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Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

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Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#102
I like PHP! It's the first OO programing that I learned and paved the way for me learning C, C#, Obj-C...and now I'm studying Java. If it wasn't for Php's loose declarations (as compared to C) than I would have had a harder time to grasp object oriented programming and would've never made it past javascript.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#103
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AJ here, a PM on App Engine (and the guy who wrote the tutorial). The Batcache plugin (which caches to Memcache) works on GAE out of the box, and gives a predictable improvement to performance, especially when you've got a lot of DB-heavy plugins.

That's a nice tutorial and the idea of running Wordpress on GAE is intriguing to say the least. I apologize that I have not closely familiarized myself with Google Cloud SQL. Is it really API compatible with MySQL, or are there limitation that one is bound to run into when one starts adding plugins etc.? I also don't quite understand (not having tried it out yet, obviously) how you'll handle static files (images, etc…

Google Cloud storage is a great place for uploaded media (it's pretty efficient at serving), and the PHP runtime integrates quite cleanly into GCS (you can fwrite() to a GCS object, for example).

https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/php/googlestora...

We're working with a couple of Wordpress developers on a plugin to integrate Wordpress media uploads with Google Cloud Storage.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#104
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoops, I thought the question was about Compute Engine. Yes, you can sign up for PHP on App Engine at the link you provided.

It was about Compute Engine actually. For those who are interested, the GCE page says registration opens at 6PM PST on May 15th, 2013.

You can sign up now!

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#105
post #93

I cannot possibly hope to express the reasons I dislike PHP better than this comprehensive article: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de... An excerpt: > I can’t even say what’s wrong with PHP, because— okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there. > You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it’s one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that’…

This has been reiterated over and over again and is just a bunch of fluff. It doesn't explain why PHP is bad with examples and while I know there are a ton of sites that do, many people including myself have used PHP successfully in the past. I will refer you to an even better quote: 'Software engineers are becoming like "photographers". They spend so much time arguing over the right lens type, focal length, camera b…

> It doesn't explain why PHP is bad with examples

The linked article specifically does explain why PHP is bad, and it does it by providing literally hundreds of specific examples. It's a really impressive essay.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#106
post #88
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put it very lightly. It is not pedantry or elitist hackers, it is computer science . A sane engineer with a little bit of experience would not start off with PHP to build anything at all.

Engineering is not computer science. A sane engineer don't pick technology based on what is most theoretically pure, but based on what can deliver on the requirements on time and on budget. If you are building a simple CRUD style application, for example, there's likely nothing in your technical requirements that precludes PHP in any way. Then the question turns to ease of deployment and maintenance, operational cost…

Cost and availability of developer time is much more of a factor in platform choice than a lot of people think, especially engineers who don't have to worry about the business end.

If you can find RoR developers, they are not cheap. If you're building a v1 product on a limited budget, and don't want to spend 80 hours per week writing it yourself, PHP is an excellent choice.

Having to read the code with a clothespin on your nose is a small price to pay.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#107

Given Google's reputation of awful customer support, why would anybody want to locked into their platform, especially when you have to do so many things the "app engine" way?

You can run Django on top of AppEngine and port your app to any number of Django hosts with minimal changes. I just talked to a startup founder who started out on AppEngine and just recently switched to Heroku.

Last year I spent a number of months porting an (albiet poorly written) django app from AppEngine to AWS. I would not call the number of changes we made in order to port the app "minimal". I have heard similar stories from other development teams. My evidence is totally anecdotal, but so far it's lead me to believe AppEngine is not a good solution for running a django app.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP is only popular because many hosting providers support it. Many hosting providers only support it because it's popular. At no point in this equation does the relative merits of the language itself factor in.

At no point in this equation does the relative merits of the language itself factor in. ... except for "easy to deploy", which is a merit.

* Easy to deploy

* Cheap to deploy

* Easy to find programmers to help you

* Affordable programmers

* Code is easy to read for non-programmers who understand HTML

* Ton of free code available to reuse

Inconsistency, poorly thought out OO, lack of purity, and disdain by hipsters are a small price to pay for those merits.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#109
post #2

LOL at adding PHP support to app engine almost 5 years later. PHP gets a lot of bashing but you can't deny its popularity, as evidenced by the number of stars. https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1...

PHP is a solid workhorse. Quick to prototype, and once a PHP app is up and running, it just works.

Wikipedia, Facebook, MailChimp, WordPress, tons more -- they all load fast and are hardly ever down.

You can argue all day about the fine details of programming languages, but PHP is popular for good reasons.

Re: Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP

#110
post #64

I see a lot of people on here wondering why Google would just now add support to PHP. I don't work for Google, but I used to work at Microsoft. When Azure launched it tried to "leapfrog" the other cloud vendors by offering only Platform as a Service (PaaS). It offered superior benefits like high-reliability and geographic redundancy. Though, that was met with limited adoption. Why? Well, one of the major reasons was…

In related news, Google also just dropped Drive pricing to exactly 50% that of Dropbox. Looks like they're trying to monetize all that huge capacity they have floating around. It's about time AWS had some serious competition.

It's about time AWS had some serious competition.

Hah, yeah, okay, sure.

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