Re:Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP?
by sachinag on Saturday June 07, 2008 @11:18PM
(#211867)
I spent a lot of time bellyaching about this when starting my company - looking at PHP, Perl (preferred by the devs), and Python (preferred by the advisers I trust).
In the end, we went PHP, and it was hugely lucky - we were able to hire a couple of devs on very short notice because we were in PHP, even though we use a less popular framework called Qcodo. After they were hired, I asked them what they thought, and there was no way they were going to learn a new language to join us, but they were ok learning a new framework.
My feeling is that PHP has the largest base of developers out there, and that means that you've got the biggest base of potential co-workers. If you yourself are a great hacker, you can prop up whoever else you're working with. If you're building an app/business to scale, you have to have other hackers join you.
Hell, Apple has a hard time finding Objective C hackers, and they're Apple.
In the end, we went PHP, and it was hugely lucky - we were able to hire a couple of devs on very short notice because we were in PHP, even though we use a less popular framework called Qcodo. After they were hired, I asked them what they thought, and there was no way they were going to learn a new language to join us, but they were ok learning a new framework.
My feeling is that PHP has the largest base of developers out there, and that means that you've got the biggest base of potential co-workers. If you yourself are a great hacker, you can prop up whoever else you're working with. If you're building an app/business to scale, you have to have other hackers join you.
Hell, Apple has a hard time finding Objective C hackers, and they're Apple.