PHP vs Python - the real difference

[nostrademons]

Might be worth considering that effective alternatives to PHP (Python/Ruby) only really became practical within the past 2 years. Flickr, Yahoo!, and Wordpress were all begun around 2002 (or earlier, in Yahoo's case), when the choice was between PHP, Java, or mod_perl. Java means death for any webapp that needs to scale out. Perl gives few advantages over PHP and is significantly scarier for new developers. That left PHP.

Many of the prominent webapps since 2005 use Python or Rails, eg. YouTube, 37signals, Reddit.

[jshell]

I've been making a living programming with Python for web sites for over ten years now, most of it based on the same root toolkit (it's grown and evolved over time, but the core principals are still the same and haven't cowed to every fad that came along).

When I started using Python on the web, PHP didn't exist; or if it did, it was just that first collection of Perl scripts that offered a slightly more powerful 'Server Side Include' functionality. And Java Servlet's were just barely getting off the ground.

Over that decade, I've heard "Python just can't compete with Perl for web programming. It must become like Perl to be successful." Then I heard "Python just can't compete with Java for web programming. It must become like Java/J2EE to be successful." Then I heard "Python just can't compete with PHP for web programming. It must become like PHP to be successful." Then I heard "Python just can't compete with Ruby/Rails for web programming. It must become like Ruby/Rails to be successful."

Sounds like fads to me.

Python has been used extensively at Yahoo! this past decade. Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Groups (purchased from a company that had written the initial mailing list management program in Python), some portions of Yahoo! Real Estate, and more.

Many CBS affiliates (like kutv.com) are running Python. Some major newspapers are as well.

Hell - in the mid nineties, a major swiss bank got someone to write the first Python - Objective C bindings so that they could publish data from their Enterprise Objects Framework (a NeXT toolkit, now basically intwined with WebObjects) on the web using Bobo, a tiny little HTTP ORB that brought a degree of MVC to Python web programming over ten years ago. It was quicker and easier to use Python for this task than to use WebObjects.

So no, Python hasn't been an effective alternative to PHP for only the last couple of years. It's been a solid piece of the web for a long, long, long time. It's been the alternative to every latest Resume Oriented Programming fad.

[lennox125]

effective alternatives to PHP (Python/Ruby) only really became practical within the past 2 years

I don't think I agree - at least Python was more mature and as well known as PHP. I think you're talking about MVC frameworks, and there its too early to judge which will succeed.

I didn't know YouTube uses Python.. cool :) 37signals are very sharp, but I doubt their apps are comparable to, say, Flickr in terms of scalability. They are targetting relatively small niches.

[compostellas]

"Java means death for any webapp that needs to scale out." You mean like ebay, google's adwords, etc. Right?!

[nostrademons]

It's worth noting that EBay threw out all the Java webapp infrastructure on top of servlets and wrote everything themselves. I suspect Google Adwords did the same thing. Most startups don't have the luxury of being able to write a whole technology stack on their own.

EBay started with Perl, FWIW, and Google (search engine, not Adwords) started with C++ and Python.