Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Which Web Platform Would You Use?
New submitter datavirtue writes "I'm about to embark on developing active content (database driven, and web services) for the first time for my website and I have grown to love PHP. Knowing that there are other web development platforms available, and noticing some disdain for PHP in some circles, I'm curious to know which platforms slashdotters prefer along with the reasons why. Before I get started into heavy development I would like to get some opinions and more facts. Why shouldn't I use PHP?"
I've been using Django for a while now on my web app, having moved away from home-brewed PHP. Very easy to use, and encourages well-written and elegant code.
Ydco co
OK; because for some strange reason nobody has raised this criticism, I will:
Going down the Microsoft (ASP.net/C#/Visual Studio/SQL Server/etc.) route is EXPENSIVE. You will have to pay ongoing licensing fees for EVERYTHING. It simply isn't an option for a small-time developer without much cash; you need to be a small-to-medium sized business at least, I'd say.
That's a significant consideration, and is the primary reason I tend to avoid it for my personal projects.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
To throw my personal thoughts in to the fray. It really depends on what you are trying to do. For slimmed down front end, I prefer PHP. If you came from a PHP background, I would expect ASP.Net's UI to be infuriating to get used to. (I also come from a very strong PHP background and the shift to ASP.NET webforms for a project at work has been a major headache.) That said, ASP.Net MVC functions much more in the PHP style that you are used to. Overall though, unless you need to have the same front end and back end, I would recommend working the front end in whatever you are the most comfortable with. If that is PHP, I don't see any reason it should cause you trouble.
As for the backend, it could be done in PHP and I've done back ends in PHP before, but you will need to either use a third party framework or write a lot from the ground up. My preference has been to build from the ground up, but I've also typically worked on very specialized solutions. This is where ASP.Net really shines though. In terms of data handling and providing web services to back your site. C# and .Net offer a lot of very powerful tools and nice enterprise compatibility. The debugging tools are also excellent. If you are using MSSQL to back the project, then it is almost a no brainer, but my understanding is that MySQL and Postgres support isn't bad either. ASP will also let you easily switch the type of web service you are using by simply swapping out the interface or in some cases, simply updating a config file.
If it is just your personal site though, then again, PHP will probably serve you just fine, particularly if your hosting provider doesn't support ASP.Net.
AJ Henderson
"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth
So please cut the oh write everything in C/C++ crap, I write in all the languages you mention but there is no reason to write something in language when it isn't needed. If you are writing a web site PHP is just fine(see the big website called www.facebook.com). If you are writing a realtime stock trading application , then use C/C++ would be warranted.
Avoid motherfucking frameworks
See http://badprogrammer.infogami.com/ "3. Deficient research skills / Chronically poor knowledge of the platform's features."
Don't know if you meant "web frameworks" , but writing everything from scratch is just crazy.
Maybe. But not all of it.
I have been using PHP, for both business and personal stuff, since it was called "PHP/FI" ("personal home page / forms interface"). My old startup company would never have been successful without stuff we did in PHP. I've written and contributed C-based PHP extension code which was distributed with the core for years (until the underlying libraries fell so far out of use that there was no point including it anymore).
I still use PHP sometimes. But I prefer not to use it for important stuff that needs to stick around for a long time if it has any complexity.
Here's why: in my own personal experience (YMMV, of course), PHP has not been terrific about separating security fixes and bug fixes from feature evolution. It was far too easy to write code that would break with a version upgrade (eg. because an API or behavior changed), and to be forced into that version upgrade because security hole fixes were only available for the newest versions.
It's certainly the case that if you were very careful, you could avoid the problems. But, you had to be careful, and I saw a lot of novice programmers who weren't. (Our startup company provided PHP APIs for our product -- as well as Perl, Python, Java, and even TCL, this being the mid-to-late 1990s -- so I got to interact with a lot of novice PHP programmers.)
It's also certainly the case that for home/hobbyist use, you can mitigate some of the trouble by getting your PHP as part of a Debian distribution instead of getting it directly from upstream sources. The Debian folks are kinda insane about backporting security fixes to regarded-as-obsolete versions of software, and I love 'em for it. This is what I do on my household servers. (Yes, I still run my servers myself, not via a hosting provider -- have since about 1988, when they were Sun and VAX systems instead of the Linux I use today.)
It's certainly possible that PHP has gotten significantly better about this than it used to be. I haven't had reason to go check.
But anyhow, that's where my own ... hatred is too strong a word, let's say maybe "concern"? ... for PHP came from.