5 ms·
While your observation is true to some degree, I do remember ASP, Cold fusion, CGI and a few other more obscure technologies way back when. Perhaps I was quite
by osrec 7y ago
While your observation is true to some degree, I do remember ASP, Cold fusion, CGI and a few other more obscure technologies way back when.
Perhaps I was quite late to the party though - I only started programming in 1999 (got a computer for my 11th birthday!) - so I'm not sure what it was like before then.
- javagram 7y agoASP and ColdFusion both required license fees at the time I believe (asp the Windows server license and CF of course the CF license) CGI just would run any type of script. Originally that was typically Perl but PHP surpassed Perl for a variety of reasons. PHP could be run either through CGI or through mod_php in Apache. There was also a mod_perl I believe and a few others but php is what web hosts typically installed in the early 2000s.
- im3w1l 7y agoWhy did php beat perl?
- horizone 7y agoPersonally, I switched from Perl to PHP around 2002 (I could be wrong with the year) as I wanted to move from flat file dbs to MySQL. I wouldn't say that it beat Perl, it was just made web development more accessible. I still wrote in Perl after that, but for server side scripting (processing, cleanup etc).
- tjpnz 7y agoEasy to write and easy to deploy. But that was a double edged sword.
- Kye 7y agoThe web. Making a typical language output HTML required a lot of hoop-jumping or inventing a web framework in a time before Django and Rails. PHP was its own web framework.
- klodolph 7y agoSomeone with better knowledge might step in here. From https://perl.apache.org/about/history.html https://perl.apache.org/about/history.html > "PHP was also around already, and was an embarrassing witness to Perl's greatest weakness for server-side programming: that embedding Perl was a pain. Although the hooks were there for embedding Perl, they were both undocumented and buggy. My other take on it is that PHP is like TypeScript, in that the path to adopting PHP from HTML is simple enough—just rename your HTML files with a .php suffix and you can add dynamic elements—or not. Just like how you can rename your JavaScript code with a .ts suffix and add types—or not. Personally, I remember writing a few Perl CGI scripts. But I ended up using PHP for any quick-and-dirty dynamic stuff.
- wvenable 7y agoPerl was just as inscrutable then as it is now.
- wvenable 7y ago> I do remember ASP, Cold fusion, CGI This is the competition that PHP was so much better than.
- Sir_Vival 7y agoI had a job 5 or 6 years ago where I needed to maintain/add to a website using ColdFusion. I actually kind of liked it, compared to PHP. That said I wasn't doing anything especially complex, which might have changed my mind.
- pjmlp 7y agoCGI yes, ASP certainly not.
- untog 7y agoASP required a license. That alone made PHP superior for many people.
- pjmlp 7y agoCheaper definitely, superior not.
- untog 7y agoWhy are the two separate? Of course you include cost when evaluating with option is superior.
- pjmlp 7y agoBecause to be superior, the tooling and libraries also have to be superior. PHP was only free beer with a clunky language and 3rd class DB support. MySQL couldn't hold a candle to real RDMS back then, versus what was available with ODBC connectors.
- 7y ago