It runs half the Internet quite well, but if you went by the posting on HN, you'd think it was Windows Vista.
I've probably read every article critical of PHP that has hit the front page of HN in the last few years, and the one thing they all have in common is the vague refrain that PHP is a broken language. And yet the gap between tangible proof of that being the case in real world use and the gossip of it supposedly being true, couldn't be wider.
No, what's "wrong" with PHP is that other things that are better have come along since. That's not a fault of PHP, that's the nature of language evolution.
> It runs half the Internet quite well
COBOL runs tons of mission critical business services quite well. It doesn't mean that nobody's improved on COBOL or that you should use it for a new project today.
The problem is, no, nothing else has. Node.js is awesome and fun, but far harder to set up for basic webpage serving. Python is awesome, but also has a huge learning curve to learn how to serve basic webpages with. And... I can't think of anything else. Perl? ASP? Java is a huge pain to set up and maintain.
What other language out there is better than PHP for getting simple webpages up and running quickly? I wish there were one, but when you consider practical aspects instead of just theoretical ones, there really isn't. Sadly.
better = in a better "programming language design" sense only
Hey now, we're all human. Even engineers. As soon as something becomes popular, it is no longer cool. Cool is the next popular. Cool is being different. That's just how things work.
Apache is slooooow (NGINX is cool!). MySQL is retarded (Postgres is cool!). PHP sucks (Python is cool!). Red Hat is lame (Ubuntu is cool!).
See a trend? The tech that sucks is the most popular and well established. The tech that's cool isn't popular. It has nothing to do with any objective qualities of platforms. It's all about being a part of the cool croud!
Remind you of high school much?
Now, if this is just a hobby, who gives a shit? Roll with the cool kids. If you're starting a business, be aware that the future welfare of your family is relying on your decisions. Think real hard about that.
Apache is a webserver from 1995. It uses a process (sometimes a thread) per request, a architectural decision which made it nearly fundamentally incapable of solving the C10K problem. Only back in January was the Event MPM added (and it's still experimental), allowing you to have many Keep-Alive connections open at once without degrading performance. Nginx was started in 2004, and is event-based allowing for much higher concurrency. (Yes, I'm hand waving.)
PHP is among the worst languages most sane programmers have ever used. The referenced article, "A Fractal of Bad Design" is a pretty good starting point if you want more details on why it sucks. PHP stands for letting amateurs code effectively. Python is designed with an emphasis on readability, and manages to have a rational type system and a fairly regular standard library.
Apache vs Nginx is about learning from the mistakes of your ancestors. Apache was designed with the 90s in mind, and our technology has moved on to the point where the decisions made in its architecture simply don't work anymore.
PHP vs Python is about being a rational, non-masochistic, human being.
To say what is cool "has nothing to do with any objective qualities of the [technologies involved]" is to know nothing about programming as a business.
The problem is, it often does take into account objective qualities.
The downsides of popular platforms are often ignored because they carry with them all the advantages of popularity: good support, a well-established community, a wealth of experienced people you can hire or draw upon.
These are not "objective qualities" of the technology, but real side-effects of popularity. In fact, you could say it's a technology's popularity that fools you into ignoring many of the objective qualities of the platform.
I think part of tech hipsterism (which, let's face it, is what you're talking about) is a rejection of this groupthink, and a return to true technological thinking. It's the ability to say "we don't care what's popular, we're just going to look at what works again and see where we end up." I think this very idea is considered 'cool' in the tech world because we tend to like people who think logically about their problems and don't just blindly follow what people have already done. We like people who look at lesser-used technologies (which all of the "cool" tech you listed above actually are) just on their technical merits alone. This is, perhaps, one reason they're considered cool; because it takes actual thought to break away from simply using what everyone else has used for years.
So I think you have noticed a definite trend, but I don't believe it's as purely social as you imply.
That said, "be aware that the future welfare of your family is relying on your decisions" is an argument that's used in so much Enterprise software that it's almost scary. Often the most popular, most entrenched, least risky, biggest company with the largest pockets wins because the CTO can't be blamed for fucking up that decision. It's an incredible driver of technological stagnation in the Enterprise world. It is great to think through your decisions to their far-reaching impact, but be thankful that all of technology is not driven by that kind of strictness, or we'd never use anything new.
Just because a technology is "cool" doesn't mean that you're acting like a high schooler for using it. Nor does using non-"cool" technology make you an adult.
Truer words have never been spoken. When you think about it that way, these types of arguments about why language X rocks/sucks become trivial and unimportant.
I like to geek out over languages and technologies as much as the next guy, but there needs to come a time when you put your foot down and make a decision based on more important reasons than personal preference/feelings towards a language.
Cool-ness biases are perhaps not so easy to distinguish from justified ones.
Just because something is shitty to use doesn't mean you can't do productive work in it. We're all just poking Turing machines here. Let's not even talk about the enormous weight of sunk cost fallacies.
Once you have something that grows faster than education grows, you’re always going to get a pop culture
-Alan Kay
Click on a link?
I promise, at some point, PHP is involved.
The message you should get from this post is that familiarity with one's tools easily trumps any aesthetic flaws (consistency in parameter ordering, naming conventions, etc are really nothing more than aesthetic flaws and not "deep" [1] as the author suggests. After all, human language is inconsistent. After awhile you just get used to it and don't think about it anymore. Programming languages are no different.
I agree with Marco that it will take "years to master" whatever he chooses next. I always scratch my head at these "I learnt Python in a day" claims you often see around here. No, you didn't learn Python in a day. You learnt the syntax for a for loop in a day. Idiomatic Python takes much longer.
I don't agree that choice is the reason people don't use Linux on the desktop. Desktop Linux is the reason people don't use Linux on the desktop. I'm sorry but it's truly awful and probably won't ever get better. In the absence of product direction you have us geeks making everything configurable because, you never know, you may want to write your own window manager (and knowing us geeks, no two will agree on what's right) so you have no consistency, no grand UI/UX design and it's just terrible.
I use Linux/Ubuntu at work basically because I have to. There are advantages on having your dev environment mirror your production environment and Linux (over OSX) does actually have a package system (it's a messy hack on OSX) but I certainly don't like it.
The only computers I use that I truly enjoy using are my iPad and my Macbook Air.
Fear of the wrong choice isn't I believe what motivates most people. Fear of looking like an idiot? Sure. But that's different and will probably be the case with anything new.
People don't tend to weight up two or more options, decide which is best and go with it. They tend to use the first thing they come across until its flaws (perceived or actual) outweigh the "cost" of transition and appearing like an idiot for awhile.
[1]: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Linux can be really, really awesome, if you're prepared to spend time making your work environment great.
Lastly, all this time is not wasted, you end up learning so much stuff that you can apply to every where else - because of my linux knowledge I often find myself helping out my friends who use OSX but don't understand things like headers and libraries.
Granted, I use Gnome Shell for my desktop of choice, and find that much closer to my definition of "beauty", while KDE4 is busy chasing some idea of beauty that more resembles a mish-mash of Win7 style glass that spends more time distracting my eyes than allowing me to work, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I think OSX has come closest to the mark of "beauty" from a desktop environment, but it's such a terrible window manager compared to X11 that I can't stand using it except when I have no other good choice. Even then the only thing keeping me from insanity is a set of third party window managing tools that still only get me about 50% of the way to where I want to be.
This is why I dropped Linux/BSD on the desktop over a decade ago, and switched to something I don't have to think about, and instead I can simply use to get my actual job done.
Had to do it. I like linux a lot, but It doesn't make the quote false.
OSX is beautiful, it's smooth, and it can run a lot of my games too. But, just like Windows, it lacks functionality. Setting up a MAMP server with my required PHP extensions for work was an absolute nightmare even with Homebrew. Even when working with my Ruby projects I was struggling, when some gems required certain libraries to be installed, it was a nightmare to install them too.
Not to mention installing software and keeping it up to date was a pain too. Once you become used to relying on robust package managers it's very difficult to turn back.
Linux is designed to be powerful and functional foremost, and that's what makes it fantastic.
Same on any nix system I use : sandboxing is the way.
- Want to use hg-git for mercurial, dont, homebrew that !! Build it in your ~/bin/ or in your $HOME sandbox, give all PATHS in your $HOME precedence, and rejoice.
- need mysql, postgre,... Don't homebrew that !! Either build it, or use the Macos dedicated installer with propper service installation, on dedicated port.
- etc,...
All in all, Homebrew, Fink and Macports are great for one thing : showing you how to patch the default tgz, saving the user hours of work for his custom, sandboxed install of any software (which as itself has been a life saver, for myself, on many an occasion).
Macos still is, as far as i'm concerned the best laptop platform for someone who has to use licenced software (external job/office constraint) but also needs a nix (bsd) environment. Otherwise, what can't you do with the default Ubuntu 12 LTS (i guess you agree) ? Macos, sure, is's on its way to become worthless as The Lion slowly sandboxes the user out of the OS, but tat's another story.
EDIT : and let it be said that OF COURSE, I agree with you that aptitude, yum and the like have no decent equivalent on the Apple/Microsoft closed platforms.
I found running a VM on my mac to be the best of both worlds. Plus you can backup and distribute your VM so the entire team develops on the same setup.
From the impression I get of Marco whilst listening to his Build and Analyze podcast, is that he does have a lot to say about the technical aspects of his work. However when he does, it is often written/spoken out as a response to a question. The constant talk about PHP in recent weeks has probably triggered something he's been thinking about for years.
I wonder if you've tried homebrew? It's really really good, esp compared to the horrors of MacPorts.
someone who has mastered in PHP will no doubt be a lot more proficient in developing apps than a junior/intermediate python or ruby developer. same can be said for reverse.
it really all comes down to knowledge and experience.
Have you tried Unity or G-S lately? I'm not as willing to argue G-S has as clear a direction as Unity, but they both ship with a very limited amount of configurability and they're both insanely easy to start using even without background knowledge.
Anecdote: I've used Ubuntu for a long time, but due to some nonfree applications dependence on mac/win I've gotten myself a apple laptop. It's mostly the same, I use a browser, terminal, vim and a thousand silly apps but they are about the same amount of config-time.
The biggest difference is that Ubuntu ships with APT and a lot of tools that are good for a hacker, but it's not to hard to get equivalents on osx.
Summary: Mac OS and Ubuntu are more on par in ease to use than I could have believed before I tried.
I'm very surprised that Google doesn't provide some kind of consistent dev VM environment that is similar to prod that developers can SSH into.
If I want to write a hello world application in PHP, it's neither as long as <?php print("hello world");?> nor as short as <?="hello world"?>
Rather it's simply: hello world. Just type in those 11 characters in a text file and save it as hello.php. Now load it on your browser [or run it from command line] and it will print hello world. I don't think it can get any more simpler than that in other languages. PHP was developed from the ground up as a templateting language for serving HTML pages. These other languages are more of a general type.
Therefore the replacement for PHP should come through a new language targeted as a replacement for PHP as Jeff said. Otherwise there always be extra web/template stacks for the developers to take care of. And that will be the first hurdle to learn and overcome for novice developers looking for switching to something easier.
After 15 years of one of the biggest bursts of innovation the open source world has ever seen, and with such diversity in frameworks that the mind boggles, nobody has returned to this model successfully. I've got MVC-inspired designs coming out my ears, continuation-based designs, frameworks just beginning to incorporate web sockets deeply (instead of as an afterthought), GWT, ASP.net, and other attempts at building a fundamentally different model and compiling it into another, and everything under the sun... but no return to the page-is-program model.
I don't think it's the key to PHP's success, because even in the competitive-yet-very-fertile soil of the web framework world, nobody else can make it work anymore. I think it's vestigial, and nothing else.
(Personally I think the key is simply that everybody has deployed it, and since there's basically no way to force every web hosting company to support Language X simultaneously, PHP isn't going away until the entire concept of web hosting goes away. Which isn't anytime soon.)
It's true that other languages have not wasted a lot of time trying to displace PHP as the language of choice for anonymous random dinosaur servers. That's because there's no money in fighting PHP on its home turf. The turf just isn't worth enough.
"Vestigial" is the wrong word. That's like describing a screwdriver as "vestigial" because the impact driver has been invented. Sure, impact drivers can accomplish many things that mere screwdrivers cannot, but that doesn't mean that screwdrivers aren't still useful, and numerous, and popular.
Ease of install is part of the same pattern. PHP has always been easy (with connections to a free database), and got easier with good package management systems. What's coldfusion like for ease of install, ease of install with database access?
ASP for Windows was huge. It was even easier to get started on than PHP because you just needed to install IIS from a EXE and you could reference access files. The only reason it's not still massive is that MS moved on.
This is solid advice for an engineer. And absolutely moronic for a businessman.
Choosing what platform to use is a business decision.
If you take too long to get it right, you will never get the chance to make a dime off of your work.
We are all working on limited time frames. It is far better to throw something together that works and rewrite later, when you're actually making money.
PHP is amazing at letting you write something fast and rewrite it into something more manageable later.
Unfortunately, nobody starts out well-educated and experienced. And many projects start out small and grow. If you want to make your platform a broad success, you need to have a good experience for noobs and quickies. PHP is an abomination as languages go, but it's massively successful because any idiot can quickly get something basic up.
$ echo 'hello world' | erb
hello world
$ echo 'hello world' | php
hello world
If you truly only need a single page template without any further abstraction, then why not use PHP? It seems all of the complaints about PHP stem from using it in big projects. It is hard to argue that it does a single page template very well for when that is all you need. Right tool for the job and all that.
Why not improve it? After the millions of man hours that have gone into the plethora of open source PHP based frameworks and tools (aka, what powers the internet) - wouldn't we as a community want to improve the foundations rather then scrap them entirely?
You know, like what happened with Javascript...
PHP has a lot of them. And they interact badly.
Wouldn't that also apply to jsp, cfm, gsp, jsf and asp?
It's built for smaller web apps, and rapid prototyping. The system of mapping endpoints to functions is incredibly intuitive -- if you've used Python before, learning Flask is incredibly easy.
The idea of Flask is to build a good foundation for all applications. Everything else is up to you or extensions.
http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/design/#what-flask-is-what-flask...
There's even an entire section in the docs about scaling your application up: http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/becomingbig/#becomingbig
What I meant was that it lends itself well to small apps because the lack of code/architectural overhead, as opposed to Django, where coding small apps often feels like only furnishing one room in a five-bedroom house.
With Flask, you just have to learn Python, as Flask is so mindfuckingly simple.
That being said, for a 'big' project I'd recommend Django over Flask, if for no other reason than googleability -- if you run into a particular error or question, Django's community (due to size) is probably going to be more helpful than Flask's.
I believe that Flask will move to Python 3 eventually, but at the moment I agree with the decision of Flask's creator (Armin Ronacher) to stick with Python 2.7. In the end, Python 2.7 is probably better for someone new to the language. There's more documentation, and it's still the default Python on most systems(although a few are starting to pre-bundle Python 3).
As far as python 3 support is concerned: this is a minor annoyance, but it will probably be rectified by the time python 3 is relevant in production environments.
But it's preaching to the choir. If you've never seen anything other than PHP, you won't understand two thirds of the list or why they're problems. (<- Not looking down on PHP coders there, rather I'm thinking back to when I started out on PHP and am speculating on how I would have received the document.)
How do we communicate effectively what makes other languages better to someone with no reference frame other than PHP itself?
So to encourage developers to start with something other than PHP you'll need to lower the barrier to entry to modifying existing software, and also make something as popular and widely useful as WordPress and MediaWiki.
This is going to take a while.
A big hurdle is ops dev. All hosting services support PHP out of the box.
Now I'm faced with the "distro choice". Which server do I use (lighthttpd / nginx / tornado)? Which framework (django / flask / web2py / cherrypy / pylons / pyramid)?
Like the original author, I've had a VPS sitting unused for 2 months paralyzed by choices. I eventually decided on nginx / flask, but haven't had the time to set it up. Maybe I should have just used Heroku. shrugs
Two thirds of that list are actually incorrect.
But I programmed in Java, C++, C, VB, and so on before I started coding in PHP many years ago. So many years ago, in fact, that PHP was easily the best choice.
The problem with lists like that is they obscure the truth -- and that is -- that solving a programming problem in modern PHP isn't really that different from solving it in Python and Ruby. It's just not that much of a leap.
Got a link to a good rebuttal?
The idea that disagreement is because person disagreeing is not educated enough and only if he could learn The Next Best Thing he'd immediately become a fanboy like you are - is deeply fallacious. I've seen your Next Big Thing. It's nice. So are other hundred Big Things. They are all nice, and all have its place. And no, I'm still not a fanboy, sorry. I still think Python is a nice language for its uses, and PHP is a nice language for its uses. Banality, but somehow so many people can't grasp how can it be. Please believe me, it can.
You're trying to convince yourself that you made the right choice, the right investment.
That's sad.
Have confidence in yourself. You made the right choice for yourself and let others choose for themselves.
There is no universal proper language or platform to use.
PHP works and it works extremely well for many companies. Its commercial success is not debatable.
Python on the other hand ... aside from Google, who's using it at a massive scale? Even Google has been shifting to Java for a long time.
See how that works?
Let's stick to the old parable. A proper tool for every job. If you're convinced that there is no proper application for PHP, then you're not even trying to be objective ... you're just trying to make yourself feel better about the choices you made.
> That's sad.
Err, huh? What's with the preachy tone and the presumptuos attitude there? No, I don't need to convince myself, nor am I looking for confirmation - I know that I'm happier coding in Python than I was coding in PHP, that I get more done in less time, that I've vastly increased the average reusability of code that I write, and that it blows up less in production.
> Have confidence in yourself. You made the right choice for yourself and let others choose for themselves.
That's not what this is about. It's about how I didn't make a conscious choice to use PHP back then - nor would I have if I had been in a position to make a choice. I believe the same is true for many others, so how do we get to a point where they have the facts to make a choice?
> Python on the other hand ... aside from Google, who's using it at a massive scale? Even Google has been shifting to Java for a long time.
Shrug. It's you who's playing up the PHP vs. Python angle here, really -- for me there's plenty of stuff out there that's better than PHP, not just Python.
> If you're convinced that there is no proper application for PHP, then you're not even trying to be objective ... you're just trying to make yourself feel better about the choices you made.
Actually I think there are circumstances where PHP is the right choice, though it's mostly a matter of market considerations, certainly not technical strength.
Interested in learning something that isn't PHP to code your web applications in? Ok. You have a ton of options and this is a very exciting time to be a web developer.
Do you want to lean towards stability and proven concepts and work within a full application structure? Look at Django and Rails.
Do you want to serve up responses from a simple script without a lot of extra pieces? Look at Sinatra and Flask.
Do you want to get in on the cutting edge and don't mind forging some of the path yourself? Look at Node.js and Meteor.
Got a high level decision made? Sweet. Now compare the primary languages between your choices (forget the framework for now). After a few minutes looking at each, which reads better to you? Feel free to go on gut instinct here: there are no wrong choices.
You've now made a choice for your next learning target. Now: don't spend years. Don't worry about knowing everything about the framework and the language. Google for "X tutorial" and follow the first link that looks reasonable and current. Do that tutorial. Now you have some bearings within the framework and have some idea of how it thinks.
Now. Pick something you want to build (a todo list is popular now, it used to be a blog or a wiki). Build it. You will make mistakes. You will be confused. Google for answers (if you're in Node.js or Meteor you will have trouble here) or hack until you get something working.
Throw what you built up on github and ask others to check it out. Build something else. Repeat.
If you are already a decent programmer with a good grasp of the web and how HTTP works: you will pick up any of these frameworks well enough to work in it in a month or so. In six months you'll be well advanced: especially if there are good books available for the framework/language you are working in.
Have fun!
Oh.
I hate PHP as much as anyone (of course), but that's what it does.
To deploy you just push to a free heroku instance and you are fine until you get big. Much, much easier than setting up your own Apache+PHP. And much, much cheaper than buying hosting.
The only advantage PHP has in terms of deployment is that there are more cheap, crappy shared hosts that support it.
That's the problem. I'm in the same boat as Marco with pretty much the same reasoning. I'm not interesting in learning something -- I'm interesting in starting and completing my next project as quickly, cheaply, and well designed as possible. I'm willing to accept that, all things being equal, a better design is possible in Python or Ruby. But for that to be true, I need to know Python or Ruby. I need to know the framework I'm working on.
I can certainly put the time into learning, the time into heading down the wrong path in both design and technology for a project (and that will happen), perhaps rewrite a few times. But with only so many hours in the day (less than I really need), it's not much of an option.
Software development is a Red Queen field [1]. If you don't take the time to keep up, you will eventually get left behind.
Edit: Perhaps I worded my question wrong. How do PHP programmers try and keep to DRY (ala layouts and view templates)?
EDIT: Disclaimer: I'm a PHP guy trying to make a break for it, and the question was both rethorical and tongue-in-cheek.
template = """<boilerplate html>%(greeting)s</boilerplate html>"""
parts = {'greeting': "Hello, World!"}
page = template % parts
The real answer is "it doesn't matter". Of course python people will try to convince you to use python, and ruby people will try to convince you to use ruby. But both groups will agree that either language is far better than PHP. And as someone who likes neither of those languages, I would agree with both of them, just pick one. There's no "wrong choice" to worry about.
A weekend project is the PERFECT time to learn a new language/framework. Sure the weekend may become 2-6 weekends, who cares?
If I am not mistaken, Twitter and Reddit have both changed very large parts of their codebase from one language to another, so I don't really know if I buy that argument either.
Finally, I think programming languages should work for the guy writing the program. I made a point of learning everything I could (and continue to do so) about every language I come across. So when I need to do something, I have 6-7 toolboxes at my disposal, as opposed to 1 or 2. I write in 5-6 different languages every day at my current job, and have become a very valuable employee because of this.
This is coming from someone who has only the most basic experience with PHP, take it with a grain of salt.
The time spent just researching whether it's a bug in my code or their code starts to eclipse the total project time if done in another language.
If you pick a solution and run into a tiny annoyance learn to work around it in some way. It is a tiny annoyance.
Best case scenario, learn why it's happening, how you can fix it, and (in a dreamland) submit a patch that fixes this for everyone else in the future.
Worst-case scenario just find a workaround.
As for your specific case, writing your own framework in lua doesn't make ruby a wrong choice. You could have written your own framework in ruby too. Or perl, or python, or even one of those dreaded compiled languages.
The multi-core reality means that the long-term languages will have a strong concurrency model. Clojure and Go are two languages with strong concurrency models that are building momentum and have potential to go mainstream.
But for your first foray out of PHP, I would pick a language that has a large, well-established community with mounds of documentation, books, and resources.
My path out of PHP would be:
1. Python
2. Clojure
3. Go
Then once you're comfortable with Python, I would venture into Clojure. It's different, but in a good way. And you get access to all of Java's libraries so it's practical now, even though it's relatively new.
And then look at Go. Go is building momentum fast, but right now it doesn't have the massive libraries that Python and Clojure have. However, in a few years, this will change.
It would be nice to have a language that lets you prototype quickly but also build the real deal efficiently. Actually, not having such a language should be embarrassing for the software industry.
Maybe Clojure fits the bill, difficult to say.
So if you're stuck in limbo trying to "make the right choice," concurrency is the feature that you should pay attention to because it will bring the dominant language in years to come, even if the CRUD devs don't use it directly.
And who knows what the basic Web app of the future will be, it may not be CRUD forever.
If your goal is to become independent and wealthy, perhaps not.
I would love to be able to not write PHP. But the language that replaces it has to be that easy to deploy.
Passenger (mod_rack/mod_rails) looks like an attempt to imitate that stack to some degree but so far the results are far from perfect.
[1] This does not include Dreamhost, Bluehost or any of the other oversold shared hosting (please, feel free to search G+ and see complaint after complaint about them, especially recently).
I guess I don't see any "real" sites being deployed in environments where only PHP is available. A random script that you want to let someone else use for a few minutes, sure, upload that to randomphphost.com, but a real life public webapp??
If you take the time to learn it, deploying C#, python, ruby apps can be insanely easy. And to be my usual self, deploying Golang apps are beyond insanely simple. (I cross compile from my Mac to my Linux 64bit target, upload and run `sudo ./server -host=:80` and I'm deployed).
A few more features get added in this way over the next few month and years and all of a sudden the sites popularity explodes. Now they have a whole bunch of stuff to deal with, and rewriting the entire site in some other language they know nothing about is not on the top of their priority list.
I've deployed C# apps; I did .NET exclusively for about 8 years. It's great! But telling Joe's Washer Warehouse that they have to pay for the .NET stack, and that they can't just find a random PHP guy to do any further development is kind of tough pill to swallow.
Yes, PHP sites are usually the lowest common denominator, but on the other hand there are lots of people that are only willing to pay for that. There's a reason the PHP market is as big as it is. Thankfully for those of us in PHP-land there are starting to be lots of quality frameworks like Drupal and Symfony so that it's not such a horrible experience as it used to be.
And the other part is really the market. You want a large CMS-driven website? PHP is where it's at. That's where the code and communities are. There's a reason that lots of very large websites use Drupal. Sure, if I was going to try and make some sort of big-backend web app that did a lot of services and whatever, I'd want to do .NET. But as a freelance web developer, those projects just aren't there. Like it or not, I'm in PHP land.
(And RoR used to be a total nightmare to deploy. That whole community needs to send a collective giant cardboard check to the mod_passenger guy.)
Just out of curiosity, why would someone believe this? The syntax of python and ruby are nearly identical, but ruby has more tools and support for web-based projects. For someone looking to develop for the web, ruby is pretty clearly a better choice. And this is not knocking python at all, I really enjoy them both and there are many other things python has more community support for - don't get me wrong.
To support what I'm saying about the syntax, check out this comparison: http://hyperpolyglot.org/scripting - they are super similar, if anything ruby is a tiiiny bit more elegant.
If you agree there is a difference, then for some set of people, those differences will be the determining factor.
Also, while fairly comparing the amount of "web stuff" that Ruby and Python have would be an effectively impossible task, the simple truth is that both ecosystems are abundantly full of stuff, to the point that which has "more" doesn't matter. You're not going to miss out on anything by going with Python, unless you drill down to a hyper-specific particular package you may need which only exists on one.
For someone looking to troll while looking smart and insightful, this comment is pretty clearly a better choice. Python has a ton of web tools and lots of companies build web services in Python. Ruby is simply another choice, not a better or worse one.
Just off the top of my head:
- Ruby was always designed as an OO language, whereas Python OO was bolted on later. Ruby's object system is almost a straight transplant from Smalltalk and is very powerful.
- Python lambdas can only be one liners. Ruby lambdas can be arbitrarily long. Guido doesn't really like FP - there's no tail recursion, either.
- Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities are a bit more powerful (haven't really looked at Python in this regard, so don't quote me).
- In fact, there are some pretty big syntax differences. Python requires brackets even for the print statement now, whereas Ruby lets you miss them out if it's unambiguous. Ruby has blocks. Python doesn't have "end\n end" sprinkled everywhere.
The main philosophical differences are that Ruby is more powerful and implicit, wheras Python is stricter and explicit. When I say "powerful", by the way, I don't necessarily mean "good", just that it exposes more functionality to the user. Although I like Ruby a lot, I accept that on large projects Ruby's power (like that of Lisp or C) can be dangerous. Python has a lot going for it.
You're right, they're still very similar in many ways. Maybe they're like Democrats or Republicans; up close, they're screamingly different, but from a distance they're almost alike.
- Whether or not Python was historically OO or not, everything in Python is now an object. Its love for protocols drives design like `str(foo)` (which calls `foo.__str__()`), not any particular deficiency in its object system
- Python's lambdas are indeed limited, but one can easily use `def` and just name the function. Functions are first class, after all
- Metaprogramming facilities are very similar in power. Neither language has macros.
- Python tends insist on not duplicating things (i.e. both indentation and braces/end) and on not being ambiguous. There is another reason Python can't omit braces for function calls: without braces, they are references to the function. As a consequence, Python doesn't need things like .call()
Overall, I haven't seen one language or the other to be more powerful.
PHP is good. I'm living proof of that. I'm a very successful developer and PHP does just about everything I ask of it. I also find it enjoyable (when you don't use crap frameworks or CMS' like Drupal). For those of you that do struggle with PHP, then what on God's green Earth makes you think you'll do any better with the next language? There comes a point when you've rifled through everything saying they are all junk that you gotta look in the mirror and ask yourself what's really the problem?
I severely doubt it's as easy as the latter. I'd like to see an article that explains in less than 140 chars how to deploy a simple app as Hello World to the web in Python without the use of a framework like Django or Flask.
Edit: In the amount of chars Twitter accepts, here's how to get Hello World going in PHP.
sudo apt-get install php5 && echo '<?php echo "hello world"; ?>' > /var/www/index.php
85 characters. I'm done. Now let's see this done in Python... Ruby... Any other popular language this quickly.
That's simply not true. I love Python (I'm using Flask for projects at this moment), but saying that setting up a python web service is as easy as php is disingenuous.
Like PHP, .PYP files would be templates with no limits on mixing presentation and logic. The filesystem hierarchy provides the default URL-routing.
But, you get the regularity/power/compactness of Python wherever you want it. (Perhaps, every line in a .PYP file beginning with '\' is meaningfully-indented Python.) If you ever want to hijack a part of the URL-space from the filesystem, there are routing utilities to do that.
Would such a glide-path from PHP to Python be a good thing? Or bad? ("The barbarians are at the gates!")
I don't think it's widely used, though, probably because the possibility of using PHP in this template-like way isn't actually a big advantage (serious PHP devs almost certainly don't use PHP that way); PHP's big advantage is that it's installed everywhere.
Hilarious suggestions contained throughout his post.
You know what does that even better? C.
Oh, that's too painful? You want tools that make development easier and less error-prone?
Exactly.
What? Really?
One thing I love about Ruby is how many methods suggest one another. For example, Enumerable collections, like arrays, have an `any?` method. It takes a test function and returns true if any of the items pass that test.
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5].any? {|i| i > 4 } # true
Ok, you just learned `any?`. Now, you can replace `any?` in the above with
1) `all?` - do all elements pass? 2) `one?` - does exactly one pass? 3) `none?` - do none pass?
If you can remember one of those, chances are you can remember others. And if not, `myarray.methods` will remind you.
That same array has a `max` method and a `min`, a `max_by` and a `min_by`. It has a `select` to get all matching items and a `reject` to get all non-matching items. Knowing one helps you remember another.[1]
The key is consistency. It speeds up the learning process and makes you refer to the documentation less often.
That's the advantage of choosing a good language. It reduces the very pain that the OP is worried about.
==========
[1] (But wait, there's more! Any class you create, if you define `each` and `include Enumerable`, gets all these methods for free!)
Alternatively, if all I knew was PHP, I would understand why someone would be scared of learning something new. I mean, look up and down this thread. Everyone thinks a one-liner hello world is the pinnacle of the ultimate web dev language. Because real web frameworks require an http handler, they assume it's more work or harder. To me, it seems that many in the "PHP is easier!" crowd are too scared or lazy to take the time to learn something else and realize that better separation of concerns and tooling actually allows for faster and safer development.
{%
name = request.get('name','world')
list = ['this','language','rocks']
%}
<h1>Hello {{ name.upper }}</h1>
<ul>
{% for item in list %}
<li>{{ item }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Create a mod_next and try it on any web server like apache, nginx, etc. It should work without any extra fiddling with config files or installing frameworks or template engines.
It should just work!
That's the kind of platform that would leave php behind once and for all.
Of course once you master it, you separate the code from the html and call it from the view like this:
hello.nxt
name = request.get('name','world')
list = ['this','language','rocks']
response.render('hello.html',name,list)
<h1>Hello {{ name.upper }}</h1>
<ul>
{% for item in list %}
<li>{{ item }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Why do I need to switch?
You've already gone through the pain of learning how to work around all of its warts, and you will lose a ton of productivity immediately after switching to a new language. This may seem trivial if you are just programming as a hobby (and fun, even, to learn something new) but if you are a professional programmer, the productivity loss can be a problem. If you are a freelancer billing at a good rate, can you charge the same thing to your new client knowing things will take you twice as long and be less optimal, with bugs happening in new surprising places?
Taking on a new language needs to happen for a better reason than "the language I'm an expert in is kind of ugly." Are there libraries that are only available in the new language? Is there a different server architecture that lets you write applications with several times the performance in certain important use cases? These are valid reasons. "Too many functions in the global namespace" is not, especially if you already have them all memorized.
a) You need to know it anyway.
b) Node.js is awesome and works the way web servers ought to work.
c) JavaScript, if you avoid the obvious warts, is a really nice language. Every other language I've learned either has as many warts as JavaScript or isn't practical.
Having picked JavaScript, it turns out to be amazingly powerful. Need to automate content production? Adobe's stuff is all scriptable via JavaScript. Want to write a 3d game? Unity uses a dialect of JavaScript.
So if I was operating in the capacity of a recruiter for a project/company/startup, I'd definitely pick a skilled RoR dev over a skilled PHP dev, because the frameworks and the language themselves are handicaps for the PHP dev. Even if PHP is faster for a very small project, as soon as you move into a decent sized project, the frameworks start paying handsome returns for using them.
Note: I don't particularly love RoR/Django. Substitute with your favorite framework. It's just to illustrate a point.
I mean, I install node, I install the node package, I start the server...
And then it just looks for an "index.node" file or something in a directory? URL's would map to node files? It would use some kind of templating syntax like <? ?> or whatever, but the point is, it would be as easy to use as PHP. (Each template could get the URL parameters, and read session variables, just like PHP.)
I've used Express, of course, but that's overkill for throwing together a little website. People love the PHP model of files. It's clearly not theoretically ideal, or particularly scalable, but it works and is easy.
Anything out there? Maybe I should throw it together myself...
But even if you do decide to use the synchronous functions everywhere, having all your function names end in Sync would just add unnecessary confusion.
So, while you idea certainly doesn't lack merit, it would make more sense for something other than node.
I guess that's why nobody's done it yet. :) Thanks!
But even Java is so much better than PHP. If you like it, go for it.
If somebody had profound disagreements with the way PHP was being developed, they would be much better off switching or contributing to another language then they would be trying to re-invent PHP.
I imagine authors do have very strong opinions on whether it is better to write a poem or a short story or a novel.
A huge part of node's appeal to me (and many others, I'm sure) was the fact that I already knew javascript. Making the switch couldn't have been easier.
I used to defend PHP; but now when I look at PHP code, even well-written code, it just makes me go "ugh".
This discussion seems to be missing a key factor: context.
I seriously dislike PHP and its inconsistent, unpredictable features and libraries. I avoid PHP whenever reasonable/possible. I also avoid talking to mean, verbose or dumb people whenever reasonable/possible. But sometimes I just gotta do it...
So I use PHP, Python, [Java|Coffee]script, Ruby, Django, Pyramid, Express, Wordpress, Joomla, or whatever else is the right tool for the context/job.
In the context of building a 100M request/month API server, I used Python + Django. I would never have used PHP and I consider it a serious mistake to build large scale systems in PHP. Of course, others would choose Ruby, Clojure, Java, Scala, etc and those are all reasonable answers. I happened to be able to get the thing up and running fastest and most effectively in Python + Django.
In the context of currently re-building a client site that needs social features, a small CMS, etc, we're using PHP and Wordpress. I would never have used Python + Django because the client would not know how to host it and whomever is called on to fix a template is going to have to set up a Python stack, learn git and SSH, log into a VPS, etc in order to tweak anything.
Blends are good, too. We recently worked with a client where the website and application were built in PHP/Wordpress, but their API was Python. The "application" was basically a handful of Wordpress templates that pulled API data. They got the nice little CMS interface of Wordpress which made the website admins happy, but the developers got to do the heavy lifting in Python. Their anti-PHP developers were quite happy with the arrangement.
On Marco's post:
If you can get PHP programmers to agree that they need to stop using it,
the first question that comes up is what to use instead, and they’re met
with a barrage of difficult choices and
wildly different opinions and recommendations.
I think the tension for PHP developers is in understanding on a personal-level how and when to make the transition to newer languages. Unfortunately, many seem to ignore the possibility that a transition is underway.
Everyone should be skeptical of claims that include the word "everyone". Here's some history of ice cutters who did adapt; their business established in 1848 is still operating today:
-Bjarne Stroustrup
I know it's difficult to compare or find an observer who could adequately judge between the two, but I wonder if Ruby made Jekyll easier to write and maintain? Of course, there's not any easy way to make that judgment without knowing how much effort Marco put into Second Crack versus what was put into Jekyll.
So when I start something that has a deadline in 24 hours or just a few days, I can either fall back to PHP to get something going fast or spend most of my time just learning a new language. So, I have been typically going with PHP…
I've found that the important thing is to take the time to set yourself up with the minimum environment that can get something, anything going in a different language: that means whatever is needed to print something on a page and get some logic working with GET and POST parameters. Because the nice thing with PHP is that it's so easy to write a single file that displays text on a page, or that responds to POST and GET parameters with some logic behind it. If I started with Ruby for example, I wouldn't know how to do this basic thing. (granted, with Rails and Heroku, this is easy)
My plan is to make Python my generalist programming language and I started to look at Flask (http://flask.pocoo.org/) for that reason: it's a mini-framework that doesn't take long to learn how to do these simple things. I can then play with it for simple things.
*though it can make things easier since I can just work on whatever I want in whatever language I want :)
Sure, there's a learning curve to any new language, and I would love to learn a "better" language, but, if you can't explain to a novice why a certain language is better, the novice is going to go for the smallest learning curve and the language with the best/most ubiquitous documentation.
What do Python or Ruby do that PHP can't? Are they "faster?" I've heard that they are more secure, but does that mean that PHP can't be as secure if a skilled developer is coding for security? People say things like "rapid development," but I've been using CodeIgniter and it seems pretty rapid to me. What it all comes down to is this: are Ruby and Python "practical" for novice programmers like me? Truly? If not, then doesn't it make sense to start with a language like PHP and then, when you have figured shit out, make the jump to Python or Ruby? I wish this was more clear.
Something that I'm not seeing people take into account generally when they decide to develop in a "new" language or complain about any established language additionally is how far along that new language is and how many people know it well. Choosing the best thing also involves how easy it is to get the help of others. An analogy might be an automobile purchase. If you are located in the middle of nowhere it might be a better idea to buy the Honda where there are multiple local dealers rather than the NewGreatAuto (pick any car with less market share that is better price and feature wise) where you have to travel 50 miles each way for warranty service.
I went through this with hardware back in the 90's choosing SGI servers that were better price and performance wise than Sun, only to find that many open source software ready to run was not available for SGI. And that there were less people that knew IRIX than Solaris.
Go with Python if you already find it appealing.
I stopped myself from, unfortunately, not building things. I've spent the last year learning Ruby, Python, Rails, Django, and a half dozen javascript frameworks to get myself acquainted with it all. Only recently I took a position where I'll be working with Rails full-time. It's a tough addiction to break, but it's so liberating once you learn what else is out there and what you can do with it!
The fact is that my comfort with PHP stems from knowing what I know, knowing there are things I don't know, knowing there are unknowns I don't know, and knowing there are unknowns that are unknown. (Thanks, Rumsfeld)
Its this grasp on the language that gives me comfort. Mix that in with the universality of PHP and I'm more than willing to take my lumps for being told I solve problems using a shitty language.
There are shitty guns and shitty marksman. A good marksman can kill you with a shitty gun, but a shitty marksman will always be a shitty marksman.
Same with my distro - I am currently using Mint, but that may change, when my next boot hard drive fails.
Even with VBA, where I had done much of the work using DAO (started in 2005 with what I already knew) I am now trying to make the next changes using ADODB. The benefit being it will be easier to shift the back end to MySQL (or any other ODBC-compliant flavor) and have more then one language used in different front ends.
Ah, the learning! My joy in life.... And these days, thankfully little tuition required.
Between these two extremes run all others with their fair share of incongruencies and imperfections. They are just not popular and probably never will be. So I don't care. Let me know when there is a language that slaps me on the wrist for bad design and coding!
It's not exactly mind-shattering stuff, but it's nice to have some common terms to describe the properties programming languages have that make them the kinds of products they are.
If you want a nice introduction into the world of developing web apps with Python, I suggest you read the Flask user manual (see http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/). It not only covers the basics of the framework, but also seems to assume that you're a first-time Python user as well. It covers topics such as using virtualenv and pip to setup your environment which I found very helpful when getting started with the language.
Make small incremental steps.
The investment you think you have in X (PHP) is less than you think. It's much more in how to code, how web works, etc. the PHP parts are cruft you won't miss anyway.
They have the man-power required to displace it, as well as the serious need... although the only potential solution they have come up with HipHop / HPHPi is really lacking in community support. Its open source but rather undocumented, and took an entire day to get set up.
If they could produce a viable alternative to PHP... something that fixes the clear fuckups but doesn't try to fix everything I think it would have a real shot.
An excuse for not learning something new.
"[php solves problems etc] but it's deeply flawed.
[...] I promised my next project i would code in something else
[...] but i went right back to PHP"
Or is it just a signal that PHP is indeed damn practical for web prototypes that tend to overgrow?
i'm pretty comfortable dumping C and assembly to microcontrolers (kidding, nobody is. damn datasheets full of mistakes) and automating every bit of what i do in bash and python. but i can't get away from PHP for web crap!
Do not write every part of a project in only one language. Following the UNIX "Small is beautiful", most projects can and are cut to small things that work together.
I often find myself writing a library in Python and publishing it's API in web.py, building services that rely on this API in Node.js, and making the final website in PHP.