6 ms·

> you can have that with server-side rendering plus yes, we use PHP for this which is much simpler to grasp than JS-SSR

geek_at 3y ago
plus you don't need to restart any services or rebuild servers. Just git pull and you have the new code on the live server without even a second of downtime
- flemhans 3y ago
  watch -n 1 git pull
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
Nah, not simpler, nextjs is simpler then php to start working with. Also running & deploying nowadays is easier. PHP used to be easiest, but fell behind.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pzmarzly 3y ago
  This very much depends on what you are building and how experienced you are. If you just want a few pages, no need for background workers or database migrations, PHP is still the king. You download one of many single-executable LAMP servers, and start writing your index.php. Deploy? Just copy files to server. Zero downtime deploy? Copy files to server and use symlink to atomically switch versions. Dependencies? Composer (package manager) is a single-file script, you can place it wherever. Pain only begins when you want to break away from file-based routing, or need custom .htaccess and nginx.conf, or want to isolate components, or need Redis and cron for background jobs. On NextJS side, I knew a few people who wanted to start their career with it and the experience wasn't smooth. You install nodejs... but your distribution only ships Node 12, so everything is failing with cryptic errors. You search how to upgrade Node, and get caught in nvm vs n vs asdf flamewars. Once you found a working solution (which probably required you to edit env variables), you run the npm command... and it wants root access? To install packages system-wide? So you google around, find a way to make it use the user home directory. Then you are up and running, you aren't sure what this "React" thing is, but you get stuff done. Time to deploy - and you are told to either learn Docker (and Kubernetes if you want zero downtime), or to use one of few hosting companies with a price markup. Well, at least there is a free tier (for now), so most people choose the latter. Was this a simple start? Now, when it comes to big apps, I'd very much rather use Nextjs than PHP, it is production-tested, gives you a lot "for free", JS LSP is built-in to VSCode, I already know React and most of JS ecosystem. But if somebody tells me that they just finished learning HTML and vanilla JS, and they want to do something simple server-side, I'm torn on what to recommend nowadays.
  - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
    You haven't worked with Vercel. Just connect your git account and you have a fully git-flow based server, with preview urls for every PR. Especially for small projects ideal. Running it on a VPS is a skill on it's own, for both, if users had known to use NVM (which is explained in most top articles in Google) it would have not been a problem and if they don't know they should accept the learning pains of running productions apps (PHP, node or whatever), or otherwise use a managed service such as Vercel. Upgrading PHP version is even more painful, I've tried to do version updates, and was alway easier just to build a new server. And also requires specific knowledge of apache, or nginx. Let alone deal with server outages, backups, restart, memory issues.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      You normally want to see things locally as you develop them. Vercel is cool and all, but doing a git push and waiting for the build every time you want a refresh? Nah, that's not viable. And almost everything mentioned above for deployments applies to your own dev machine as well.
      - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
        Okay then your comment is weird, windows & mac dont have distribution with node versions lower then LTS. It can be an issue on ubuntu/linux having an outdated registry. But nextjs clearly states minimum node version in their docs: https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started/installation https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started/installation And how to install every version you want NVM, that's on the user if it didn't work. That's not something different then can happen with PHP or other tools as mysql in the LAMP setup.
        viraptor 3y ago
        The context here is the "starting with" situation. It's much easier to do that with PHP since you normally don't have to care about versions there - barely anything requires version higher than in LTS. On the other side it doesn't matter what is clearly documented, or which registry is up to date - a person looking at this for the first time is either going to have an easier life or not. Nextjs effectively has extra steps you need to know about and follow.
vmfunction 3y ago
In node there is EJS which is basically PHP templating with JS.

plus you don't need to restart any services or rebuild servers. Just git pull and you have the new code on the live server without even a second of downtime

flemhans 3y ago
watch -n 1 git pull

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago

Nah, not simpler, nextjs is simpler then php to start working with. Also running & deploying nowadays is easier. PHP used to be easiest, but fell behind.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pzmarzly 3y ago
This very much depends on what you are building and how experienced you are. If you just want a few pages, no need for background workers or database migrations, PHP is still the king. You download one of many single-executable LAMP servers, and start writing your index.php. Deploy? Just copy files to server. Zero downtime deploy? Copy files to server and use symlink to atomically switch versions. Dependencies? Composer (package manager) is a single-file script, you can place it wherever. Pain only begins when you want to break away from file-based routing, or need custom .htaccess and nginx.conf, or want to isolate components, or need Redis and cron for background jobs. On NextJS side, I knew a few people who wanted to start their career with it and the experience wasn't smooth. You install nodejs... but your distribution only ships Node 12, so everything is failing with cryptic errors. You search how to upgrade Node, and get caught in nvm vs n vs asdf flamewars. Once you found a working solution (which probably required you to edit env variables), you run the npm command... and it wants root access? To install packages system-wide? So you google around, find a way to make it use the user home directory. Then you are up and running, you aren't sure what this "React" thing is, but you get stuff done. Time to deploy - and you are told to either learn Docker (and Kubernetes if you want zero downtime), or to use one of few hosting companies with a price markup. Well, at least there is a free tier (for now), so most people choose the latter. Was this a simple start? Now, when it comes to big apps, I'd very much rather use Nextjs than PHP, it is production-tested, gives you a lot "for free", JS LSP is built-in to VSCode, I already know React and most of JS ecosystem. But if somebody tells me that they just finished learning HTML and vanilla JS, and they want to do something simple server-side, I'm torn on what to recommend nowadays.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  You haven't worked with Vercel. Just connect your git account and you have a fully git-flow based server, with preview urls for every PR. Especially for small projects ideal. Running it on a VPS is a skill on it's own, for both, if users had known to use NVM (which is explained in most top articles in Google) it would have not been a problem and if they don't know they should accept the learning pains of running productions apps (PHP, node or whatever), or otherwise use a managed service such as Vercel. Upgrading PHP version is even more painful, I've tried to do version updates, and was alway easier just to build a new server. And also requires specific knowledge of apache, or nginx. Let alone deal with server outages, backups, restart, memory issues.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    You normally want to see things locally as you develop them. Vercel is cool and all, but doing a git push and waiting for the build every time you want a refresh? Nah, that's not viable. And almost everything mentioned above for deployments applies to your own dev machine as well.
    - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
      Okay then your comment is weird, windows & mac dont have distribution with node versions lower then LTS. It can be an issue on ubuntu/linux having an outdated registry. But nextjs clearly states minimum node version in their docs: https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started/installation https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started/installation And how to install every version you want NVM, that's on the user if it didn't work. That's not something different then can happen with PHP or other tools as mysql in the LAMP setup.
      - viraptor 3y ago
        The context here is the "starting with" situation. It's much easier to do that with PHP since you normally don't have to care about versions there - barely anything requires version higher than in LTS. On the other side it doesn't matter what is clearly documented, or which registry is up to date - a person looking at this for the first time is either going to have an easier life or not. Nextjs effectively has extra steps you need to know about and follow.

vmfunction 3y ago

In node there is EJS which is basically PHP templating with JS.