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Yes, that would be great. An alternative intro would be most welcome. It should, though: - Be able to start and serve in minutes, across most platforms - Allo

Yes, that would be great. An alternative intro would be most welcome. It should, though: - Be able to start and serve in minutes, across most platforms - Allow for portable code e.g. the code you create locally should be able to be ported over to an actual webhost with only [S]FTP. - Not require the command line to "work". At all. I tried to learn django ~a year ago, and it was an experience wrought with frustration and pitfalls. The documentation was so-so, and limited in resources (or I couldn't find it). The main trouble was getting all the packages/dependencies correct. I am quite comfortable with linux and terminal (again thanks to PHP), and though I eventually got it working, I was turned off enough by the whole process that I didn't do anything with it. My accomplishment was that I got it to work, which for me was certainly still worthwhile as I was still learning, but a newcomer would likely have gone back to Facebooking long before that... What is dangerous about the PHP bashing in my eyes (speaking with some current experience as a newb), is when someone decides to try and learn programming and they google some stuff about PHP and read endless diatribes on how horrible it is. So they go off and try django or RoR, are met with tough situations with little to no documentation; can't get anything to work, and give up all together. Whether or not PHP is pretty, it is accessible. The divide that is created by language ideology only serves to hurt the community as a whole, IMO.

crag 15y ago
"The main trouble was getting all the packages/dependencies correct. " This is the one big problem python has; terrible package management. I can think of 3 different package management systems for python. All of them barley work and the various libraries all require different mangers and different python versions. This package requires python 2.6. This other package requires 2.5. And now we have separate python 3.x packages. Ridiculous.
- kijin 15y ago
  Well, to be fair, "package management" in PHP usually means bundling every single package you need with every single app that needs them. Then you upload the whole thing by FTP.
kijin 15y ago
I would add low cost to that list. HN's fascination with cloud computing and massive scalability is not representative of web dev in the rest of the boring world. The vast majority of web sites out there are powered by shared hosting, where the norm is to cram 1,000 sites on a cPanel server. Apache+PHP makes economic sense in this environment because when your site isn't getting any requests, it uses no resources. But if everybody started running a persistent Django or Rails process in the background, or if every customer had to be given a VPS, hardware and maintenance requirements would quickly exceed what the provider can profitably offer. I can host a small website on NearlyFreeSpeech for $0.30 per month plus bandwidth, even less before they introduced a surcharge for dynamic websites. One of my old clients is hosted on another pay-as-you-go shared host, where she incurs all-inclusive charges of $0.07 per month on average. (The site is mostly static, with a PHP guestbook.) Like it or not, PHP makes this possible by folding the app server into the web server, and a lot of effort has gone into making such an environment reasonably secure without blowing up resource requirements. Even if you use a regular shared host that charges $8.95 per month, that's still cheaper than a medium-quality managed VPS. The current state of shared hosting might not be anything to write home about, but the low cost (compared to a VPS) allows anybody, including dirt poor students, to run a web site without being held hostage to a less customizable service that might or might not exist tomorrow, e.g. Posterous. I think this contributes to technical literacy and independence in a small but unique way. Any realistic alternative to PHP had better meet the same requirements.

crag 15y ago

"The main trouble was getting all the packages/dependencies correct. " This is the one big problem python has; terrible package management. I can think of 3 different package management systems for python. All of them barley work and the various libraries all require different mangers and different python versions. This package requires python 2.6. This other package requires 2.5. And now we have separate python 3.x packages. Ridiculous.

kijin 15y ago
Well, to be fair, "package management" in PHP usually means bundling every single package you need with every single app that needs them. Then you upload the whole thing by FTP.

kijin 15y ago

I would add low cost to that list. HN's fascination with cloud computing and massive scalability is not representative of web dev in the rest of the boring world. The vast majority of web sites out there are powered by shared hosting, where the norm is to cram 1,000 sites on a cPanel server. Apache+PHP makes economic sense in this environment because when your site isn't getting any requests, it uses no resources. But if everybody started running a persistent Django or Rails process in the background, or if every customer had to be given a VPS, hardware and maintenance requirements would quickly exceed what the provider can profitably offer. I can host a small website on NearlyFreeSpeech for $0.30 per month plus bandwidth, even less before they introduced a surcharge for dynamic websites. One of my old clients is hosted on another pay-as-you-go shared host, where she incurs all-inclusive charges of $0.07 per month on average. (The site is mostly static, with a PHP guestbook.) Like it or not, PHP makes this possible by folding the app server into the web server, and a lot of effort has gone into making such an environment reasonably secure without blowing up resource requirements. Even if you use a regular shared host that charges $8.95 per month, that's still cheaper than a medium-quality managed VPS. The current state of shared hosting might not be anything to write home about, but the low cost (compared to a VPS) allows anybody, including dirt poor students, to run a web site without being held hostage to a less customizable service that might or might not exist tomorrow, e.g. Posterous. I think this contributes to technical literacy and independence in a small but unique way. Any realistic alternative to PHP had better meet the same requirements.