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Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

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Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#81

Post by randallsquared »

jrockway wrote: post #30
t0pj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, for a lot of people, PHP would be easier to dive into than Python? I get your point; without any other knowledge, you'd be better off selecting from a pool of Python developers than PHP developers when looking for good hackers. Correct? Although I would be able to somehow separate the good hackers from bad by initially chosing Python, would you say that good hackers would also stay clear of opportunities whe…

You won't find any PHP hackers. The good PHP developers realized that PHP was a waste of their time a long time ago. All the novices have significantly lowered the average PHP developer's salary compared to other languages. Basically, there's no skill and no money in PHP, so the good people don't use it.

This isn't true in my very recent experience. I was recently (briefly; hired now) looking for a job in the DC metro area, and I find that even places that want you to primarily use Python or Java seem to also desire PHP experience, presumably because they have lots of legacy PHP code.

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#82

Post by dangoldin »

SwellJoe wrote: post #64
neovive wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a Perl background, you would probably be more comfortable with PHP. Definitely checkout the KohanaPHP framework (www.kohanaphp.com) for a solid, well-designed PHP5 MVC framework, With a good framework, you can write very readable and maintainable code.

I come from a Perl background and I'm definitely not more comfortable with PHP, despite having used it quite a bit over the past year or so for our company website, forums, store, etc. Python at least has first-class functions, and I had no problem using it for a few years when I was working in a Python shop (and I still miss IPython which rocks so hard...Devel::REPL is not quite an acceptable substitute). But, I fin…

I'd have to agree with you. I have a few years of Perl experience and started a bit of PHP to help a buddy out and learn. Writing something that is trivial in Perl gets quite complex in PHP. It's definitely doable, just not as nice as I'd want it to be.

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#83

Post by hello_moto »

menloparkbum wrote: post #36

I've used all three of the languages you mention for relatively large web applications. People will say PHP sucks because it is ugly and retarded and only has one namespace. People will say Python sucks because of the whitespace issue and mod_python doesn't work on a $5/m shared hosting plan. Perl sucks of course because "the syntax is crazy!" But, huge sites are built in PHP (Facebook, Hype Machine, Flickr, half of…

Most of Google products were written in C++ or Java.

GMail - Not Python

AdSense - Not Python

GMaps - Not Python

Search - Not Python

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#84

Post by [deleted] »

neilc wrote: post #60
sachinag wrote: post #35

I spent a lot of time bellyaching about this when starting my company - looking at PHP, Perl (preferred by the devs), and Python (preferred by the advisers I trust). In the end, we went PHP, and it was hugely lucky - we were able to hire a couple of devs on very short notice because we were in PHP, even though we use a less popular framework called Qcodo. After they were hired, I asked them what they thought, and the…

If you're hiring candidates that wouldn't consider learning a new language to join an interesting startup -- well, good luck!

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#85

Post by RobertL »

Excellent discussion by some obviously very experienced and intelligent people. I haven't used Perl too much, I'm much more experienced in Python and PHP, but I think all are capable languages.

I think the most important things to consider are things that you can't really relate effectively to a forum discussion like this and that is what your real skill levels at each of these languages is and the availability of skill in your area and network of friends.

I would lean more to those factors for making the final decision because it makes no matter that python might have wome extremely elegant and powerful syntax or library for coding a specific functionality if nobody working on the project is familiar enough with the language know the syntax or the library.

The primary investment in any new app like this is "developer time". Managing that resource requires the juggling of many more factors than the capabilities of any given language.

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#86

Post by lyime »

hello_moto wrote: post #83
menloparkbum wrote: post #36

I've used all three of the languages you mention for relatively large web applications. People will say PHP sucks because it is ugly and retarded and only has one namespace. People will say Python sucks because of the whitespace issue and mod_python doesn't work on a $5/m shared hosting plan. Perl sucks of course because "the syntax is crazy!" But, huge sites are built in PHP (Facebook, Hype Machine, Flickr, half of…

Most of Google products were written in C++ or Java. GMail - Not Python AdSense - Not Python GMaps - Not Python Search - Not Python

source?

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#87

Post by markbao »

thorax wrote: post #28

I loooove Python. But if asked to "bet the farm" on a web app, I'd go with PHP because it's been successfully demonstrated again in again in every form of web app you can imagine. In a year, I'd recommend Python, but I still find Django and the other web frameworks a bit too immature and clunky to do things that PHP has been hacking with for years and years. As much as I hate to say it, for the Python community the w…

CodeIgniter seconded. Makes PHP programming a lot easier. Also check out CodeIgniter fork Kohana. I use it to run an advertising network, works really well - ORM and tons of libraries (and of course, being open-source) makes it great.

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#88

Post by Jesin »

natch wrote: post #45
xlnt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one can write readable anything, but some languages encourage it more, both in the language features and syntax, and also in the community, tutorials, etc

Yes, Perl encourages readability in the language by one of its language features, the helpful prefixes in front of variable names.

This is a joke, right? You can't possibly be serious.

Re: Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?

#89

Post by mojuba »

Don't worry about "Extensive support of libraries and frameworks", you don't need it. All web sites I built, large and small, required only two additional components: the DB glue (typically mysql) and UTF support (mbstring). There may be specific situations when you might want to send https requests or use compression, but that's ok, even that is not called "extensive libraries and frameworks". The bottom line is, a good web site has a clean, simple source that doesn't depend on third-party code that much.
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