Why PHP is so much more popular for web-development

[Carsten Haese]

On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 12:34 -0700, walterbyrd wrote:
> On Jul 25, 12:40 pm, Carsten Haese <cars... at uniqsys.com> wrote:
> 
> > What exactly could Python learn from PHP?
> 
> Remember, I'm a noob, I'm not trolling.

I know.

> When I posted "Python" I meant the Python web-developement world. In
> particular, python frameworks, like CherryPy, have requirements that
> are not realistic for most shared hosting plans.

CherryPy is not a framework. Also, CherryPy's requirements are very
minimal. You either need a "vanilla" Apache/mod_python setup (which is
no harder to set up than a vanilla Apache/PHP setup), or just Python
itself if you use the webserver that is in CherryPy.

> Maybe I'm wrong, but I often get the idea that those  who develop
> python frameworks don't give a thought to the realities of shared
> hosting. They seem to think that everybody has complete control over
> the server. Things are very different in the PHP universe.

Again, CherryPy is not a web programming framework. It is a web server
that "publishes" object methods.

Also, things are only easy in the PHP world if you only use the modules
that the hosting provider pre-installed. I doubt you'll easily find a
PHP hosting provider that will allow connections to Informix or Oracle
databases.

> To use codeignitor as an example, again. On the "why  codeignitor"
> part of the welcome page you will find:
> 
> ---
> CodeIgniter is right for you if...
> * You need broad compatibility with standard hosting accounts that run
> a variety of PHP versions and configurations.
> * You want a framework that requires nearly zero configuration.
> * You want a framework that does not require you to use the command
> line.
> ---
> 
> I don't seem to see Python frameworks using those sorts of selling
> points. Posting as a noob, who is struggling to get django configured
> on dreamhost, I gotta tell 'ya: those selling points look awfully
> attractive.
> 
> The point is: PHP framework makers are very considerate of the
> realities of shared hosting.

It may look like that to you, but that's not a property of the PHP
language. I haven't seen CodeIgniter, but I imagine it's easy for you to
set up because it's already installed by the hosting provider, which is
due to PHP's popularity. If you could find a provider that can give you
an out-of-the-box Django or TG set up, you'd probably find that just as
easy. Finding a hosting provider that'll do this is the problem, of
course, but that's not because these frameworks are designed to be hard
to install. It's just that most providers don't pre-install these
frameworks because there isn't enough demand.

>  Python framework makers don't seem to
> give it a thought.

Python framework makers have no influence over what web hosting
providers do.

>  Just maybe, that's something that Python could
> learn from PHP.

What is "that", and what can Python developers do to learn "that"?

-- 
Carsten Haese
http://informixdb.sourceforge.net