Ask HN: How can I convince my co-founders not to use a LAMP stack and should I?

Well for one, you can use any client side tools you want since they will be server language agnostic. And as others have pointed out, having to learn a new language/framework/etc is going to introduce another huge risk.

At the end of the day, a beautifully written app with the latest and greatest technology with zero users isn't going to help you build a business.

There is a wide range of quality in PHP code, and it depends mostly on the coder.

If your team uses simple php pages with inline code and a rats nest of includes like newbies did in 1999, it will be a disaster.

If they have progressed beyond that, you will have a range of experience from mediocre to excellent.

If your team has good coding conventions and practices and uses a modern framework (I use Yii on a current project and find it of high quality), they can write a solid maintainable app in PHP.

As a programmer myself, I would actually prefer starting clean slate with something new (especially for a brand new project), like ruby, nodeJS. Of course, you can stay in your comfort zone with what you know (be it PHP or even .Net MVC C#), but in the long run, the cost of re-writing logic, pain of scale and transition to another platform is truly a buzz kill. I would rather get the code on the right platform first, so that future maintenance is not merely throwing money down in the drain. Not sure about you, but re-writing sounds pretty lame and low efficiency to me.

If they were at all interested in ramping up to Rails or node or then you'd have some room to discuss the benefits of one over the other. But they're not, and it looks like you don't.

It takes a lot of work to move from one framework to another and if there's no enthusiasm for the move then there's very little chance the move will succeed.

There's plenty of better frameworks than php, sure, but there's also lots of cases trying to force the issue and ending up with a painful rewrite down the road.

http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_swit...

Rebuilding to scale is a bad idea IMHO. The moment your app takes of you have just about everything on your mind, but not a clean slate rewrite in a different language. You'll need to scale and scale fast. So you'll be tacking on hot-fixes for stuff that breaks, features your customers want, ... And the more code you write, the less attractive it sounds to rewrite.

I wouldn't try to convince the coders to use a language that they don't know but I'd really try to convince them to have a look at stuff outside their comfort zone. There's a lot to loose but also a ton of things to gain. Have a look at other storage options (NoSQL, ...), other languages and what benefits they offer. Think of running on environments such as GAE or Heroku that are not available for PHP. They do offer their own share of advantages when it comes to scaling an app. They do have some disadvantages as well. Maybe there's a set of libraries in a given language that helps you a long way, maybe there's not.

However, in the end I'd say that the language you choose is the least of your problems. Cool technology can be built in pretty much any language.