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Most PHP developers don't start their first programming project from scratch using PHP to write their first web app. It's far more common to start because you a

by alxp 14y ago

Most PHP developers don't start their first programming project from scratch using PHP to write their first web app. It's far more common to start because you are running a blog on WordPress and you want to make some small change. Then you make another and another, then you're writing plugins and suddenly you're a programmer and PHP is your language. So to encourage developers to start with something other than PHP you'll need to lower the barrier to entry to modifying existing software, and also make something as popular and widely useful as WordPress and MediaWiki. This is going to take a while.

sho_hn 14y ago
Very true, that's how I started out as well (though neither WordPress or MediaWiki existed back then).
AncientPC 14y ago
I did a lot of PHP over the years, trying to migrate over to a Python web stack. A big hurdle is ops dev. All hosting services support PHP out of the box. Now I'm faced with the "distro choice". Which server do I use (lighthttpd / nginx / tornado)? Which framework (django / flask / web2py / cherrypy / pylons / pyramid)? Like the original author, I've had a VPS sitting unused for 2 months paralyzed by choices. I eventually decided on nginx / flask, but haven't had the time to set it up. Maybe I should have just used Heroku. shrugs
- eric_bullington 14y ago
  The same choices exist for PHP, although you may not be aware of them. PHP runs on all the servers you mentioned, and there are many, many frameworks in PHP (although admittedly not quite as many as in Python). Just choose one and learn it. They're all excellent web servers. I'd recommend going with Flask or Django in the beginning, simply because they have the best documentation. web2py also has pretty good documentation. The only problem with Django and web2py is that they are monolithic. If you don't like their ORM, or templating engine, or authentication/authorization, it's generally hard or impossible to switch, and if you do switch you lose all the benefits of the integrated system. With Flask and Bottle, on the other hand, you are free to pick and choose components. I think the same modular design approach is used by Pylons and Pyramid, but I'm not sure since I've never used them. But as you learn more, there's a lot to be said for being able to switch out components of your framework, or even writing your own in a pinch.

by alxp 14y ago

sho_hn 14y ago

Very true, that's how I started out as well (though neither WordPress or MediaWiki existed back then).

AncientPC 14y ago

I did a lot of PHP over the years, trying to migrate over to a Python web stack. A big hurdle is ops dev. All hosting services support PHP out of the box. Now I'm faced with the "distro choice". Which server do I use (lighthttpd / nginx / tornado)? Which framework (django / flask / web2py / cherrypy / pylons / pyramid)? Like the original author, I've had a VPS sitting unused for 2 months paralyzed by choices. I eventually decided on nginx / flask, but haven't had the time to set it up. Maybe I should have just used Heroku. shrugs

eric_bullington 14y ago
The same choices exist for PHP, although you may not be aware of them. PHP runs on all the servers you mentioned, and there are many, many frameworks in PHP (although admittedly not quite as many as in Python). Just choose one and learn it. They're all excellent web servers. I'd recommend going with Flask or Django in the beginning, simply because they have the best documentation. web2py also has pretty good documentation. The only problem with Django and web2py is that they are monolithic. If you don't like their ORM, or templating engine, or authentication/authorization, it's generally hard or impossible to switch, and if you do switch you lose all the benefits of the integrated system. With Flask and Bottle, on the other hand, you are free to pick and choose components. I think the same modular design approach is used by Pylons and Pyramid, but I'm not sure since I've never used them. But as you learn more, there's a lot to be said for being able to switch out components of your framework, or even writing your own in a pinch.