8 ms·

Are you suggesting that if the boards were written in PHP they'd still be alive or that they'd have been shut down long ago?

ars 10y ago
That they'd still be alive. Mainly because maintenance, and equally important, new features, would be easier. The poor reputation of PHP is from bad PHP by bad programmers, use a good programmer (as he seems to be) and the "boost" you get from using PHP would lead to much easier to maintain code. i.e. the same boost that lets a bad programmer get something running in PHP can take a good programmer and make him even better. Perl is a powerful language, but it's not well suited for making web pages.
- colinstrickland 10y ago
  I wouldn't claim to be a good programmer, but I would point out that back then my exposure to PHP was PHP version 3, and version 4 was only just getting established.
  - ars 10y ago
    Don't sell yourself short. It's easy to see in hindsight that mod_perl was a mistake, but back then it was hardly obvious - in fact it seemed like mod_perl was poised to take over. Personally I only switched to PHP around 2003/2004 when I realized it was more productive than perl, so I'm not faulting you at all. I would have chosen the exact same language as you in 2001. Or maybe ColdFusion if it was a windows shop. PS. Sorry for coming across as critical, I didn't mean it that way. I was talking only in a retrospective kind of view.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      Personally I don't think mod_perl was the issue. It was the lack of a decent lightweight framework for web apps. They did appear eventually (Dancer, Mojolicious), but too late once they were mature enough.
- rwmj 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. About the same time as the article's author (1999-2002), we wrote a huge discussion site all in Perl, and it was pretty elegant. All the code was compiled with strict, all warnings fixed. The code was properly modular. We even post-processed the code with a linter (similar to pylint).
  - ars 10y ago
    And did you forget about slash? It still exists and is maintained. Even PHP itself was originally written in mod_perl. I didn't say you can't write good stuff in mod_perl, but rather it's slower and harder. Using perl as a template language is simply using the wrong tool for the job, that's all. And I say this having done both. Think about the site you wrote: Did you have to spend a lot of energy and time writing modules to make handling HTML easier? Did you write functions to deal with form input? Was the site successful because you essentially wrote an HTML handling framework?
    - sciurus 10y ago
      Your argument is that PHP is better than Perl for web development because PHP is a better suited for use directly as a templating language? That may be true, but I don't think it's particularly relevant given the long existence of templating engines for both. The PHP developers I know don't use PHP as their templating language anymore. They use Twig, Smarty, Blade, etc...
  - segmondy 10y ago
    I have been in an environment, where there is some legacy Perl scripts that run, everyone is terrified to update it even tho it's a PHP shop. I looked at the code thinking it would be a nightmare, but no. It's actually good clean code. So it's not nonsense, some folks absolutely refuse to engage in new adventures. They would be ready to hack all over it if it was node, but Perl? won't touch with a 10 feet pole.
- kyberias 10y ago
  I don't think the reason of shutdown is anything technical. They're not shutting it down because of perl and they wouldn't be keeping it alive because of PHP.
- cutler 10y ago
  Ever heard of HTML::Mason? See my other comment on this thread. Considering that embedding HTML in PHP has been frowned upon for over 15 years I can't see how PHP as used in, say, Laravel is any different from Perl/Mojolicious or Ruby on Rails. Around the time the author built the IMDb boards, if I remember, Smarty was preferred over embedding PHP a la Rasmus Lerdorf at which point PHP lost its "made for the web" advantage.

ars 10y ago

That they'd still be alive. Mainly because maintenance, and equally important, new features, would be easier. The poor reputation of PHP is from bad PHP by bad programmers, use a good programmer (as he seems to be) and the "boost" you get from using PHP would lead to much easier to maintain code. i.e. the same boost that lets a bad programmer get something running in PHP can take a good programmer and make him even better. Perl is a powerful language, but it's not well suited for making web pages.

colinstrickland 10y ago
I wouldn't claim to be a good programmer, but I would point out that back then my exposure to PHP was PHP version 3, and version 4 was only just getting established.
- ars 10y ago
  Don't sell yourself short. It's easy to see in hindsight that mod_perl was a mistake, but back then it was hardly obvious - in fact it seemed like mod_perl was poised to take over. Personally I only switched to PHP around 2003/2004 when I realized it was more productive than perl, so I'm not faulting you at all. I would have chosen the exact same language as you in 2001. Or maybe ColdFusion if it was a windows shop. PS. Sorry for coming across as critical, I didn't mean it that way. I was talking only in a retrospective kind of view.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Personally I don't think mod_perl was the issue. It was the lack of a decent lightweight framework for web apps. They did appear eventually (Dancer, Mojolicious), but too late once they were mature enough.
rwmj 10y ago
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. About the same time as the article's author (1999-2002), we wrote a huge discussion site all in Perl, and it was pretty elegant. All the code was compiled with strict, all warnings fixed. The code was properly modular. We even post-processed the code with a linter (similar to pylint).
- ars 10y ago
  And did you forget about slash? It still exists and is maintained. Even PHP itself was originally written in mod_perl. I didn't say you can't write good stuff in mod_perl, but rather it's slower and harder. Using perl as a template language is simply using the wrong tool for the job, that's all. And I say this having done both. Think about the site you wrote: Did you have to spend a lot of energy and time writing modules to make handling HTML easier? Did you write functions to deal with form input? Was the site successful because you essentially wrote an HTML handling framework?
  - sciurus 10y ago
    Your argument is that PHP is better than Perl for web development because PHP is a better suited for use directly as a templating language? That may be true, but I don't think it's particularly relevant given the long existence of templating engines for both. The PHP developers I know don't use PHP as their templating language anymore. They use Twig, Smarty, Blade, etc...
- segmondy 10y ago
  I have been in an environment, where there is some legacy Perl scripts that run, everyone is terrified to update it even tho it's a PHP shop. I looked at the code thinking it would be a nightmare, but no. It's actually good clean code. So it's not nonsense, some folks absolutely refuse to engage in new adventures. They would be ready to hack all over it if it was node, but Perl? won't touch with a 10 feet pole.
kyberias 10y ago
I don't think the reason of shutdown is anything technical. They're not shutting it down because of perl and they wouldn't be keeping it alive because of PHP.
cutler 10y ago
Ever heard of HTML::Mason? See my other comment on this thread. Considering that embedding HTML in PHP has been frowned upon for over 15 years I can't see how PHP as used in, say, Laravel is any different from Perl/Mojolicious or Ruby on Rails. Around the time the author built the IMDb boards, if I remember, Smarty was preferred over embedding PHP a la Rasmus Lerdorf at which point PHP lost its "made for the web" advantage.