I think his point is that real top-tier developers are going to despite working with such a grotty language as PHP, so it hurts their hiring process that way. Whereas if they worked in a superior language (an ML, Haskell, a LISP...) they'd attract talent. Who wants to deal with a language such such inane design decisions all day?
I'd imagine people signing up to work at FB do so despite the fact they use PHP, not because of it.
It's not like people who work at Facebook have to use PHP anyway - there are quite a few who work in "superior" languages, although most just use C++, Java, and Python.
In my experience, the top-tier developers enjoy challenges and solving problems, and languages are just tools they use to defeat those challenges and solve those problems. Sometimes it's a language they really enjoy using. Sometimes it's a situation where that language isn't a suitable one.
I just don't understand the hate. Like any language it has some syntactic quirks and inconsistencies. There's no way to objectively say that one language is superior to another, because there are so many metrics that contribute to superiority and every person in the world is going to weight those various metrics slightly differently.
I imagine it's neither "despite" nor "because" of PHP use; any top-tier developer is going to use the tools available to him/her, rather than pick an employer in order to use a specific set of tools. Lower-quality developers may do so, but that's probably because they're less likely to know the right tool for the job (eg someone may hate functional programming and avoid jobs that use it, but that's because they don't know when FP is the ideal way to solve the problem)
You can't objectively say that one language is better than another, but you can't deny that a language such as Haskell has a level of consistency and mathematical rigour that PHP will now never attain. Top developers who Facebook target (normally top CS students from top colleges and PhD programs) strive to be consistent and mathematically rigorous themselves, and poor design and math annoy them.
Totally valid point. One of my housemates loves Haskell for very much the same reasons, and all other things being equal I'd prefer that as well (who wouldn't?).
But of course, anyone who's worked on production systems knows that all the mathematical ideals in the world doesn't stop bugfixes from becoming a giant hairy mess. It's more your culture, skill, and process that allow or prevent that from getting refactored into a better solution and how long that takes. Any language can be a part of a clean or messy codebase, although some tend to skew towards one side or another - but I'd wager that's as much a factor of barrier to entry as anything else.
Facebook lives in a SOA. PHP is probably the best choice for dispatching services written in more "advanced" language. The beauty of SOA is that you can use the right tool for the right job.
>I think his point is that real top-tier developers are going to despite working with such a grotty language as PHP
Actual top-tier developers don't fret much about it. Complaining about some language's warts is mostly for bike-shedding and blogging types. PG, that writes about blub languages and who-cool-is-list, used Perl in ViaWeb too (which is as inelegant a mess as PHP is, but at the time was good for web work).
Top tier developers get shit done in whatever language. And most of them rarely ever comment or blog.
I'd imagine people signing up to work at FB do so despite the fact they use PHP, not because of it.