If it takes almost no effort to install your language and any modules that users might need, then the system administrator will just add it to the list of things to install. PHP is everywhere because its very easy.
PHP historically did not come with a disposable webserver, and writing one was hard. All the focus was on stateless applications. So while the smart guys were dealing with the memory leaks of their wonderful engineered systems, PHP monkeys were able to get things done with almost no fear to bring down the server.
I remember reading that Aaron Swartz used to go to bed with his laptop in order to be able to quickly restore Reddit in the case it crashed during the night. [Citation needed]
For hosting companies of the time, the choice of the language was pretty obvious. Most of them have policies of automatically killing long-running processes even nowadays.
On that note though, getting mod_wsgi up and running with Apache is really quite simple.
def wsgi_app(environ, start_response):
output = 'Hello World!'
status = '200 OK'
headers = [('Content-type', 'text/plain'),
('Content-Length', str(len(output)))]
start_response(status, headers)
yield output
# mod_wsgi need the *application* variable to serve our small app
application = wsgi_app
<?php
echo 'Hello World!';Adapting your wsgi script for "what? is it in a virtual env? Where? What version of Python is running on this server?" and other similar problems is not so easy.
But yes, it's a matter of an hour or two for a complete newby to complete it. It completely disappears when compared to the time it takes to develop the site, but lots and lots of people consider it the most important aspect of a platform, because it comes first.
Given any programming task, you're just going to end up with better code in pretty much any other language, especially a functional one.
I shudder when thinking about the damage that showing == vs === stuff (PHP's type coercion rules, in general) to someone new to programming! It is such a waste to force someone new to learn a bunch of edge cases and weird behaviors and an endless list of php lol's that literally have zero value outside the context of PHP.
This is the exact bull* that good hearted Haskell and Lisp guys have to face and fix because of arrogant people like you.
First of all, a good PHP programmer is a good programmer. End of story. You can write crystal clear code in PHP that anyone who started with C (how many I wonder?) or a C inspired language can read. Spreading information and knowledge IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT than debating the language.
Let me ask you a question, did you just happen to read that post that was recently on the front page of HN? The one that showed how much awesome is Lisp comparing to Python? How Python's creator seems to hate Lisp (functional programming)? Did you read it and got to the conclusion that since (perhaps) you are using a functional language then you are entitled to spew crap like that since you are the holder of truth?
Congratulation! PHP is worse than a functional language (you can write functional code in Python and PHP btw) and you are the winning lord of programming languages debates!
> you are entitled to spew crap like that since you are the holder of truth?
We ban users who address other users repeatedly like this, so please don't do it again on HN. Comments here must be civil and substantive.
No. It is not. It takes a lot more effort to produce the code of same quality in php. For one thin, you have to consider that one has to keep and endless list of gotchas and edge cases (yes, all languages have these, but the list is nowhere near as long as it is in php) in mind when writing any amount of php code.
>You can write crystal clear code in PHP that anyone who started with C..
tell me, what does this code do, in php?
$a = array('1' => 'one');
What is the value of $a after this statement?
Answer: It appears that it is creating a dictionary with a string key that maps to another string value, but instead it creates a numerically indexed array with value 'one' stored at numeric index 1.
Do you call this 'Crystal clear'?
PHP is a language that breaks the principle of least surprise at every turn. Please don't say you can write crystal clear code in it, if you are actually interested in spreading information and knowledge, as you put it.
But I agree, it's crystal clear for anyone with a minor PHP knowledge. For the rest it's just "clear". (It will still work calling $a['1'] with the quotes so what exactly is the issue? If you mean the drawbacks of type coercion not sure if this example is the best one.)
Oh yea. Try this.
$a = array ('1' => 'one');
foreach ($a as $k=>$v) {
if ($a === '1') {
echo "found one";
}
}
THAT is the issue! I used '===' so I should be safe from type coercion issues, right? Well, a hidden rule in php says no.
See this bug..oops feature, when it bit even experienced php programmers here
https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/2zhg6z/how_true_is_thi...
See that post and the comment from the user e-tron. Both of them who are experienced php programmers
> Bad idea? Sure. But once you know the enemy you can deal with it
Why surround yourself with more enemies than those that inherently exist in your business logic/problem domain? The problem with PHP is all of those "no big deal tiny issues" add up to something reminiscent of death by 1000 papercuts.
if ($k === '1') instead of if ($a === '1')..I spent 5 years working with ASP (very similar to PHP especially in the ability to create spaghetti code). In PHP's defense, I wrote an eBay-like site in one night using it. I also know Lisp, some Haskell, BASIC, Pascal, spent 10 years (!) on Ruby, know Clojure, Erlang, JS...
I think I know my shit, I'm 43 and have been basically coding since I was 12 on a Commodore PET... And although PHP lets you get something up quick... It will always be a challenge to create a team-maintainable codebase with it.
PHP doesn't even pass its own test suite. And they do not realize why this is bad? This is the hallmark of hubris.
It's not "arrogance" you're seeing, man. It is the cold hard weight of experience building and maintaining large codebases for years in various languages.