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It would be interesting to learn the technical reasons for choosing PHP to implement a Dropbox clone.
by krn 7y ago
It would be interesting to learn the technical reasons for choosing PHP to implement a Dropbox clone.
- CM30 7y agoI'd guess easy hostability would be the main one, not anything technical. More hosting companies support PHP than any other language, and using it means people can set up their own file sharing system without needing to know much about server management. That's arguably the reason most popular CMS systems run PHP too; because they'd rather have something that's easier to setup and can be run nearly anywhere than something that requires knowing how to use a terminal or something.
- nine_k 7y agoI'd suppose it likely was an initial preference of a developer who wrote a quick prototype. I think shared hosting with php is mostly dead / makes no sense in a world of $5 VPS hosting. Anyone caring for simplicity of installation would ship a Docker container anyway (for last 5 years or so).
- CM30 7y agoI don't think shared hosting is dead. It's less popular among startups and tech savvy companies than it used too be, but there are still tons of companies and individuals who use it. Companies like GoDaddy and EIG still make a ton of money (even if many would rather they didn't), and many agencies specialising in WordPress/Magento/Drupal/whatever still get a lot of business.