4 ms·

You are free to think that w3techs is junk, but you initial claim was wrong. https://w3techs.com/disclaimer https://w3techs.com/disclaimer

by tored 5y ago

theamk 5y ago
I think I got most of this correct? My initial claims were: "bad reporting" -- I this is fully justified. The arstechnica report says things like "PHP [...] holds a 78.9 percent share as of today" without mentioning that this is not share of all servers, this is a share of servers where w3techs algorithm works. Which is a pretty low share based on my spot check. a website quote saying the percentages are not from all websites, but only from one where they know programming languages -- this is correct quote, see https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php . "graph only covers the languages which leak their names into headers" -> I agree, this is wrong, I should have omitted "into headers" part. But I think it is a pretty minor difference and it does not change the other points. "The “unknown” category is missing completely," -- this is correct as well. Do you see "unknown server-side language" category in the graph or anywhere else in the report? Overall, that arstechnica article and that report are both omitting a crucial piece of information which makes the data unreliable.
- tored 5y ago
  Ars technica's article is wrong, that is true. It claims that the survey says that PHP has a lead in server-side programming languages, that is not what the survey says, the survey only measures websites, not server-side programming languages in general. What I meant was that your original claim that the survey measures response headers only, that is false.
  - theamk 5y ago
    > the survey only measures websites, not server-side programming languages in general. the survey only measures websites where w3tech's algorithm works Or, in other words, "PHP maintains an enormous lead in the websites on which w3tech's scanner returned something" does not sound that impressive, does it?
    - tored 5y ago
      I guess it depends on the failure rate, but the thing is that PHP has an overwhelming lead over the others that is not even close even if you would combine everyone else vs PHP, can the failure rate be that big? What this tells us is that still today PHP is really good fit for websites, but language makers seems to focus on solving other non website related problems but then hype their technologies that it can be used for websites when few of the web developers agree. That is a problem. Edit: And then we have the reoccurring PHP hate campaigns, and it seems to not only be something online but also within academia, which of course creates an illusion that PHP is not useful when we actually need more PHP developers.
      - theamk 5y ago
        > can the failure rate be that big? yes? have you seen my post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538595 out of 6 major websites I thought of (gitlab, github, microsoft, youtube, amazon), it got all of them wrong. I dug a bit further and while I could not find the recent data, I found some details: - For Jan 2013, Netcraft said "244M sites" running PHP: 244M sites: https://www.php.net/usage.php https://www.php.net/usage.php - For Jan 2013, Netcraft said they had 630M sites total: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/01/07/january-2013-web-server-survey-2.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/01/07/january-2013-w... - That means that according to Netcraft, in Jan 2013, 39% of sites were running PHP - For the same date, w3techs were showing 75% of websites their scanner works on were running PHP This means that w3techs can be easily more than 100% off -- and I don't think it got better over time. I bet if we saw "unknown" figure, then PHP would get less than 50% of the sites, and dropping fast.
        tored 5y ago
        6 out of 10 to 11 million websites that is. The Netcraft survey has a different sample, where w3tech test the 10 million largest websites of Alexa and Tranco top 1 millions websites, it seems like Netcraft samples every host they know of to get sites and in 2013 it was about 630 million sites tested and then either look at php file extension or response header. Thus you are comparing apples to oranges. Both can still be true.

You are free to think that w3techs is junk, but you initial claim was wrong. https://w3techs.com/disclaimer https://w3techs.com/disclaimer

by tored 5y ago

You are free to think that w3techs is junk, but you initial claim was wrong. https://w3techs.com/disclaimer https://w3techs.com/disclaimer

theamk 5y ago

I think I got most of this correct? My initial claims were: "bad reporting" -- I this is fully justified. The arstechnica report says things like "PHP [...] holds a 78.9 percent share as of today" without mentioning that this is not share of all servers, this is a share of servers where w3techs algorithm works. Which is a pretty low share based on my spot check. a website quote saying the percentages are not from all websites, but only from one where they know programming languages -- this is correct quote, see https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php . "graph only covers the languages which leak their names into headers" -> I agree, this is wrong, I should have omitted "into headers" part. But I think it is a pretty minor difference and it does not change the other points. "The “unknown” category is missing completely," -- this is correct as well. Do you see "unknown server-side language" category in the graph or anywhere else in the report? Overall, that arstechnica article and that report are both omitting a crucial piece of information which makes the data unreliable.

tored 5y ago
Ars technica's article is wrong, that is true. It claims that the survey says that PHP has a lead in server-side programming languages, that is not what the survey says, the survey only measures websites, not server-side programming languages in general. What I meant was that your original claim that the survey measures response headers only, that is false.
- theamk 5y ago
  > the survey only measures websites, not server-side programming languages in general. the survey only measures websites where w3tech's algorithm works Or, in other words, "PHP maintains an enormous lead in the websites on which w3tech's scanner returned something" does not sound that impressive, does it?
  - tored 5y ago
    I guess it depends on the failure rate, but the thing is that PHP has an overwhelming lead over the others that is not even close even if you would combine everyone else vs PHP, can the failure rate be that big? What this tells us is that still today PHP is really good fit for websites, but language makers seems to focus on solving other non website related problems but then hype their technologies that it can be used for websites when few of the web developers agree. That is a problem. Edit: And then we have the reoccurring PHP hate campaigns, and it seems to not only be something online but also within academia, which of course creates an illusion that PHP is not useful when we actually need more PHP developers.
    - theamk 5y ago
      > can the failure rate be that big? yes? have you seen my post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538595 out of 6 major websites I thought of (gitlab, github, microsoft, youtube, amazon), it got all of them wrong. I dug a bit further and while I could not find the recent data, I found some details: - For Jan 2013, Netcraft said "244M sites" running PHP: 244M sites: https://www.php.net/usage.php https://www.php.net/usage.php - For Jan 2013, Netcraft said they had 630M sites total: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/01/07/january-2013-web-server-survey-2.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/01/07/january-2013-w... - That means that according to Netcraft, in Jan 2013, 39% of sites were running PHP - For the same date, w3techs were showing 75% of websites their scanner works on were running PHP This means that w3techs can be easily more than 100% off -- and I don't think it got better over time. I bet if we saw "unknown" figure, then PHP would get less than 50% of the sites, and dropping fast.
      - tored 5y ago
        6 out of 10 to 11 million websites that is. The Netcraft survey has a different sample, where w3tech test the 10 million largest websites of Alexa and Tranco top 1 millions websites, it seems like Netcraft samples every host they know of to get sites and in 2013 it was about 630 million sites tested and then either look at php file extension or response header. Thus you are comparing apples to oranges. Both can still be true.