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Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

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Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#111

Post by winternett »

jegea wrote: post #25

I think this shows how much HN is a bubble in itself. Most discussions here happen around new/exciting/cool/weird technology. And don't get me wrong, I love those discussions! That's why I come here! But reality outside of this bubble is people building and maintaining web apps as efficiently as possible and PHP hasn't stopped being very efficient. On the contrary, it's getting better with time. Interestingly enough,…

It's a controversial opinion of mine, but many other languages have come and gone since PHP, yet it still dominates. With all the new alternatives nothing has taken over and it shows that stability and mature works better than change when there is not a critical need for it.

Modern languages have also time and time again forsaken the ideal of making development LESS COMPLICATED than prior languages, and this is why they don't take over markets. Creating more abstract languages just to do the same things that PHP, Python, Java, JS, and other "legacy" langs have accomplished (over many years) does not make sense. Too many people get credit for reinventing the wheel these days and it's a distraction from truly game-changing innovation.

Relevant and reliable function resides in a separate lane than innovative new solutions. They shouldn't be hyped and rushed to market as "PHP killers" simply because they generate buzz and new contract money.

And FTR... If you still have to compile code in 2021 prior to running it, you're burning a lot of extra valuable time off your life and away from your family in frustration just to find out that the advice on Stack Overflow was not relevant to your framework's new update, and you'll regret the lost years on your death bed... probably... Sorry, That had to be said... :P

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#112

Post by astura »

adventured wrote: post #49
clone1018 wrote: post #4

I wonder how much the results of this are skewed because PHP reports via the server response header that it is being used. Other languages like Elixir, Go, etc aren't so public about their usage unless one of their web frameworks adds it. I'd also love to see a study like this instead focused on "How much of the active web is wordpress?" and "How much of the inactive web is wordpress?".

It's a very common config change these days to turn off expose_php (stop reporting by X-Powered-By header that PHP is installed on the server). You'll see this suggestion across nearly all forums related to PHP. That has been true for a decade or more at this point.

It's not just PHP, turning off X-Powered-By (or similar) is part of any server hardening standard for any language I've ever seen (and implemented).

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#114

Post by blacktriangle »

brightball wrote: post #43
jegea wrote: post #25

I think this shows how much HN is a bubble in itself. Most discussions here happen around new/exciting/cool/weird technology. And don't get me wrong, I love those discussions! That's why I come here! But reality outside of this bubble is people building and maintaining web apps as efficiently as possible and PHP hasn't stopped being very efficient. On the contrary, it's getting better with time. Interestingly enough,…

I tell people all the time about how good the Ruby job market is. Lots of opportunities and not a ton of people to fill them for some reason. People from other languages don’t seem to want to believe it.

I'm not sure if the Ruby market has ever been better from the pov of devs looking to get hired. There's now a ton of companies with established revenue streams based on Ruby/Rails apps looking to hire, while simultaneously it seems like all the new grads have bought the "Rails is dying!" hype and are looking to invest their time in other techs. Also it seems like all the bootcamp types have moved on from Rails to JS which has only further dried up the incoming developer pipeline.

It doesn't help that despite the impressiveness of the 15 minute blog demo, Rails has always been somewhat difficult to get up and running, particularly on Windows, and it seems like that has only grown worse over time.

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#115

Post by acdha »

godojo wrote: post #34
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP is my bread and butter. Yes there are still shops that use it. It doesn't really deserve the bad rap.

The bad rap was probably due to older versions. I used to program PHP in a professional setting (quite a while ago) and it basically interchangeable as any other system script (bash) executed by a parent http server process. The language itself at the time was mostly useful because you could execute a script made of HTML (or anything really) with some embedded magic tags interpreted as PHP instead of the opposite whe…

Older versions were worse but the current versions still have a lot of cultural baggage around the idea that ignoring errors is great and that's it's helpful to automagically convert data types. Changing that would break a huge amount of code and habit so the community is kind of slow-walking in that direction by deprecating features, adding opt-in config, and using linters to identify likely sources of problems.

I don't disagree that it was useful — especially for having such a simple “upload a file, hit refresh” workflow — but popularity can work against you when it encourages optimizing for easy starts over long-term maintainability and a huge number of people learned dubious habits and aren't quick to switch.

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#116

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jegea wrote: post #25

I think this shows how much HN is a bubble in itself. Most discussions here happen around new/exciting/cool/weird technology. And don't get me wrong, I love those discussions! That's why I come here! But reality outside of this bubble is people building and maintaining web apps as efficiently as possible and PHP hasn't stopped being very efficient. On the contrary, it's getting better with time. Interestingly enough,…

I guess I don't fit in, here.

I write native Apple software (Swift/UI/App/WatchKit), and my server stuff is PHP (and works great).

I like to spend as little time as possible on the backend. I totally admit its not my strong suit, so having a robust, highly-supported, standardized, performative, language like PHP, with a gazillion assistive resources and examples around, is nice. I've been writing stuff in PHP for over 20 years, so I sort of know my way around it.

I'll be expanding my Apple native stuff into the new "pseudo-reactive" realm of SwiftUI, but I don't really plan to keep growing my backend chops. PHP is doing fine for me. If I need anything else, I'll hire the talent.

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#117

Post by AzzieElbab »

fogihujy wrote: post #110
AzzieElbab wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about efficiency , it is about legacy. You can count number of Perl scripts out there and conclude that Perl is still the most popular scripting/devops tool in the world

In PHP's case it's about WordPress which still being deployed at a very high rate. While the blogging thing isn't that much in focus anymore, WordPress + Divi + WooCommerce is an extremely common stack for setting up eCommerce sites. An yes, then there's Drupal, Laravel, Symfony, and many others, and they're going strong too. Heck, even Joomla is actively developed even though it's probably small enough today to be c…

Probably true. Another thing I’ve missed are all those admin and status pages for iot and networking equipment

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#118

Post by [deleted] »

winternett wrote: post #111
jegea wrote: post #25

I think this shows how much HN is a bubble in itself. Most discussions here happen around new/exciting/cool/weird technology. And don't get me wrong, I love those discussions! That's why I come here! But reality outside of this bubble is people building and maintaining web apps as efficiently as possible and PHP hasn't stopped being very efficient. On the contrary, it's getting better with time. Interestingly enough,…

It's a controversial opinion of mine, but many other languages have come and gone since PHP, yet it still dominates. With all the new alternatives nothing has taken over and it shows that stability and mature works better than change when there is not a critical need for it. Modern languages have also time and time again forsaken the ideal of making development LESS COMPLICATED than prior languages, and this is why t…

[deleted]

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#119

Post by tialaramex »

rich_sasha wrote: post #27
daneel_w wrote: post #19

I'm surprised nobody have linked the infamous "a fractal of bad design" article yet. It's particularly popular with people who have never written a line of PHP in their lives.

It sure resonated with me, the occasional PHP user. Though I get that you can poke holes in anything.

You can, but "fractal of bad design" isn't really playing that game. The naming schemes for example. It's not that PHP made a choice and any choice can be criticised, the criticism is that PHP declines to make any choice whatsoever on naming. str-foo strFoo str_foo and FooStr are all defensible choices but having all four in your language is not.

Re: Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

#120

Post by jonwinstanley »

FormFollowsFunc wrote: post #93

Outside of Wordpress, I don't think the PHP ecosystem is in a great state. I worked with it recently and the availability of 3rd party libraries wasn't great. A lot of them were abandoned. Python and JavaScript have healthier ecosystems.

Symfony is very healthy plus there are a load of packages around Laravel and Symfony that can be used independently
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