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For web development, PHP still has a key advantage that no other language can match: ease of deployment. Many developers woefully underestimate how important th

For web development, PHP still has a key advantage that no other language can match: ease of deployment. Many developers woefully underestimate how important this is, particularly if non-technical users need to self-host your software. Telling potential users to spin up a VPS or type some command line instructions to install code is too complicated for many users, even though it may seem trivially easy to a developer.

kbenson 9y ago
Actually, I think the current state of the art is significantly easier than PHP was, in that you just choose your langauge and the framework written in your language, start it and go to localhost and some port. It used to be that you had to have a web host, and then( sure you could just drop PHP in place, but you still needed that host. Setting anything up yourself required twiddling with Apache and mod_php (or using a distro that shipped with packages that enabled it by default). The whole "start up a little webserver in the same language" trend makes everything much* easier to develop. Where PHP still has an edge is deployment for non-development. If you just want to drop in some software and use it on the web (e.g. a bulletin board), PHP is still easier in many cases for novice users. But that's not development, it's just deployment. I would even hazard that correct deployment of that software in a secure way is made harder by PHP's ease of deployment, as you have to rely on permissions in lieu of separate locations that have no remote read access, as many frameworks implement.
- fizdoonk 9y ago
  >sure you could just drop PHP in place, but you still needed that host. Setting anything up yourself required twiddling with Apache and mod_php (or using a distro that shipped with packages that enabled it by default). php has builtin webserver since 5.4. that's like 5-6 years ago
  - kbenson 9y ago
    If we're talking about the rise and dominance of PHP, we're talking about 10-15 years ago.
- lmm 9y ago
  > The whole "start up a little webserver in the same language" trend makes everything much* easier to develop. I actually agree, but that's not the approach that's pushed. In python the "tiny http server" is explicitly advertised as insecure and unsuited to production use. In Java, embedding Jetty involves dozens of arcane lines and manually translating suggested XML files into code - not something a beginner can do. What other language than PHP can I dump a single file on a shared host and have it be running? (Ironically Java is actually a legitimate answer here, if the shared host ran an application server like Tomcat and accepted .war uploads. But I don't think I've ever seen a shared host that offered that?)
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > I actually agree, but that's not the approach that's pushed. In python the "tiny http server" is explicitly advertised as insecure and unsuited to production use. Sure, but we're talking about developing, and that's a pretty easy way to get started. In Python, don't you have Gunicorn, Tornado and Twisted? In Perl there's Mojolicious and Dancer. Ruby has Rails, Sinatra and probably a least a few more. Java... Well, IMO Java has a habit if either not delivering simple smaller projects, or communicating they exist very poorly (but I'm not really in the loop so my opinion may be very uninformed). Tomcat was too big and complex to fit this need a decade ago, so I doubt it does it well now (but maybe I'm wrong?). > What other language than PHP can I dump a single file on a shared host and have it be running? My point is that needing a shared host to get started is actually a step you often don't have to wait for now. If you're a developer, it's easier to just start up your dev locally and work out hosting in a bit. If you're developing something beyond the simplest things, the host allowing drop in scripts is not actually a problem I think. For anything that's super quick and dirty, you still have CGI. That's the point I was making. The drop in script support isn't really all that beneficial to PHP developers, but it is very beneficial to regular user that just was to deploy a PHP webapp of some sort, such as a bulletin board or blog software.
    - lmm 9y ago
      > Sure, but we're talking about developing, and that's a pretty easy way to get started. > My point is that needing a shared host to get started is actually a step you often don't have to wait for now. If you're a developer, it's easier to just start up your dev locally and work out hosting in a bit. I have to disagree. It's silly to try to develop something you can't actually run. Getting your software in front of actual users is the critical path; everything else is secondary. (And exposing your dev laptop as a web host on the internet is pretty complex in practice for most people, quite aside from whether it's a good idea) > For anything that's super quick and dirty, you still have CGI. Do any of the frameworks you listed (Gunicorn or Mojolicious or Rails or...) support running as CGI? Is it documented in their tutorials?

kbenson 9y ago

Actually, I think the current state of the art is significantly easier than PHP was, in that you just choose your langauge and the framework written in your language, start it and go to localhost and some port. It used to be that you had to have a web host, and then( sure you could just drop PHP in place, but you still needed that host. Setting anything up yourself required twiddling with Apache and mod_php (or using a distro that shipped with packages that enabled it by default). The whole "start up a little webserver in the same language" trend makes everything much* easier to develop. Where PHP still has an edge is deployment for non-development. If you just want to drop in some software and use it on the web (e.g. a bulletin board), PHP is still easier in many cases for novice users. But that's not development, it's just deployment. I would even hazard that correct deployment of that software in a secure way is made harder by PHP's ease of deployment, as you have to rely on permissions in lieu of separate locations that have no remote read access, as many frameworks implement.

fizdoonk 9y ago
>sure you could just drop PHP in place, but you still needed that host. Setting anything up yourself required twiddling with Apache and mod_php (or using a distro that shipped with packages that enabled it by default). php has builtin webserver since 5.4. that's like 5-6 years ago
- kbenson 9y ago
  If we're talking about the rise and dominance of PHP, we're talking about 10-15 years ago.
lmm 9y ago
> The whole "start up a little webserver in the same language" trend makes everything much* easier to develop. I actually agree, but that's not the approach that's pushed. In python the "tiny http server" is explicitly advertised as insecure and unsuited to production use. In Java, embedding Jetty involves dozens of arcane lines and manually translating suggested XML files into code - not something a beginner can do. What other language than PHP can I dump a single file on a shared host and have it be running? (Ironically Java is actually a legitimate answer here, if the shared host ran an application server like Tomcat and accepted .war uploads. But I don't think I've ever seen a shared host that offered that?)
- kbenson 9y ago
  > I actually agree, but that's not the approach that's pushed. In python the "tiny http server" is explicitly advertised as insecure and unsuited to production use. Sure, but we're talking about developing, and that's a pretty easy way to get started. In Python, don't you have Gunicorn, Tornado and Twisted? In Perl there's Mojolicious and Dancer. Ruby has Rails, Sinatra and probably a least a few more. Java... Well, IMO Java has a habit if either not delivering simple smaller projects, or communicating they exist very poorly (but I'm not really in the loop so my opinion may be very uninformed). Tomcat was too big and complex to fit this need a decade ago, so I doubt it does it well now (but maybe I'm wrong?). > What other language than PHP can I dump a single file on a shared host and have it be running? My point is that needing a shared host to get started is actually a step you often don't have to wait for now. If you're a developer, it's easier to just start up your dev locally and work out hosting in a bit. If you're developing something beyond the simplest things, the host allowing drop in scripts is not actually a problem I think. For anything that's super quick and dirty, you still have CGI. That's the point I was making. The drop in script support isn't really all that beneficial to PHP developers, but it is very beneficial to regular user that just was to deploy a PHP webapp of some sort, such as a bulletin board or blog software.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > Sure, but we're talking about developing, and that's a pretty easy way to get started. > My point is that needing a shared host to get started is actually a step you often don't have to wait for now. If you're a developer, it's easier to just start up your dev locally and work out hosting in a bit. I have to disagree. It's silly to try to develop something you can't actually run. Getting your software in front of actual users is the critical path; everything else is secondary. (And exposing your dev laptop as a web host on the internet is pretty complex in practice for most people, quite aside from whether it's a good idea) > For anything that's super quick and dirty, you still have CGI. Do any of the frameworks you listed (Gunicorn or Mojolicious or Rails or...) support running as CGI? Is it documented in their tutorials?