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PHP is an ok language for web frameworks. But for most other things, it is a poor fit. There’s a reason why people are generally not doing scientific computing
by mikl 5y ago
PHP is an ok language for web frameworks. But for most other things, it is a poor fit.
There’s a reason why people are generally not doing scientific computing, machine learning, hardware integration, systems programming, etc. in PHP (yes, there are likely some obscure projects doing all of those, but in general, it’s not done because of limitations in the PHP runtime).
If you already know PHP, you can probably have a long and healthy career in that space. But if you’re new to programming, you’ll probably be better off learning Python or Rust, or maybe one of the platform-oriented languages like C#, Kotlin or Swift. JavaScript is also a very popular choice, because it’s currently the only thing you can easily use in the browser, but that might change with the rise of WASM.
- postalrat 5y agoAnd there's a reason why people are generally not doing web stuff in python or rust.
- __float 5y agopeople aren't doing web stuff in python?? django, flask, etc. are still very popular. maybe not as much as a few years ago, but people tend to stick to tech they know well, and python's web libraries are pretty battle tested at this point.
- mikl 5y agoLots and lots of people do web stuff in Python. There are a whole bunch of Python web frameworks like Django, Pylons, Flask, etc. And there are big sites written in Python, too. Reddit, YouTube, some Google apps, Spotify, Netflix. Rust is still a bit young, but also has several web frameworks like Rocket. No big case studies that I know of, but Rust still has many more fields of applications than PHP does.
- postalrat 5y agoSure, a small minority of sites are partially written in python.
- mikl 5y agoTons of sites are written exclusively in Python. Django alone has 60k stars and 25k forks on Github. That about the same as Laravel.
- postalrat 5y agoA quick search came up with an order of magnitude more sites in laravel than django. And combined are still a small fraction of sites on the internet.
- mikl 5y agoWhichever way you spin it, building web stuff is a perfectly normal thing to do with Python. Thousands of companies do so, even big famous brands like the aforementioned.
- wiseowise 5y agoThere's nothing platform-specific about C# and Kotlin.
- mikl 5y agoIn theory, true. In practise, they are most popularly used for the Microsoft and Android ecosystems, respectively. I’ve reworded it to platform-oriented.
- philliphaydon 5y agoI'm not sure what you mean by platform-oriented.
- mikl 5y agoWell, I’m not trying to invent scientific classifications here, but the common reason to choose one of said languages is to use them with the Microsoft/Apple/Android ecosystems, respectively.
- philliphaydon 5y agoOk, I'm just trying to understand. Not trying to make you create a scientific classiciation :D I just disagree as a .NET developer.
- mikl 5y agoI could be mistaken, but I can’t remember last time I heard of a C# project that wasn’t either targetting Windows as a platform (whether server or desktop) or running against some other Microsoft-thing like Xamarin. In the early days of Mono, there were some attempts at using C# outside Microsoft circles, like building Gnome-apps with GTK#, but most of those projects have faded away.
- philliphaydon 5y ago