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The argument here seems to be that PHP is great because you can use it to get things done quickly. But Python and Ruby, among other languages, are also availab

The argument here seems to be that PHP is great because you can use it to get things done quickly. But Python and Ruby, among other languages, are also available for Web programming, and you can get things done quickly in them as well. Plus, you can do some things in them much more easily than in PHP. I think the most important thing in the development of any hacker is to constantly scratch the creative itch. A close second to that would be to constantly explore. While PHP scores better on those measures than some other languages, I think developers that use it day-in and day-out eventually find it painful to use. At that point, the language becomes a burden, because it discourages you from creating and exploring. I think it boils down to where you are on the learning curve and how much heavy lifting you need/want to do on a regular basis.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
But Python and Ruby, among other languages, are also available for Web programming, and you can get things done quickly in them as well. Plus, you can do some things in them much more easily than in PHP. I hold out great hope for these languages, but they are still very new. (Technically, the languages themselves are as old as PHP or older, but their popularity in the web problem space is new.) Some of the advantages of being old are easy to appreciate, like the fact that PHP is so easy to deploy that most cheap shared hosts deploy it as a matter of course, and the fact that it runs really fast. Others are more subtle. There are enormous user communities centered around user-focused, PHP-based toolkits like Wordpress and Drupal. Ruby and Python just don't have these yet, but that may just be a question of time. The Drupal community is now huge, but it took nearly eight years to get to this point. There are a few Ruby and Python-based projects which aim to be the equivalent of Drupal (everybody wave to the Insoshi folks!), but they're only a year or two old. Which is too bad, because Ruby is so much more satisfying than PHP. The future cannot arrive soon enough.

mechanical_fish 18y ago

But Python and Ruby, among other languages, are also available for Web programming, and you can get things done quickly in them as well. Plus, you can do some things in them much more easily than in PHP. I hold out great hope for these languages, but they are still very new. (Technically, the languages themselves are as old as PHP or older, but their popularity in the web problem space is new.) Some of the advantages of being old are easy to appreciate, like the fact that PHP is so easy to deploy that most cheap shared hosts deploy it as a matter of course, and the fact that it runs really fast. Others are more subtle. There are enormous user communities centered around user-focused, PHP-based toolkits like Wordpress and Drupal. Ruby and Python just don't have these yet, but that may just be a question of time. The Drupal community is now huge, but it took nearly eight years to get to this point. There are a few Ruby and Python-based projects which aim to be the equivalent of Drupal (everybody wave to the Insoshi folks!), but they're only a year or two old. Which is too bad, because Ruby is so much more satisfying than PHP. The future cannot arrive soon enough.