4 ms·

The op makes an extremely valid point: php works for his company. Clearly they're more concerned about the end result than the means through which it's accompli

The op makes an extremely valid point: php works for his company. Clearly they're more concerned about the end result than the means through which it's accomplished. And isn't that the way it should be? We're not talking about a freelance web developer here, who can easily experiment with different languages for each new project. It's a company with a large existing code base, which needs to function properly and, as it happens, so it does. Why throw all that in the bin just to be cool? Remember, the op does say they experiment with other languages at the company. They have yet to find one whose advantages are amazing enough to be worth a complete rewrite of the company's code base. That's not unresonable. So why all the "they're just can't be bothered to change" comments?

deleted 16y ago
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jasonlotito 16y ago
> So why all the "they're just can't be bothered to change" comments? Because (and I'm being serious here), it's PHP, and people can't accept that PHP is anything but a useless horrid beast.
FreebytesSector 16y ago
There are many situations in which rewriting the entire codebase can destroy a project. I have seen it happen. People get excited about a new language or framework and decide to rewrite their code in it. They want to add a single new feature that would be easier to do in the new language. They could still do this in the old language, but it would take longer. So, they begin to rewrite. They get bored, and the project never gets finished or they are inexperienced, and the project takes much longer than anticipated to get up to the level of the original. It is an unacceptable delay in most cases. For new projects, use the appropriate languages, but rewrites for large businesses are often the nail in the coffin.
bad_user 16y ago
Comments of the type "they're just can't be bothered to change" are idiotic, and whatever works for them it is fine. That said, for newer projects companies are better off choosing another platform more suitable to their domain. For example, if you want to do data-mining / language processing, there is no better alternative than Python. It has mature libs in that regard, good visualization tools, books on the subject come with Python source-code, and has bindings for frikin' everything (you can script everything with it, from Emacs and Vim to Gimp). Native extensions are easy as pie, working with forked processes is as good as it gets (comes with lots of really sweat libs), and Python also has Google's App Engine. And Ruby on Rails completely blows away (IMHO, YMMV) every alternative for fast web development ... it's beautifully designed, comes with best-in-class plugins and I haven't seen so much activity in any other web-related platform. So for newer projects, companies should try experimenting / investing in newer tools; otherwise the competition might just gain an unfair advantage. You shouldn't reinvent the wheel when people have been working on the exact same problem for years.

deleted 16y ago

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jasonlotito 16y ago

> So why all the "they're just can't be bothered to change" comments? Because (and I'm being serious here), it's PHP, and people can't accept that PHP is anything but a useless horrid beast.

FreebytesSector 16y ago

There are many situations in which rewriting the entire codebase can destroy a project. I have seen it happen. People get excited about a new language or framework and decide to rewrite their code in it. They want to add a single new feature that would be easier to do in the new language. They could still do this in the old language, but it would take longer. So, they begin to rewrite. They get bored, and the project never gets finished or they are inexperienced, and the project takes much longer than anticipated to get up to the level of the original. It is an unacceptable delay in most cases. For new projects, use the appropriate languages, but rewrites for large businesses are often the nail in the coffin.

bad_user 16y ago

Comments of the type "they're just can't be bothered to change" are idiotic, and whatever works for them it is fine. That said, for newer projects companies are better off choosing another platform more suitable to their domain. For example, if you want to do data-mining / language processing, there is no better alternative than Python. It has mature libs in that regard, good visualization tools, books on the subject come with Python source-code, and has bindings for frikin' everything (you can script everything with it, from Emacs and Vim to Gimp). Native extensions are easy as pie, working with forked processes is as good as it gets (comes with lots of really sweat libs), and Python also has Google's App Engine. And Ruby on Rails completely blows away (IMHO, YMMV) every alternative for fast web development ... it's beautifully designed, comes with best-in-class plugins and I haven't seen so much activity in any other web-related platform. So for newer projects, companies should try experimenting / investing in newer tools; otherwise the competition might just gain an unfair advantage. You shouldn't reinvent the wheel when people have been working on the exact same problem for years.