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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

#201
post #123
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the "secret" of PHP. It's 20 years later and it just works. Many other front-end development tools and frameworks have come and gone in that timeframe yet PHP persists. Why? Well, I'm not a PHP expert but it sounds like they care about backwards compatibility. You don't have to continually reimplement everything all the time, which both costs money and discourages further investment. There are reasons COBOL is still around 50+ years later.

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

#203
post #152

Not sure how representative this is of people actually writing code. I run a bunch of websites doing various little things. One is a Wordpress blog. I wanted a blog-like site so that myself and a few non-technical friends could write and publish articles on a particular subject. The easiest and most reliable and well-supported solution was to just install Wordpress. Throw in a few plugins from the Wordpress repo for…

I'd say it's definitely not representative of people writing code: what "code you run" on your website doesn't mean it was you who wrote that code.

There are other statistics around the web for language use.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for that though is that it has changed so much that your old experience is hardly relevant because it is so different now. The Old PHP world and the New PHP world are hardly recognizable as the same thing.

1) Would you argue that point with WordPress too? It still looks a lot like the old PHP and it is a big part of those nearly 80% market share. 2) Part of my point was PHP, regardless of what you may think of it, is not bad enough that any of that code needs a rewrite. Still PHP people concentrate on me not liking PHP and argue with me about that and nothing else. Why is the reflex in the PHP community to do this so s…

WordPress sucks ass. It's a cancer and it's growing.

But you can use modern PHP in your own theme or plugin if you want.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for that though is that it has changed so much that your old experience is hardly relevant because it is so different now. The Old PHP world and the New PHP world are hardly recognizable as the same thing.

1) Would you argue that point with WordPress too? It still looks a lot like the old PHP and it is a big part of those nearly 80% market share. 2) Part of my point was PHP, regardless of what you may think of it, is not bad enough that any of that code needs a rewrite. Still PHP people concentrate on me not liking PHP and argue with me about that and nothing else. Why is the reflex in the PHP community to do this so s…

I would keep WordPress and PHP entirely separate in my mind. WordPress is... blegh. PHP and Laravel is a totally different story.

As for the reflex... PHP has had this bad reputation for so long, that most PHP programmers (IMHO, just an opinion!) feel looked down-on for using what is actually a pretty decent system now. Viewed as inferior programmers for preferring it.

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

#206
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You can count number of Perl scripts out there and conclude that Perl is still the most popular scripting/devops tool in the world Perl is still heavily used. I wrote more than 2K lines just last week, lots of it is throwaway. But hey not many languages make it easy for you to write thousands of lines of throwaway code in hours. It's still the most useful language in the backend/unix world. This comes from me, who…

would you consider those 2k perl loc legacy/maintenance work or something new?

Why would it be called legacy, I wrote that just last week. This is active development.

Besides merely being an old technology doesn't mean legacy. SQL is fairly old.

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

#208
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It would be interesting to see the PHP sites broken down into wordpress and non-wordpress

Why? They're both PHP

I think the more interesting breakdown (which admittedly would be damn hard to get) would be WordPress sites with/without custom PHP running.

"Anyone" can make a website with WordPress, but how many WordPress websites have programmers writing code for the website?

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

#209
We keep "trying" to rewrite a legacy application, and said rewrite keeps failing, then we end up with what we tried to avoid in the first place: A Frankenstein one-off for some specific project.

A lot of people sing the praise of everything being type safe, but I think the dynamic typing of Php and its synchronous nature are what make it so productive.

Also, at least compared to its C# Frankenstein cousin, uses a fraction of the resources to do MORE work, that still amazes me TBH...

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

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

cPanel could probably included, it's nearly on all web hosts.

cPanel is Perl, not PHP.
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