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I don't understand how Perl fell off and PHP didn't

dbalatero 10mo ago
I think PHP is way more accessible syntactically, even with all the standard complaints about the language. In the early 2000s it felt like "simple C style function calls embedded in HTML templates" more or less. Not much to have to teach there. And serving it tends to be "copy the files to your web server's public dir".
inglor_cz 10mo ago
PHP is, at least for me, way, way more readable. Similar enough to Java that you don't have to re-learn syntax too much.
wvenable 10mo ago
Perl is a very difficult language. PHP was a comparatively simple language. PHP was just a scripting language for C and incorporated as many open source C libraries as possible back when open source libraries were a bit of disjointed mess. PHP's success and Perl's decline was obvious at the time.
writtiewrat 10mo ago
As someone who doesn't really know neither Perl nor PHP, PHP is more of a domain-specific EDSL than a mainstream programming language. One of the few insights in the blog post that aren't stupid, fake, inconsistent and schizophrenic, is the one about PHP's common approach regarding spinning up new processes.
SoftTalker 10mo ago
PHP has fallen off. Who is doing anything new in PHP? PHP has a much bigger legacy of web stuff than Perl, because it was so much easier to use. But there's no future in it. Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla... all had their time but it's all in the past.
petesergeant 10mo ago
mod_php was dramatically simpler to use than mod_perl. If the sysadmin set it up, you didn't need to know it was there, and your regular PHP just ran really fast. That and nothing else really copied the "scriptable HTML file" paradigm which some people really really liked and made a very low barrier to entry compared to Perl. That's really what kicked off the demise of Perl -- it stopped being the most accessible way onto the internet. PHP also didn't screw up their major language upgrades like Perl did. RoR helped Ruby push off its inevitable demise for a while, but it's going the same way as Perl. Python got lucky that it's become the defacto choice for everything ML.
- smw 10mo ago
  I think this is the answer. PHP stayed relevant for so long because deployment was simple and the per-page-load performance hit was reasonably low.

I think PHP is way more accessible syntactically, even with all the standard complaints about the language. In the early 2000s it felt like "simple C style function calls embedded in HTML templates" more or less. Not much to have to teach there. And serving it tends to be "copy the files to your web server's public dir".

inglor_cz 10mo ago

PHP is, at least for me, way, way more readable. Similar enough to Java that you don't have to re-learn syntax too much.

wvenable 10mo ago

Perl is a very difficult language. PHP was a comparatively simple language. PHP was just a scripting language for C and incorporated as many open source C libraries as possible back when open source libraries were a bit of disjointed mess. PHP's success and Perl's decline was obvious at the time.

writtiewrat 10mo ago

As someone who doesn't really know neither Perl nor PHP, PHP is more of a domain-specific EDSL than a mainstream programming language. One of the few insights in the blog post that aren't stupid, fake, inconsistent and schizophrenic, is the one about PHP's common approach regarding spinning up new processes.

SoftTalker 10mo ago

PHP has fallen off. Who is doing anything new in PHP? PHP has a much bigger legacy of web stuff than Perl, because it was so much easier to use. But there's no future in it. Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla... all had their time but it's all in the past.

petesergeant 10mo ago

mod_php was dramatically simpler to use than mod_perl. If the sysadmin set it up, you didn't need to know it was there, and your regular PHP just ran really fast. That and nothing else really copied the "scriptable HTML file" paradigm which some people really really liked and made a very low barrier to entry compared to Perl. That's really what kicked off the demise of Perl -- it stopped being the most accessible way onto the internet. PHP also didn't screw up their major language upgrades like Perl did. RoR helped Ruby push off its inevitable demise for a while, but it's going the same way as Perl. Python got lucky that it's become the defacto choice for everything ML.

smw 10mo ago
I think this is the answer. PHP stayed relevant for so long because deployment was simple and the per-page-load performance hit was reasonably low.