4 ms·

I was once asked in an interview for a PHP role what was my favourite feature of PHP and my answer was deployablitiy. In my opinion it can't really be matched o

I was once asked in an interview for a PHP role what was my favourite feature of PHP and my answer was deployablitiy. In my opinion it can't really be matched on how easy it is to deploy. I can deploy any other language but it is never as easy as deploying PHP. The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.

FriedrichN 5y ago
> The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer. I wonder what would be the proper answer. Also if there is a proper answer, they shouldn't ask what your favourite feature is. I hate it when people ask questions where they expect some sort of exact question to see if you think in the exact same manner as they do. Just ask me what you want to know or I'll pack my shit and leave.
- gcmrtc 5y ago
  You're right, and donwvotes are from that kind of people.
flippinburgers 5y ago
Golang web apps are probably the simplest to deploy.
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  For that you need to build some little tooling around it. You have to do the service registration somit auto starts and then you need some form of a harness to restart the go daemon if something goes bad etc. Also the one deploying Go needs system permissions on the machine. For a PHP deployment this is all handled by a fully standardized Apache httpd (at least back in the days, nowadays setups became more fancy) and the PHP.user just uses (s)ftp to copy the files in and all works magically. Need to update? - Just copy the new files. This is the unbeaten simplicity. (Of course that breaks at some point, like imma high traffic site simply copying the files via sftp will lead to some request in the middle having inconsistent state etc.)
  - flippinburgers 5y ago
    The golang binary file + systemd. Don't run the process as root. Done.
    - that_guy_iain 5y ago
      Need ssh access. Can't deploy via ftp. A non-techincal person can deploy a WordPress site they will not be able to deploy a golang binary. If the binary fails for whatever reason the application is either down or you have to have something ensuring it stays running. With PHP if it breaks, it'll be ok for the next run.
      - flippinburgers 5y ago
        I am not familiar with tooling designed to allow non-programmers to deploy. For a programmer, a single binary is trivial stuff. My point being you can drop a golang in any linux environment and it will just run. It doesn't get simpler than that.
        that_guy_iain 5y ago
        I understand what your point is, it is just your point is invalid. You say you just drop a golang binary into any linux enviroment and it'll just run. Except it won't. If I just upload the file it won't just run. I need to run the binary. Literally, you need to do more than just upload the binary to the enviroment. Where as with PHP with many hosters you do just need to upload the files and it is deploy. As you said you can't get simplier than just uploading the files. Secondary, if you have to make exclusions to proof your point of simplicity then it is not as simple as you state. Thirdly, your deployment would be unstable. If an error occurs someone would manually have to restart it. For any production deployment you would need supervisior. And if you were going to deploy a new version you would have to stop supervisor, stop your process, upload and then restart supervisor. Quite simply your trival deployment is not production ready and would not be how someone would deploy it. I get it you like golang, I like it to, but PHP has it beat on deployablity. It's got years on it when it comes to improving the ecosystem around it.

FriedrichN 5y ago

> The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer. I wonder what would be the proper answer. Also if there is a proper answer, they shouldn't ask what your favourite feature is. I hate it when people ask questions where they expect some sort of exact question to see if you think in the exact same manner as they do. Just ask me what you want to know or I'll pack my shit and leave.

gcmrtc 5y ago
You're right, and donwvotes are from that kind of people.

flippinburgers 5y ago

Golang web apps are probably the simplest to deploy.

johannes1234321 5y ago
For that you need to build some little tooling around it. You have to do the service registration somit auto starts and then you need some form of a harness to restart the go daemon if something goes bad etc. Also the one deploying Go needs system permissions on the machine. For a PHP deployment this is all handled by a fully standardized Apache httpd (at least back in the days, nowadays setups became more fancy) and the PHP.user just uses (s)ftp to copy the files in and all works magically. Need to update? - Just copy the new files. This is the unbeaten simplicity. (Of course that breaks at some point, like imma high traffic site simply copying the files via sftp will lead to some request in the middle having inconsistent state etc.)
- flippinburgers 5y ago
  The golang binary file + systemd. Don't run the process as root. Done.
  - that_guy_iain 5y ago
    Need ssh access. Can't deploy via ftp. A non-techincal person can deploy a WordPress site they will not be able to deploy a golang binary. If the binary fails for whatever reason the application is either down or you have to have something ensuring it stays running. With PHP if it breaks, it'll be ok for the next run.
    - flippinburgers 5y ago
      I am not familiar with tooling designed to allow non-programmers to deploy. For a programmer, a single binary is trivial stuff. My point being you can drop a golang in any linux environment and it will just run. It doesn't get simpler than that.
      - that_guy_iain 5y ago
        I understand what your point is, it is just your point is invalid. You say you just drop a golang binary into any linux enviroment and it'll just run. Except it won't. If I just upload the file it won't just run. I need to run the binary. Literally, you need to do more than just upload the binary to the enviroment. Where as with PHP with many hosters you do just need to upload the files and it is deploy. As you said you can't get simplier than just uploading the files. Secondary, if you have to make exclusions to proof your point of simplicity then it is not as simple as you state. Thirdly, your deployment would be unstable. If an error occurs someone would manually have to restart it. For any production deployment you would need supervisior. And if you were going to deploy a new version you would have to stop supervisor, stop your process, upload and then restart supervisor. Quite simply your trival deployment is not production ready and would not be how someone would deploy it. I get it you like golang, I like it to, but PHP has it beat on deployablity. It's got years on it when it comes to improving the ecosystem around it.