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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 migration

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.
      - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
        that's simply not true. nodejs v12 is years old, its like using php5 and lots of platforms don't support 5 anymore.
        viraptor 3y ago
        Security support for node 12 ended in 2022. For php5, in 2018. Those are very different. Rhel 7 is still alive, supports node 8, maybe 12, but nothing higher officially.
jddj 3y ago
Opinion: If more product teams had one person high up who felt embarrassed by even one of the things in your third paragraph we'd have significantly better tech.
rfl890 3y ago
Express
Aeolun 3y ago
PHP is great for getting started, but I think it gives you a fundamentally flawed idea of how the web works. You tend to think in files, and not worry about what Apache or Nginx are actually doing. Then when you switch to node, or basically any other language, you wonder where your file based logic is, and everything feels annoying and painful. Do you really need to host your own server to run a single file? Yes, you do with PHP too, but it’s hidden in Apache and php-fpm.
- Scotrix 3y ago
  The funny thing, even with React and Next, it’s ultimately just files served via a Webserver and I believe it’s the least flawed version you can get without building your own implementation of a TCP server which support HTTP (good luck with that btw ;-)). Nowadays the basics are just abstracted away and talking with developers today who might even have never seen the basic version of an on old-school Webserver or a simple HTTP request executed manually via telnet runs sometimes into really weird error and root causes analysis. So sometimes I wish the younger developers would know a bit more from the old world while the older developers now a bit more of the new world of web technologies (apache and a cgi driven bash script are not always the best solution even if you can squeeze ultimately everything into making even that work depending on your time and sadistic level :-)). Most of the modern solutions out there have been developed to solve very specific problems for a certain group of people (see the difference between React and Angular in that regard) and not always the solution everyone seems to use is the best for your problem, team and business.
Capricorn2481 3y ago
I guess as someone that likes php and is meh on Next JS and uses both for most of their job, this seems like an unfair comparison. You have node woes listed here, but nothing about different PHP versions or the headache of migrating from 7.4 to 8 (which every app is overdue for). And while composer can be good, managing php extensions is a nightmare in my eyes. Xdebug in particular is bizarre to me. I'm so used to being able to debug something in an IDE by default that I'm surprised when I switch to a certain PHP version for a project and forget the debugger won't work here until I set up the extension again.

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.
    - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
      that's simply not true. nodejs v12 is years old, its like using php5 and lots of platforms don't support 5 anymore.
      - viraptor 3y ago
        Security support for node 12 ended in 2022. For php5, in 2018. Those are very different. Rhel 7 is still alive, supports node 8, maybe 12, but nothing higher officially.

jddj 3y ago

Opinion: If more product teams had one person high up who felt embarrassed by even one of the things in your third paragraph we'd have significantly better tech.

rfl890 3y ago

Express

Aeolun 3y ago

PHP is great for getting started, but I think it gives you a fundamentally flawed idea of how the web works. You tend to think in files, and not worry about what Apache or Nginx are actually doing. Then when you switch to node, or basically any other language, you wonder where your file based logic is, and everything feels annoying and painful. Do you really need to host your own server to run a single file? Yes, you do with PHP too, but it’s hidden in Apache and php-fpm.

Scotrix 3y ago
The funny thing, even with React and Next, it’s ultimately just files served via a Webserver and I believe it’s the least flawed version you can get without building your own implementation of a TCP server which support HTTP (good luck with that btw ;-)). Nowadays the basics are just abstracted away and talking with developers today who might even have never seen the basic version of an on old-school Webserver or a simple HTTP request executed manually via telnet runs sometimes into really weird error and root causes analysis. So sometimes I wish the younger developers would know a bit more from the old world while the older developers now a bit more of the new world of web technologies (apache and a cgi driven bash script are not always the best solution even if you can squeeze ultimately everything into making even that work depending on your time and sadistic level :-)). Most of the modern solutions out there have been developed to solve very specific problems for a certain group of people (see the difference between React and Angular in that regard) and not always the solution everyone seems to use is the best for your problem, team and business.

Capricorn2481 3y ago

I guess as someone that likes php and is meh on Next JS and uses both for most of their job, this seems like an unfair comparison. You have node woes listed here, but nothing about different PHP versions or the headache of migrating from 7.4 to 8 (which every app is overdue for). And while composer can be good, managing php extensions is a nightmare in my eyes. Xdebug in particular is bizarre to me. I'm so used to being able to debug something in an IDE by default that I'm surprised when I switch to a certain PHP version for a project and forget the debugger won't work here until I set up the extension again.