real impact, me included. As you pointed out, they are ignorant and insecure, and IMO stifle actual technical discourse. Their only purpose is for their author to somehow feel better at the expense of other people.
Not everybody has the thick skin and confidence they belong in tech that you have, and it for sure is always nicer to have a constructive exchange than having to face adversity. I want people to be like the person that kindly pointed out SICP to me rather than someone blasting me for using global variables. The first was much more effective.
You can't control other people, you can only control how you react to them, or maybe how much interaction you have with them. You can call it a thick skin, but it comes down to evaluating criticism from other people and deciding if it means anything to you or not. Do you have any reason to take their opinion seriously? Do they direct their comments at you, personally, or just throw out stuff like "PHP sucks" to stir the pot?
Of course we would live in a nicer world if no one made ignorant or mean comments but we don't live in that world so we have to adapt and decide how we respond to other people.
The large group of programmers who use PHP don't qualify as a "community" to me. Programmers can share and learn from each other, and criticize tools and express opinions, and that has some value, but it falls short of what I would call a community. It seems fake in the same sense that the BMW motorcycle rider rallies I used to attend seem fake -- all we had in common was owning a brand of motorcycle. "Contrived" maybe describes the hollowness better than "fake."