6 ms·

"This" being "everyone else is doing it"? Doesn't seem a great reason.

EGreg 8y ago
No. We have a platform (https://qbix.com/blog https://qbix.com/blog) that needs to run on as many commodity hosts as possible, so as to form a cloud that isn’t centralized in Google and Amazon. We are building a Wordpress-like decentralized open source alternative to Facebook and Google.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  If "commodity hosts" doesn't include "ancient PHP shared hosting in Russia and India" then you are free from PHP itself and can build your platform on anything else.
  - pxtail 8y ago
    > you are free from PHP itself and can build your platform on anything else Sure, but why? Why one should discard proven,highly performant and well working solution with tons of already written and ready to use high quality frameworks and libraries? Why one should try to replace internet's "workhorse" with FOTM language/solution? Just because of hype on reddit and HN? I know that PHP (and Java) is out of fashion right now but it's worth to be calm, ignore buzzword hype and use best solutions for problems.
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      If not using PHP means that people are "using a FOTM language" then I don't think we can have a productive discussion since you're expressing disrespect right from the get go. The world isn't black and white and will never be. Don't oversimplify.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    We want it to be as widely geographically distributed as possible, with as much variety as possible. We won’t even care about security of the PHP 5.2 in the traditional sense. Truth be told, we will soon just need a bunch of open HTTP servers listening on the internet, and we will tunnel end-to-end encrypted traffic through them for signaling/matching clients by key and perhaps TURN relays. We already have 40,000 installed users and growing, our apps that run on people’s home computers will be able to make sure that stuff is secure and validated and enforce consensus with MINIMAL CPU power. We made the mistake of doing proof of work mining in the past and quickly removed it: https://www.google.com/search?q=qbix+mining&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=qbix+mining&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-... I think DNS is eventually going to go the way of the dodo, and we will have this: https://qbix.com/blog/2018/08/28/vision-for-a-new-truly-decentralized-web/ https://qbix.com/blog/2018/08/28/vision-for-a-new-truly-dece...
brightball 8y ago
PHP has it's flaws but it has it's strengths too. For low traffic sites or more content heavy sites that are going to be heavily statically cached anyway...it's REALLY hard to find cheaper hosting. PHP scales down better than just about any other language out there since most of the rest of them have to boot up.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  It seems like for that kind of site what you're really looking for is completely static content behind a CDN. Your average blog or corporate homepage doesn't need to be dynamic at page-load time. You can generate the pages with a template engine when you update them, and then serve up the static content. If you want to power some little dynamic things like blog comments you can run a custom microservice in a less awful programming language, or go with some hosted cloud option like AWS AppSync or Aurora Serverless.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    So one should increase their reliance on third party services, potentially having their small site requiring two or three external services (potentially at different providers) instead of just having it all in one package (in PHP or anything else)?
    - brianpgordon 8y ago
      So one should dynamically generate the page's markup for every single page view? With the attack surface that comes with exposing your PHP site to the public internet? Are you going to conscientiously check for security updates on your server? Are you going to trust whatever CMS you're using to win the whack-a-mole game of patching vulns (and god help you if it's Wordpress)? Are you going to stand up and maintain your own database server? Can you scale up capacity if you need it? Have you thought about backups? The "all in one package" solution is a lot more complex than you make it sound. I would argue that much of the 80% of the web powered by PHP would be well-advised to utilize cloud services.

No. We have a platform (https://qbix.com/blog https://qbix.com/blog) that needs to run on as many commodity hosts as possible, so as to form a cloud that isn’t centralized in Google and Amazon. We are building a Wordpress-like decentralized open source alternative to Facebook and Google.

pdimitar 8y ago
If "commodity hosts" doesn't include "ancient PHP shared hosting in Russia and India" then you are free from PHP itself and can build your platform on anything else.
- pxtail 8y ago
  > you are free from PHP itself and can build your platform on anything else Sure, but why? Why one should discard proven,highly performant and well working solution with tons of already written and ready to use high quality frameworks and libraries? Why one should try to replace internet's "workhorse" with FOTM language/solution? Just because of hype on reddit and HN? I know that PHP (and Java) is out of fashion right now but it's worth to be calm, ignore buzzword hype and use best solutions for problems.
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    If not using PHP means that people are "using a FOTM language" then I don't think we can have a productive discussion since you're expressing disrespect right from the get go. The world isn't black and white and will never be. Don't oversimplify.
- EGreg 8y ago
  We want it to be as widely geographically distributed as possible, with as much variety as possible. We won’t even care about security of the PHP 5.2 in the traditional sense. Truth be told, we will soon just need a bunch of open HTTP servers listening on the internet, and we will tunnel end-to-end encrypted traffic through them for signaling/matching clients by key and perhaps TURN relays. We already have 40,000 installed users and growing, our apps that run on people’s home computers will be able to make sure that stuff is secure and validated and enforce consensus with MINIMAL CPU power. We made the mistake of doing proof of work mining in the past and quickly removed it: https://www.google.com/search?q=qbix+mining&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=qbix+mining&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-... I think DNS is eventually going to go the way of the dodo, and we will have this: https://qbix.com/blog/2018/08/28/vision-for-a-new-truly-decentralized-web/ https://qbix.com/blog/2018/08/28/vision-for-a-new-truly-dece...

brightball 8y ago

PHP has it's flaws but it has it's strengths too. For low traffic sites or more content heavy sites that are going to be heavily statically cached anyway...it's REALLY hard to find cheaper hosting. PHP scales down better than just about any other language out there since most of the rest of them have to boot up.

brianpgordon 8y ago
It seems like for that kind of site what you're really looking for is completely static content behind a CDN. Your average blog or corporate homepage doesn't need to be dynamic at page-load time. You can generate the pages with a template engine when you update them, and then serve up the static content. If you want to power some little dynamic things like blog comments you can run a custom microservice in a less awful programming language, or go with some hosted cloud option like AWS AppSync or Aurora Serverless.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  So one should increase their reliance on third party services, potentially having their small site requiring two or three external services (potentially at different providers) instead of just having it all in one package (in PHP or anything else)?
  - brianpgordon 8y ago
    So one should dynamically generate the page's markup for every single page view? With the attack surface that comes with exposing your PHP site to the public internet? Are you going to conscientiously check for security updates on your server? Are you going to trust whatever CMS you're using to win the whack-a-mole game of patching vulns (and god help you if it's Wordpress)? Are you going to stand up and maintain your own database server? Can you scale up capacity if you need it? Have you thought about backups? The "all in one package" solution is a lot more complex than you make it sound. I would argue that much of the 80% of the web powered by PHP would be well-advised to utilize cloud services.