Why PHP and JavaScript Are Great (2025)

By Xah Lee. Date: .

An Eulogy to Pretty Home Page

PHP and JavaScript Brought About Functional Programing to the Coding Industry

PHP and JavaScript, are most responsible for spreading functional programing to the non-professional coders, during the decade 2000 to 2010.

PHP, because it has nothing but simple functions, out of pratical simple-mindedness. Every computation you do is just call a function. Human understanding became supreme priority by chance.

no object, no method, no inheritance, no instance, no enumeration, no iterators, no namespace, no lambda, no predicate, no REPL, no list comprehension, no monad, no closure, no currying, no tail recursion, no homoiconicity, no macro, no polyfill. No academic or industrial mumble jumble spread by priests.

JavaScript, spread functional programing during y2k decade is due to Douglas Crockford, the creator of JSON, and his book JavaScript the Good Parts. He brought out the scheme lisp nature in JavaScript to the web monkeys.