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Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

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Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#11

Post by mmahemoff »

rll wrote: post #4

He kind of lost me on his opening CGI argument. Most PaaS I am familiar with don't run PHP through CGI at all. Either Apache mod_php or nginx php-fpm. I guess the author means a CGI-like model or something?

OP here. That's what I meant. We often compare PHP to e.g. Ruby/Rails, Python/Django...but what we're really thinking of when we think of PHP is CGI.

Most of the same things we say about PHP deployment (it's easy, can be done in one file, etc) could equally be applied to writing CGI scripts in Ruby or Python. PHP is just a more extreme example of CGI, and arguably easier, because there's so much support for PHP-based CGI compared to Python/Ruby/Node CGI.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#12

Post by srisa »

drakaal wrote: post #5

PHP continues to thrive because of WordPress and PHPBB. There are so many sites running these two pieces of software that PHP will be a top language for years. PHP is also one of the easiest languages for Designers to learn. If you know HTML, adding a few bits of PHP is easy. Even if you dislike PHP, (I certainly do) you end up getting good at it because enough projects touch it that you kind of have to be good at it…

And Drupal, Joomla, Magento, SugarCRM, CiviCRM, WebERP .....

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#13

Post by mikeryan »

mscottmcbee wrote: post #2

I don't do much web development, just a product once every year or so to play around with an idea. Always in PHP. A few months ago I was asked by a close friend to help them with a not-so-serious site. I decided that I'd use Rails, because, hey, I've heard nothing but good about it from HN and the like. I was absolutely blown away by how much work it required to get started. That, and how painful it was to explain to…

You're making the mistake of conflating PHP the language with Rails the Framework.

I can do your app in Rails pretty damn quickly at this point (with one of my current skeleton frameworks I can add authentication administration and other nice features pretty much "for free" as well)

But tell me I have to do it CodeIgniter or Laravel and I'd be completely lost for days.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#14

Post by ojbyrne »

rll wrote: post #4

He kind of lost me on his opening CGI argument. Most PaaS I am familiar with don't run PHP through CGI at all. Either Apache mod_php or nginx php-fpm. I guess the author means a CGI-like model or something?

FPM is a CGI like model. The F stands for FastCGI. Also many cheap-ass virtual servers do run php-cgi.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#15

Post by tokenizer »

fleitz wrote: post #6
mscottmcbee wrote: post #2

I don't do much web development, just a product once every year or so to play around with an idea. Always in PHP. A few months ago I was asked by a close friend to help them with a not-so-serious site. I decided that I'd use Rails, because, hey, I've heard nothing but good about it from HN and the like. I was absolutely blown away by how much work it required to get started. That, and how painful it was to explain to…

Yes, that's because PHP operates at thermodynamic equilibrium and creating order from those states requires the expenditure of energy. Rails is great for creating a site with a form where people can upload images, it's a 20 to 30 minute project in rails, pretty much just take any rails blog tutorial and add paperclip. (Note, it's not a 20 minute project for anyone who doesn't already know rails) Rails is not for non-…

Funny, but not necessarily true. With PHP, I do as you say and spend, if I know the language, 1 hour max setting up a CRUD list/view/admin.

With Ruby, I have to spend, at least 3 months learning the concepts behind the Rails framework and what the article OP mentions just to get to that 20 to 30 minute mark.

If anything it's all meaningless, and what everyone should understand is that while the closer you are to the web server itself (CGI+PHP, Node.js, Classic ASP), you can quickly create any type of code, at the loss of organization and order.

In frameworks (criticism of Rails can also be attributed to Wordpress IMO) you have a much larger ramp up time learning the concepts and conventions, and once familiar, are able to LEVERAGE those patterns.

But don't bother me with PHP vs Ruby. I run SSI on nginx. It's not even in the same league as those two. BUT it's even easier to spin a basic 5 page website. All tools have their specialties.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#16

Post by mscottmcbee »

mikeryan wrote: post #13
mscottmcbee wrote: post #2

I don't do much web development, just a product once every year or so to play around with an idea. Always in PHP. A few months ago I was asked by a close friend to help them with a not-so-serious site. I decided that I'd use Rails, because, hey, I've heard nothing but good about it from HN and the like. I was absolutely blown away by how much work it required to get started. That, and how painful it was to explain to…

You're making the mistake of conflating PHP the language with Rails the Framework. I can do your app in Rails pretty damn quickly at this point (with one of my current skeleton frameworks I can add authentication administration and other nice features pretty much "for free" as well) But tell me I have to do it CodeIgniter or Laravel and I'd be completely lost for days.

True, it's not exactly fair to compare getting started with a language and getting started with a framework, especially one as opinionated as Rails.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#17

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

> Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

Most companies/clients, particularly outside of the SV/SF bubble, value a working solution over technical elegance. They're not irrationally ideological about programming languages, and they don't want to pay $120,000/year or $125/hour to a developer with two years of experience.

Given the supply of developers of various skill levels who can build working solutions using PHP, and the number of existing commercial and open-source applications based on PHP, it's no surprise that PHP is thriving.

> But the question is, why should PHP still be easier to deploy than Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, Node/Express (or Metro)?

It's interesting that the author grouped Ruby, Python and Node with frameworks for his comparison to PHP sans framework.

Incidentally, I think one of the advantages of PHP is that a lot of PHP developers, especially those who have been working with PHP for some time, didn't get started with a framework. Heck, before there were mature frameworks, many PHP developers rolled their own frameworks and micro-frameworks, a valuable exercise.

Third party frameworks are great, but they can easily become a crutch, and when you don't know anything but the framework, they can be downright dangerous.

What percentage of Ruby on Rails developers who started their careers with Ruby on Rails are capable of building a moderately complex Ruby application without Rails?

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#18

Post by bcoates »

fleitz wrote: post #6
mscottmcbee wrote: post #2

I don't do much web development, just a product once every year or so to play around with an idea. Always in PHP. A few months ago I was asked by a close friend to help them with a not-so-serious site. I decided that I'd use Rails, because, hey, I've heard nothing but good about it from HN and the like. I was absolutely blown away by how much work it required to get started. That, and how painful it was to explain to…

Yes, that's because PHP operates at thermodynamic equilibrium and creating order from those states requires the expenditure of energy. Rails is great for creating a site with a form where people can upload images, it's a 20 to 30 minute project in rails, pretty much just take any rails blog tutorial and add paperclip. (Note, it's not a 20 minute project for anyone who doesn't already know rails) Rails is not for non-…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillato... -- the AED is worse in every way than a properly trained professional with the right tools, except for one way: its there, it sort-of works, and you can't beat something with nothing.

Requiring a professional is a flaw, not a virtue. It's particularly problematic in our industry, where the end-user and most of the people involved in the production are not professional programmers.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#19

Post by dpritchett »

bcoates wrote: post #18
fleitz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's because PHP operates at thermodynamic equilibrium and creating order from those states requires the expenditure of energy. Rails is great for creating a site with a form where people can upload images, it's a 20 to 30 minute project in rails, pretty much just take any rails blog tutorial and add paperclip. (Note, it's not a 20 minute project for anyone who doesn't already know rails) Rails is not for non-…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillato... -- the AED is worse in every way than a properly trained professional with the right tools, except for one way: its there, it sort-of works, and you can't beat something with nothing. Requiring a professional is a flaw, not a virtue. It's particularly problematic in our industry, where the end-user and most of the people involved in the production are no…

There's nothing wrong with professionals building tools for other professionals. PHP surely requires less activation energy for a tiny project or a new developer, but that doesn't mean Rails et al aren't providing useful options for full-timers.

Re: Why PHP continues to thrive in the age of the PaaS

#20

Post by sanswork »

tokenizer wrote: post #15
fleitz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's because PHP operates at thermodynamic equilibrium and creating order from those states requires the expenditure of energy. Rails is great for creating a site with a form where people can upload images, it's a 20 to 30 minute project in rails, pretty much just take any rails blog tutorial and add paperclip. (Note, it's not a 20 minute project for anyone who doesn't already know rails) Rails is not for non-…

Funny, but not necessarily true. With PHP, I do as you say and spend, if I know the language, 1 hour max setting up a CRUD list/view/admin. With Ruby, I have to spend, at least 3 months learning the concepts behind the Rails framework and what the article OP mentions just to get to that 20 to 30 minute mark. If anything it's all meaningless, and what everyone should understand is that while the closer you are to the…

I think your first two lines are a bit unfair. In the first line you say it takes you an hour while mentioning in passing already knowing the language.

In the second you say it takes 3 months because you have to learn the framework. Honestly if it takes you 3 months to understand rails well enough to do a CRUD app there is no way you're learning PHP well enough to do the same CRUD app in less time.

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