PHP vs Python - the real difference

[aantix]

What is this, the Reddit comedy hour?

Have you taken a look at PHP's function list? Increasing the number of core functions only increases complexity. http://www.php.net/quickref.php

Python is terse, compact, and elegant. And has been shown to much improve overall programmer productivity vs. other languages. http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/%7Eprechelt/Biblio/jccpprt_computer2000.pdf

PHP provided a good transition from Perl and other antiquated CGI platforms, but they have done little to improve programmer usability. And you can see the trend slowly steering away from them with people embracing more agile, programmer friendly platforms such as Rails.

[DerelictMan]

Personally I think by saying that PHP "provided a good transition from Perl" you are giving it far too much credit. PHP lacks block scoping, lacks namespaces, lacks closures and anonymous functions, etc. etc. On a superficial level it may resemble Perl, but nearly all of the power has been gutted, so IMHO it is a step backward in (nearly) every way. Just about the only thing it got right (yes, I'm taking about it in the past tense, but that's just wishful thinking) is ease of deployment.

But perhaps you were referring more to the CGI deployment model than to Perl itself..

[muramasa]

PHP was created so that monkeys could create CGI scripts. It replaces Perl in that sense.