Top all-time · #734
stitcher.io
Personal blog · stitcher.ioprogrammingweb
stitcher.io is a personal blog at stitcher.io about programming and web. Since 2017, 88 different Hacker News readers have linked it 187 times, most often “PHP's Evolution from 5.6 to 8.2”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 34 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link it for its posts on new PHP features (named arguments, enums, JIT, preloading, each PHP 8.x release) and its yearly 'PHP in 20xx' posts.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Suggested as a way to get a grasp of the PHP language changes since 8.0.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 34 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about modern PHP, the web, and programming in general. Follow my newsletter and YouTube channel as well.
Most-linked posts?
- PHP's Evolution from 5.6 to 8.27 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-07-30
- New in PHP 86 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-02-03
- New in PHP 7.45 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-01-10
- Don't write your own framework4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-06-13
- Which colour scheme is better?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-09-27
- PHP in 20203 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-01-21
- Preloading in PHP 7.43 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-07-04
- Whats New in PHP 8.23 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-22
- A Programmer's Cognitive Load3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-05-29
- Don't Be Clever3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-06-03
What Hacker News says?
I've made a Dutch podcast about my first five years being a professional programmer at a web agency: clients were blatantly lied to, colleagues were pressured into doing all kinds of unethical stuff, I considered quitting programming altogether after a couple of years — it was a wild ride I made it into a podcast because I wanted to practice my editing skills, but it was also kind of therapeutic being able to talk a…
Comment linking /de-job
on “Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?”Submitted PHP in 2019 as a story · 908 points
HN discussionFinally, after all these years, Named Arguments! https://stitcher.io/blog/php-8-named-arguments
Comment linking /blog/php-8-named-arguments
on “PHP 8”Submitted New in PHP 8 as a story · 326 points
HN discussionYou'll be able to use it in PHP 8.5 :-) https://stitcher.io/blog/pipe-operator-in-php-85
Comment linking /blog/pipe-operator-in-php-85
on “Left to Right Programming”Submitted PHP 8: Before and After as a story · 314 points
HN discussion- xd · 2020-05-05
I've been using PHP professionally since ~1999. I remember ripping the Perl fanboys in the early 2000's until the foundations of PHP started to crumble with what are issues that stick in peoples minds today; so I do wonder if we brought it on ourselves sometimes. But PHP moved on carefully to preserve backwards compatibility. I still have a SaaS first developed back in 2005 on the latest version of PHP that's happil…
Comment linking /blog/php-in-2020
on “A look at modern PHP” Submitted PHP in 2022 as a story · 302 points
HN discussionSee Preloading which landed in PHP 7.4 https://stitcher.io/blog/preloading-in-php-74
Comment linking /blog/preloading-in-php-74
on “Show HN: FrankenPHP, an app server for PHP written in Go”Submitted PHP in 2020 as a story · 286 points
HN discussion> There's a reason it took a decade to get projects onto python 3, but PHP can swiftly move the entire ecosystem from v5 to v7 in a year. PHP did well with v5 to v7. It took more than a year but your point is well made. The PHP v7 to v8 move is not as easy [1, 2, 3]. Not having Python 2 to 3 fresh in everyone's minds is one reason; not having failed PHP v6 is another. The breakages that led to the downfall of PHP6 m…
Comment linking /blog/new-in-php-8
on “WTF Python: Exploring and understanding Python through surprising snippets”Submitted PHP in 2021 as a story · 279 points
HN discussionDon't forget, much of that effort has now trickled down into the PHP language itself. We've long had scalar types for function parameters and return values, but with 7.4 and 8.0 we've added union types[1], nullable types[2], and typed properties[3]. While not a part of the language yet, generics can be annotated with the linting tools PHPStan and Psalm[4], and native support for these annotations is coming to the ne…
Comment linking /blog/typed-properties-in-php-74
on “Things I Was Wrong About: Types”Submitted PHP 8.5 as a story · 244 points
HN discussionhttps://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8
Comment linking /blog/new-in-php-8
on “Ruby: We have decided to go forward to 3.0 this year”Submitted What's new in PHP 8? as a story · 214 points
HN discussionThe next PHP release will sport a JIT compiler [1]. I'd wager it will reach similar performance than pypy. [1] https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8
Comment linking /blog/new-in-php-8
on “Python performance: it’s not just the interpreter”Submitted Typed Properties in PHP 7.4 as a story · 205 points
HN discussionI work on multiple projects from PHP 5.2 to PHP 8.3 and everything in between. Statistics based on packagist(composer) https://stitcher.io/blog/php-version-stats-january-2024 Statistics based on web servers in the wild https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/pl-php
Comment linking /blog/php-version-stats-january-2024
on “Upcoming Hardening in PHP”Submitted Named arguments are coming in PHP 8 as a story · 178 points
HN discussionHe wrote some decent articles before, and he might write some good ones in the future, but this right here, this ain't it. Unlike other "x in 2022" articles (for example https://www.ncameron.org/blog/rust-in-2022-2/ ), this one doesn't actually give any insight into the future of the language. Not only that, but there is no original content in it. He's simply repeating what he's been writing about for the past year.…
Comment linking /blog/php-in-2021
on “PHP in 2022”Submitted Whats New in PHP 8.2 as a story · 148 points
HN discussionMaybe the article means that PHP interprets the OPCodes as opposed to java that uses a JIT compiler that produces machine code for part of the bytecodes. Anyway JIT is coming with PHP8 : https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8
Comment linking /blog/new-in-php-8
on “We chose Java for our high-frequency trading application”Submitted What's New in PHP 8.1 as a story · 133 points
HN discussionUpdated in January but not really up to date. It doesn't mention union types, the nullsafe operator, matching expressions and a lot of other features you can find here: https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8 Maybe not everything is "the right way" but at least the nullsafe operator is, I think.
Comment linking /blog/new-in-php-8
on “PHP – The Right Way”Submitted Combining event sourcing and stateful systems as a story · 130 points
HN discussionIt's nice to see PHP adding useful things like enums and async (green threads). My foray into Web development started with Perl, but quickly segued into PHP with how much simpler it felt. The ability to hop into vim on your server (or use CPanel back in the day) and edit your site live was exciting back then – but now that very thought makes me shudder with what could go wrong, haha. While I've moved onto JVM langua…
Comment linking /blog/php-in-2021
on “PHP in 2021”Submitted Opinion-Driven Design as a story · 113 points
HN discussionCounterpoint (from the same website): https://stitcher.io/blog/evolution-of-a-php-object PHP 8.2 has this: ``` readonly class BlogData { public function __construct( public string $title, public State $state, public ?DateTimeImmutable $publishedAt = null, ) {} } ``` Whereas in php 5.6, to accomplish the same you need all this: ``` class BlogData { /* @var string / private $title; /** @var State */ private $state; /*…
Comment linking /blog/evolution-of-a-php-object
on “PHP 8.5”Submitted PHP in 2024 as a story · 105 points
HN discussion
