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Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites

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121–130 of 284 posts

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

#121
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.

What's interesting is that PHP and Ruby are not just popular, they're increasing.

I am curious about that Scala number though. 2% of 10 million is quite a lot: 200,000 Scala websites? I would have never guessed!

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

#122
post #105

I don’t even know what market share / usage statistics means here. The FAQ doesn’t seem to answer the question and the actual report is behind an order form. So: how is it calculated? Is google.com weighted the same as mom-and-pop-restaurant-near-you.com? If not, how are they weighted respectively? Of course there’s also the problem of identifying the language without an x-powered-by or similar signal, which several…

These two pages provides some more information on the subject.

https://w3techs.com/technologies

https://w3techs.com/disclaimer

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

#123
post #82
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of this is just the millions of Wordpress or Nextcloud installations? I’d be more interested in knowing how many unique apps or developers work on each language because in my experience I haven’t actually seen a single php developer other than Wordpress tweakers.

There are plenty of custom PHP websites and devs that write them. I, too, still write fully custom (no framework) PHP webapps for customers where I don't expect to be babysitting the app after it's written, and where websockets and real-time interactivity is not necessary. PHP is great fit for that, because all dependencies are part of the system updates in that case.

Yes - I wrote a messageboard in PHP 18 years ago whilst clutching an OReilly book in my hand. It's definitely not well coded, but it works. It's moved servers many times, changed OS, Webserver - and it's now running on my NAS. I've maybe twice had to spend an afternoon tightening it up due to some PHP change - but broadly been maintenance/issue free.

For at least the last decade I've been pondering re-implementing it in some fancy new language - but as it just keeps working, it slides down the priority list.

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

#124
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably needs some new languages with slightly different syntax I used to toy around with Haxe: https://haxe.org/ The idea in principle is great (use Haxe the language on your machine, then Haxe the compiler to produce PHP code and upload it to a cheap hosting somewhere), but I've never found a real use for it.

I am regularly stumbling upon Haxe. It seems like a well designed language but like you I never yet found a use case. Though it seems to be also great for game dev. The show case of games written in Haxe is quite impressive: https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

I think it's close enough to ActionScript that those with flash game dev experience can be comfortable.

I think that was even the main point! If I'm not mistaken, OpenFL[1] is an effort by the same people.

[1]: https://www.openfl.org/

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

#125
post #5

I'm curious how this changes if you remove PHP being used for WordPress (where the people using it probably didn't choose it). Do lots of companies still choose PHP for brand new projects? I know Facebook has a dialect they still use, but you don't hear much about it anymore.

Yep, only companies that are seeking VC funds have to use "cool" technology to wow investors.

OTOH many bootstrapped or legacy companies pick long established technology to build their products as they are only selling product implementation, not the idea of changing the world or whatnot.

It might also be the client simply wants php. They don't want to pay to maintain anything extremely over-engineered.

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

#126

As an ex PHP developer, I don’t think it will ever go away. There is just way to much software that was written in PHP (e-commerce, blogs, CMS systems, Nextcloud/ownCloud, …) that isn’t going away. PHP isn’t something I ever want to touch again (its libs are wonky and I dislike the syntax choices of the last years) but the execution model was sort of nice before the frameworks (an entry point with a clean state you c…

Owncloud is switching to Go. https://owncloud.com/news/ready-steady-go/

How much has the NextCloud source diverged from OwnCloud? Will it also be switching to Go?

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

#127
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.

It looks like US adopted Ruby but in EU it never really catched the attention. EU is is still full of PHP.

I don't think a lot of new companies are based on Ruby anymore seeing on how there's hardly any talk of Ruby anymore. But that's just an observation.

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

#129
post #54
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,…

How much of this is just the millions of Wordpress or Nextcloud installations? I’d be more interested in knowing how many unique apps or developers work on each language because in my experience I haven’t actually seen a single php developer other than Wordpress tweakers.

> because in my experience I haven’t actually seen a single php developer other than Wordpress tweakers.

I think your experience is probably limited then. Or you're not looking for them. ??

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would PHP want to go away? It's developing and there's plenty of software being written in it now and it will continue to do so. There's not much wrong with modern PHP. Symfony and Laravel projects are a joy to work with. The standards and tooling is there too with composer, phpunit, PSR-4. I don't think you've ever been into PHP if you was only wrenching in old projects.

Dude I am old. When I was working with PHP I had to watch out for diffs between 4.x and 5.x servers. Hell, I think we hat some old 3.x code even. Frameworks where new, composer didn’t exist and I was getting annoyed of getting Paamayim Nekudotayim as an Error because the where limitations in the engine when it comes to finding the static methods of a class instance. Thing is those OLD projects where new when I was wo…

I am old also, and I have maintained some PHP code for about 18+ years now. From PHP 4 to PHP 7.4.

The changes and improvements are dramatic and wonderful. Improvements in speed, security, error processing, functionality/integration with databases, Composer, etc...

While I am not suggesting you go back to PHP, but things are simply not the same anymore.

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