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So, serious question - what language is better for small limited-scope web coding right now? I don't mean major, fully-fledged app stuff, I mean simple CMSes,

So, serious question - what language is better for small limited-scope web coding right now? I don't mean major, fully-fledged app stuff, I mean simple CMSes, on-page loops / conditionals, <? echo $_GET["foo"] ?>, etcetera. I'm no hardcore uber-coder, but I know enough to know there are languages I prefer to use than PHP. Personally, I like Ruby. But for a bit of quick glue or a relatively simple bit of web coding, I simply can't figure out what you'd use instead of PHP - and I assume from the number of "PHP sucks" comments that there must be such simple options?

Joeboy 13y ago
> I mean simple CMSes, on-page loops / conditionals, <? echo $_GET["foo"] ?>, etcetera. Serious return question - who has requirements like that? In my experience CMSes are never simple, and I can't think what kind of site has the latter requirements, but only has those requirements and won't ever need any more functionality. Personally I'd maybe use something like Django + the Flatpages app for a "simple CMS", and a tiny wsgi app for adding simple logic to a web page. Not, to be honest, because they're a perfect fit for those particular tasks but because I'd get to use a sensible language (python) that will remain sensible for the majority of other tasks (including non-web based ones).
- thenomad 13y ago
  In my case, I use simple, quick code a lot for landing pages for clients and advertising in general, as well as for websites that are mostly static but occasionally need dynamic elements - most of my web series web pages end up either like this or built in Wordpress. Anything that's either focused on content or sales and either doesn't have a programmatic backend or hands off to another site will probably fall into the "not a full-fledged webapp" category. If I'm running an A/B test on a landing page, for example, I just need logging code and a conditional to choose what variants to display on-page. There's a lot of conditionals based on input conditions, too - "Hello, Hacker News reader!", redirects depending on country of origin, that sort of thing. I'll also use simple snippets of PHP or Javascript on sites that are already using Wordpress, but there you're locked into PHP from the outset, of course.

Joeboy 13y ago

> I mean simple CMSes, on-page loops / conditionals, <? echo $_GET["foo"] ?>, etcetera. Serious return question - who has requirements like that? In my experience CMSes are never simple, and I can't think what kind of site has the latter requirements, but only has those requirements and won't ever need any more functionality. Personally I'd maybe use something like Django + the Flatpages app for a "simple CMS", and a tiny wsgi app for adding simple logic to a web page. Not, to be honest, because they're a perfect fit for those particular tasks but because I'd get to use a sensible language (python) that will remain sensible for the majority of other tasks (including non-web based ones).

thenomad 13y ago
In my case, I use simple, quick code a lot for landing pages for clients and advertising in general, as well as for websites that are mostly static but occasionally need dynamic elements - most of my web series web pages end up either like this or built in Wordpress. Anything that's either focused on content or sales and either doesn't have a programmatic backend or hands off to another site will probably fall into the "not a full-fledged webapp" category. If I'm running an A/B test on a landing page, for example, I just need logging code and a conditional to choose what variants to display on-page. There's a lot of conditionals based on input conditions, too - "Hello, Hacker News reader!", redirects depending on country of origin, that sort of thing. I'll also use simple snippets of PHP or Javascript on sites that are already using Wordpress, but there you're locked into PHP from the outset, of course.