Yes, just use a good framework like Yii (http://www.yiiframework.com) to smooth out the warts.
Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
61–70 of 104 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#62Practical? Yes. Desirable? Depends on who is going to maintain it.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#63My personal opinion is that a project can be language agnostic. You can build in whatever you want. It doesn't matter if you build your app in php, ruby, python, asp or whatever, if you're a good coder you will produce good secure code, if you suck, so will your code. So build in whatever you're most comfortable with and don't pick a language because of a superficial reason.
Build in whatever the people who are going to maintain it after you've moved on are comfortable with .... if you still bear some responsibility at that point.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#64My personal opinion is that a project can be language agnostic. You can build in whatever you want. It doesn't matter if you build your app in php, ruby, python, asp or whatever, if you're a good coder you will produce good secure code, if you suck, so will your code. So build in whatever you're most comfortable with and don't pick a language because of a superficial reason.
Isn't this the opposite of "pick the right tool for the job"? Building with whatever you're most comfortable seems to be a superficial reason. Different platforms/languages have real diversity in their strengths and weaknesses.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#65You can just as easily say RoR is slower (than, say, Symfony 2.0 on PHP with an opcode cache) and harder to work with (from a system administration perspective). Take a look down the top 100 website list, and of those sites that are web applications, more of them will be built on PHP than not. I don't think there's even a Ruby application among the top 100 sites except parts of Twitter, but I could be forgetting some…
I'm in webdevelopment many years now and switching from php to ruby was a step I'll never regret. About the sysadmin perspective, I manage all my servers myself, used debian on my workdesk long enough to do this, and in the last year with all the stuff like bundler and the new rubygems.org it got so much easier. If you need it even more easier then Heroku is something you won't get elsewhere.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#66Yes, it's practical. I'd use Postgres rather than MySQL if possible.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#67You can just as easily say RoR is slower (than, say, Symfony 2.0 on PHP with an opcode cache) and harder to work with (from a system administration perspective). Take a look down the top 100 website list, and of those sites that are web applications, more of them will be built on PHP than not. I don't think there's even a Ruby application among the top 100 sites except parts of Twitter, but I could be forgetting some…
YouTube was written in Python. Just wanted to add a unique (and possibly non-obvious) data point.
Originally AdSense too was Python/MySQL. Nowadays I don't know.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#68You can just as easily say RoR is slower (than, say, Symfony 2.0 on PHP with an opcode cache) and harder to work with (from a system administration perspective). Take a look down the top 100 website list, and of those sites that are web applications, more of them will be built on PHP than not. I don't think there's even a Ruby application among the top 100 sites except parts of Twitter, but I could be forgetting some…
The problem with this argument is that all of the websites that you mentioned were founded before Ror or alternatives were mature enough. Adam D'Angelo (former CTO of Facebook) said that if Facebook was created now, they would not use PHP (source: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=137376312958147 ). I can imagine that the situation is similar with the other websites.
The article mentioned he used Python, which is a language I really enjoy working with, but not a framework. Does anyone know what framework D'Angelo is using?
Edit: to note that I used Quora to answer my own question: http://www.quora.com/What-languages-and-frameworks-were-used...
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#69My personal opinion is that a project can be language agnostic. You can build in whatever you want. It doesn't matter if you build your app in php, ruby, python, asp or whatever, if you're a good coder you will produce good secure code, if you suck, so will your code. So build in whatever you're most comfortable with and don't pick a language because of a superficial reason.
Isn't this the opposite of "pick the right tool for the job"? Building with whatever you're most comfortable seems to be a superficial reason. Different platforms/languages have real diversity in their strengths and weaknesses.
You raise a valid point if you're putting up a shelf. But if you're programming then you'll be at a disadvantage if you're not familiar with the tools at hand. Even a designer is going to suffer if they're made to use the Gimp when they're used to Photoshop, not because Gimp is or isn't a good tool but because the interaction is different.
Switching from Lightroom to Aperture I've noticed substantial differences in my photography, and I'm not a very good photographer. I'm considering switching back to Lightroom - I'm sure Aperture's great, but the learning curve is harder than switching from Vim to Emacs.
Re: Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications?
#70You can just as easily say RoR is slower (than, say, Symfony 2.0 on PHP with an opcode cache) and harder to work with (from a system administration perspective). Take a look down the top 100 website list, and of those sites that are web applications, more of them will be built on PHP than not. I don't think there's even a Ruby application among the top 100 sites except parts of Twitter, but I could be forgetting some…
It's extremely important to draw a distinction between cool and practical. HN is all about the cool new hotness. People here are always on the bleeding edge of technology, so they tend to flock towards those instead. Also, hiring PHP developers is easier than developers. There are just more people with PHP knowledge. Not saying that is a good reason to use a language, but it is a factor.
But when it comes to hiring _good_ developers, Python/Ruby/Lisp are definitely a better option.
In my experience, while it seemed at first that hiring PHP developers would be easier, it actually proved wrong, as we had to spend way more time to find _good_ developers among the mass than we would have if we were looking for, says, Python developers.