Every time I work in another language I miss PHP’s arrays.

conceptme · 2026-05-23T16:27:44 1779553664

Basically every other language has the same functionality (or better) as a hashmap.

ceejayoz · 2026-05-23T16:35:32 1779554132

I’m well aware of them. I’m not sure I agree with “better”.

xp84 · 2026-05-23T17:23:15 1779556995

I’m very curious to hear your take on this. I started out on PHP for about 4-5 years then moved on to Ruby and JS. I never once had any fond thoughts for PHP’s split-personality array thing. So I’m very curious what it is that other people appreciate about it.

ceejayoz · 2026-05-23T17:34:13 1779557653

Having to switch implementations and potentially functionality because, say, the order of the collection matters now is rather annoying, IMO.

rokkamokka · 2026-05-23T16:00:41 1779552041

They are an incredibly versatile tool for sure. Even more so wrapped in a Laravel Collection

lazka · 2026-05-23T17:17:14 1779556634

That array keys are auto-coerced to integers has bit me multiple times.

spiderfarmer · 2026-05-23T16:10:47 1779552647

Absolutely. If you don’t know PHP arrays aren’t actually arrays, the other languages feel inferior.

bakugo · 2026-05-23T16:14:49 1779552889

For me, it's the exact opposite. Every time I work with PHP, I wish I could have TypeScript's properly typed arrays and dictionaries instead of the janky untyped 2-in-1 mess it actually has.