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With the (possible?) exceptions of Wikipedia and WordPress PHP is used by these sides for the fairly thin front-end layer. The core algorithmic functionality is
by strlen 17y ago
With the (possible?) exceptions of Wikipedia and WordPress PHP is used by these sides for the fairly thin front-end layer. The core algorithmic functionality is implemented in (usually) Java and C++ and occasionally Erlang, Python and Perl.
In fact, I am willing to argue that there's more reason to use something else if your app is simpler (i.e. it's a monolithic web application): you can add functionality without resorting to a more complex multi-tier/service oriented architecture or writing C-based extensions.
- nir 17y agoThe article is about PHP & Python. Erlang, C++ and Java don't really compete in the same space - I doubt writing any of these sites in Python would mean they wouldn't need Erlang or C++.
- strlen 17y agoPython is, in many cases, a serious contender for Java and C++. E.g. if you're dealing with any sort of machine learning (suppose you wish to add a recommendation engine to your site), Python (e.g. with NumPy) is more than capable of that (although these scripts will generally ran standalone, they could still use the same libraries for fetching user data). Yes, there are many cases where Python/Perl/Ruby can't do what Java/C++/Erlang can, but their capabilities stretch far longer than those of PHP. PHP essentially limits you to front-end web development; writing standalone scripts/tools/daemons in PHP -- been there, when a boss at a startup I worked in refused to allow me to use any other language -- is horribly painful. There's a progression between "simple CRUD pages" and "complex, service oriented architecture". Python can fill a lot more on that continuum.