4 ms·

To get Perl to work with apache (the most used web server for a time), there were two options: the not-so-complicated cgi script which gets executed from scratc

by dana321 11mo ago

To get Perl to work with apache (the most used web server for a time), there were two options: the not-so-complicated cgi script which gets executed from scratch on every request, then there was mod_perl which required a lot of tinkering with apache configurations and writing your code in a different way. Even with those two options, you can't just write some code in a page and execute it without some sort of itermediate code. Thats why php became so popular, perl coders could pick it up in a day ($ and all) and all you have to do is write .php files to a server - with the bonus that you have a rudimentary templating system built-in to php. There really isn't much more to it than that.

riordan 11mo ago
This is why I preferred Mike Migurski’s nickname for PHP: Apachescript; easy to integrate to the web server and next fastest thing to C for Apache.
- RajT88 11mo ago
  I had to do a double take when I learned that modern cloud services still support PHP. Mentally, I put it in the same bucket as legacy ASP, which is looooong dead.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
dfltr 11mo ago
I vividly remember the first time a friend showed me PHP in the late 90s. You're saying I can just write a script that generates HTML and throw it in /foo/index.php and that's the whole thing? It's wild that right up until Rails got popular, we were writing code that served billions of requests off of homebrewed MVC-ish PHP frankenframeworks.
creer 11mo ago
> mod_perl which required a lot of tinkering [...] Here we used mod_perl all over the place and it was glorious. It did take understanding how to use it - well, yes - same as the rest of perl (or apache for that matters). But it was so well integrated! I still miss it. "Picking it up in one day" is not a criteria for professional deployements.
- _zagj 11mo ago
  > Here we used mod_perl all over the place and it was glorious. It did take understanding how to use it - well, yes - same as the rest of perl (or apache for that matters). But it was so well integrated! I still miss it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989369 Most people, including small businesses, used shared hosting providers back then, and none of them supported mod_perl, while most of them eventually did support mod_php. That's why PHP came to completely dominate the market for self-hosted (or hostable) web applications, like phpBB, Drupal, and WP--writing those in anything other than PHP after mod_php became available (but before AWS) made no sense. PHP was at least as ubiquitously supported as Perl, and through mod_php (avoiding CGI's overhead), much faster.
  - creer 11mo ago
    > none of them supported mod_perl Once mod_perl existed (it was late, after lots of CGI perl) - I feel that my clients and I never had significant difficulty in finding providers. PHP was all over the place - it felt - more because there was demand. But there was enough demand for mod_perl that it was always there when we wanted it. We never had to really hunt for a hosting vendor.
    - warpspin 11mo ago
      > I feel that my clients and I never had significant difficulty in finding providers Yes, for professional uses. But we lost the next generation of devs. You could put PHP on any shared webspace and people started messing with it and from that messing, the next generation of open source PHP programmers came.

by dana321 11mo ago

riordan 11mo ago

This is why I preferred Mike Migurski’s nickname for PHP: Apachescript; easy to integrate to the web server and next fastest thing to C for Apache.

RajT88 11mo ago
I had to do a double take when I learned that modern cloud services still support PHP. Mentally, I put it in the same bucket as legacy ASP, which is looooong dead.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

dfltr 11mo ago

I vividly remember the first time a friend showed me PHP in the late 90s. You're saying I can just write a script that generates HTML and throw it in /foo/index.php and that's the whole thing? It's wild that right up until Rails got popular, we were writing code that served billions of requests off of homebrewed MVC-ish PHP frankenframeworks.

creer 11mo ago

> mod_perl which required a lot of tinkering [...] Here we used mod_perl all over the place and it was glorious. It did take understanding how to use it - well, yes - same as the rest of perl (or apache for that matters). But it was so well integrated! I still miss it. "Picking it up in one day" is not a criteria for professional deployements.

_zagj 11mo ago
> Here we used mod_perl all over the place and it was glorious. It did take understanding how to use it - well, yes - same as the rest of perl (or apache for that matters). But it was so well integrated! I still miss it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989369 Most people, including small businesses, used shared hosting providers back then, and none of them supported mod_perl, while most of them eventually did support mod_php. That's why PHP came to completely dominate the market for self-hosted (or hostable) web applications, like phpBB, Drupal, and WP--writing those in anything other than PHP after mod_php became available (but before AWS) made no sense. PHP was at least as ubiquitously supported as Perl, and through mod_php (avoiding CGI's overhead), much faster.
- creer 11mo ago
  > none of them supported mod_perl Once mod_perl existed (it was late, after lots of CGI perl) - I feel that my clients and I never had significant difficulty in finding providers. PHP was all over the place - it felt - more because there was demand. But there was enough demand for mod_perl that it was always there when we wanted it. We never had to really hunt for a hosting vendor.
  - warpspin 11mo ago
    > I feel that my clients and I never had significant difficulty in finding providers Yes, for professional uses. But we lost the next generation of devs. You could put PHP on any shared webspace and people started messing with it and from that messing, the next generation of open source PHP programmers came.