PHP and the politics surrounding the dollar sign

Many centuries ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth and 4G LTE technology was unheard of, politics was thankfully limited to economic policies at best and perhaps religious debates at worst.

But today, it has permeated each and every sphere of your life. Whether its the color or design of the clothes you wear or the kind of grammar and verbal communication you indulge in, each act of yours is subject to political scrutiny and you could be pronounced a left or right winger just on the basis of that.

The dollar sign in PHP language is also increasingly being subject to that scrutiny these days. Its a very charged symbol as it represents money or financial wealth, but its impression could vary from programmer to Programmer. Do you remember what was your initial reaction when you saw a piece of code with tokens starting with $ symbol?

$cnt = 0;

for($i=0;$i<10;$i++) {

  $cnt++;

}

echo $cnt;

For most dudes, dollar is a sign of prosperity. After all, we all write code to earn money and be prosperous in life (coding for just passion could be the case for a few, especially students, but realistically most get over that soon!).

However, a socialist or communist will see the same symbol in a totally different light. For them, dollar is a sign of the capitalist bourgeoisie, someone who exploits the labor and creates $$$ out of that exploitation.

Such a person may develop a profound dislike towards PHP language and will try and switch to some other language like python or Java. Their belief system simply may not allow it. It may have allowed them in say 1997 but not today. Today, we live in a very charged political atmosphere where every little thing is tied to your political ideology and positioning.

Even if a person may not care enough about the symbology and its connection to one's political beliefs, the constant need to conform to the norm will force them into it.

Its pretty well known in the industry that PHP isn't taught in most of the university or college IT courses. Its also well known that most of the academic institutions have a clear leftist inclination politically. Could their choice of keeping PHP out of their curriculum be linked to the existence of dollar symbol? Appears quite far fetched right? Just some food for thought!