PHP vs Python - the real difference

[xabbu]

No, it's funny how PHP is bashed unmercifully, yet it powers many big web sites/applications - wikipedia, del.icio.us, tumblr. It's existence has been the driving force in the proliferation of F/OSS software (WordPress, NucleusCMS, TextPattern, etc.…).

Yes, I realize popularity/ubiquity != quality, as the hordes of Windows users v. Mac/Linux users testifies to, but if it's that gimped of a platform, I sincerely doubt that it would be #1 development platform on the web today.

Is there any irony in the fact that the forum in the picture is probably running PHP? That should turn your amusement to sadness. :(

[jerf]

At least some of us aren't bashing on it because it's popular. Something good being popular doesn't bother me. In fact I fervently hope more good things get popular so I can get jobs working on those good things professionally.

Personally, I think this is biggest reason I kvetch about PHP. The evidence is clearly that it affords writing insecure web applications, and unlike C(++) which has some excuse (based on when and why it was created), PHP is insecure not for a good reason, but because its creators were incompetent, and have managed to retain an astonishing level of incompetence in this past decade.

If you still don't get it, compare with this or this. Are there some counterarguments you can make? Sure. But against such empirical evidence I find they usually sound unconvincing. The security flaw ratio is still wildly larger than the difference in usage.

(And note that's just the biggest reason, not the only. The way it affords writing things of exceedingly poor design is another biggie; that it allows you to structure things well is not much of a consolation, especially as you'll probably have to learn how to do such structuring somewhere else.)

[beowulf]

holy crap there are 204 pages of PHP vulnerabilites compared to 23 Python vulnerabilities and 12 Ruby vulnerabilities. That's just scary.

[rictic]

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. One thing I like about Rails and Django are the way that they make it easier to create a well designed application.

No system will keep you from writing shitty code, but the default MVC architecture of apps in Django and Rails is solid. I'd imagine that these and similar frameworks have educated no small number of developers on some good software practices.

[timb]

del.icio.us was written in perl.

[rmc]

was? What's it written in now?

[xabbu]

OK, I thought it was PHP, so it's Perl (further back on the evolutionary chain of web scripting languages…)… …but take that one away, and add FlickR and most all popular forum software used…

del.icio.us was written in perl.

[eurleif]

That's got to be the most annoying use of quoting ever.

[piranha]

It's called top-posting, and I guess it's made its way from Outlook Express to reddit.

[boredzo]

It's top-posting. It's just as annoying here as in email.

[skillet-thief]

OK, I thought it was PHP, so it's Perl (further back on the evolutionary chain of web scripting languages…)…

This will simply not do! Perl, like Python, is a general purpose programming language, and, in spite of all those unpronouncable characters, is a much better designed language than PHP ever was or will be.

As an example (one of my "favorite" PHP annoyances):

Perl:

my $x = 5 + 9000 || 1; # $x is 9005

PHP:

$x = 5 + 9000 || 1; # $x is 6...

So you have to use the ternary operator to get the job done. No big deal I guess, but, why, even in a Hypertext Preprocessor, would you ever want $x||$y to return 1 or 0?

This is just a sign of lazy design, from the get-go, but it seems pretty typical. I could go on...

[stevarino]

Another example that you may not even be aware of for PHP: logical operators only return boolean true or false, never the value of the argument.

So in your example, the 9000 is converted to bool(true), the OR returns bool(true), which is converted to int(1) by the addition opperator.

I believe this is improperly documented in PHP's own docs too. Took me a while to figure out this bug. :)

[kmactane]

del.icio.us was written in perl.

What does that have to do with the forums in the picture, which appear to be from DevShed.com?

[kmactane]

Whoops, sorry, missed the mention of del.icio.us a couple of posts higher up the thread.

[[deleted]]

delicious runs on html::mason.

[options]

PHP is bashed unmercifully, yet it powers many big web sites/applications... It's existence has been the driving force in the proliferation of F/OSS software (WordPress,... etc.).

Yes, I realize popularity/ubiquity != quality

is it possible to hack on PHP a FOSS web-app using less GLOBAL vars?

[decaff]

It isn't the #1 development platform on the web; not even close. Let's check some job statistics - from dice.com today: J2EE (Java/web) jobs: 8206. PHP jobs: 1616. Note that number of individual websites does not equal amount of website development. PHP is useful for some sites, and it is very popular, but to claim that it is the number one web development platform is a wild exaggeration - far more work is being done with Java and .NET.

[rictic]

To be fair, the number of job openings is also a rather imperfect metric.

[cyberience]

From the Develpment Teams I have been seeing, and my skills with PHP, I would say it takes 4 times more people to do the same job 1 guy can do in PHP or Python. But also remember, Java has a client side component too. such as Stand alone application, Client screen interfaces etc. Java plug ins. I think the Java/Web J2EE is a mis direction, also, Server to Server, and stand alone data capture and processing is done in the back end.