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I'm a PHP fan, but I think the following needs clarification > package manager to install dependencies (PHP apps are self-contained) PHP has Composer, which

I'm a PHP fan, but I think the following needs clarification > package manager to install dependencies (PHP apps are self-contained) PHP has Composer, which is one of the best things to happen to the ecosystem. Chances are, the piece of software you install will manage its dependencies in this way, and I'd be reluctant to install it if it didn't, as you wouldn't be able to update the software easily.

selfhoster11 5y ago
It does, but it's mostly transparent to the user. I've never had to think about it when I was installing WordPress.
- herbst 5y ago
  When you start on a minimal server installation setting up LAMP to the point that wordpress doesn't complain is just as much work as setting up RVM/Node and Passenger to run whatever language you want.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    All shared hosts already come with LAMP pre-configured. You just plug already supplied credentials into the WordPress setup page and that's it.
    - herbst 5y ago
      So does ex. heroku for all the other languages, and that actually scales. As well as most shared hosters offering node and rails. Don't get me wrong, my whole point is that this 'simplicity' is given in any ecosystem these days. Except live coding via FTP is something you consider part of the simplicity, then you are stuck with PHP :)
      - omnimus 5y ago
        This is not accurate. While some shared hosts offer node or rails you will be limited by memory and it might not even run your app. The reason PHP is so good for shared hosting is that it runs per request and when you have rarely visited PHP application it requires basically no resources. You can have 100s of small websites sharing resources that get few visitors a day on single server and it will be fine. Try doing that with node or rails which are application servers that need to run all the time. Heroku is fine but imagine you are agency managing 50 small sites. Heroku is like 7usd month minimum? You can pay 350usd month for Heroku or put it all on 20usd VPS and result will be same. That's why all self-hosted CMSes worth something are in PHP world and there are very few in python/rails/node. Also its not like PHP devs have been living under a rock for 20 years and don't want nice things. Git deployment is offered even by many shared hostings, people use SFTP+rsync, or things like https://deployer.org/ https://deployer.org/. And there is very active market of server management tools like https://forge.laravel.com/ https://forge.laravel.com/ https://ploi.io/ https://ploi.io/ https://moss.sh/ https://moss.sh/ that combined with attributes of PHP will give you your own little super easy heroku. And scaling... well most people don't need scale, you scale CMSes by caching anyway. And you can run pretty big scale just on one machine. And if you want automatic extreme scaling it's not like you can't do that with PHP https://vapor.laravel.com/ https://vapor.laravel.com/
        herbst 5y ago
        I was just using generic examples. However the way rails apps works with phusion passenger is exactly what you are explaining. I can run hundreds of apps next to each other on a tiny VM. Once a app is loaded I don't have to rebuild the state on each request, if it is not needed anymore (or rather another app needs the resources more) it gets unloaded again. Setting up passenger, nginx and git for pushing is also a job of 10 minutes max. I get there is a market for PHP, I too recommend wordpress when I don't want to code something for someone. I just don't see it's 'simplicity' as argument.

selfhoster11 5y ago

It does, but it's mostly transparent to the user. I've never had to think about it when I was installing WordPress.

herbst 5y ago
When you start on a minimal server installation setting up LAMP to the point that wordpress doesn't complain is just as much work as setting up RVM/Node and Passenger to run whatever language you want.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  All shared hosts already come with LAMP pre-configured. You just plug already supplied credentials into the WordPress setup page and that's it.
  - herbst 5y ago
    So does ex. heroku for all the other languages, and that actually scales. As well as most shared hosters offering node and rails. Don't get me wrong, my whole point is that this 'simplicity' is given in any ecosystem these days. Except live coding via FTP is something you consider part of the simplicity, then you are stuck with PHP :)
    - omnimus 5y ago
      This is not accurate. While some shared hosts offer node or rails you will be limited by memory and it might not even run your app. The reason PHP is so good for shared hosting is that it runs per request and when you have rarely visited PHP application it requires basically no resources. You can have 100s of small websites sharing resources that get few visitors a day on single server and it will be fine. Try doing that with node or rails which are application servers that need to run all the time. Heroku is fine but imagine you are agency managing 50 small sites. Heroku is like 7usd month minimum? You can pay 350usd month for Heroku or put it all on 20usd VPS and result will be same. That's why all self-hosted CMSes worth something are in PHP world and there are very few in python/rails/node. Also its not like PHP devs have been living under a rock for 20 years and don't want nice things. Git deployment is offered even by many shared hostings, people use SFTP+rsync, or things like https://deployer.org/ https://deployer.org/. And there is very active market of server management tools like https://forge.laravel.com/ https://forge.laravel.com/ https://ploi.io/ https://ploi.io/ https://moss.sh/ https://moss.sh/ that combined with attributes of PHP will give you your own little super easy heroku. And scaling... well most people don't need scale, you scale CMSes by caching anyway. And you can run pretty big scale just on one machine. And if you want automatic extreme scaling it's not like you can't do that with PHP https://vapor.laravel.com/ https://vapor.laravel.com/
      - herbst 5y ago
        I was just using generic examples. However the way rails apps works with phusion passenger is exactly what you are explaining. I can run hundreds of apps next to each other on a tiny VM. Once a app is loaded I don't have to rebuild the state on each request, if it is not needed anymore (or rather another app needs the resources more) it gets unloaded again. Setting up passenger, nginx and git for pushing is also a job of 10 minutes max. I get there is a market for PHP, I too recommend wordpress when I don't want to code something for someone. I just don't see it's 'simplicity' as argument.