Why PHP is so much more popular for web-development

[Paul McNett]

Steve Holden wrote:
> When someone starts to push the limits of PHP they either continue to 
> push until they get where they want to be (producing an ugly or 
> ill-maintained bunch of code along the way) or they choose a more 
> appropriate tool.
> 
> The latter behavior is typical of programmers. The former is typical of 
> typical users. There are many people producing web sites who I wouldn't 
> let within yards of any of my code. but it's some kind of tribute to PHP 
> that it manages to satisfy so many of them. This doesn't mean that 
> grafting PHP features into Python mindlessly will improve the language.
> 
> The Python approach is a scalpel, which can easily cut your fingers off. 
> The PHP approach is a shovel, which will do for many everyday tasks.

Exactly right on. I actually use PHP quite a bit. For websites that 
would otherwise be static html pages other than the fact that I want to 
reuse elements (header, footer, etc.), I choose PHP in a heartbeat, 
because it's easy, and I'm lazy. Ditto if it is a simple db-driven site.

Start adding business rules and complex program flow and I run away from 
PHP as fast as I can. I wouldn't want to actually code anything in it, 
after all. ;)

I've seen comments that mod_python is hard to use, but I just haven't 
found that to be the case. For me, mod_python is the next step up when 
PHP no longer suits my needs. Granted, I'm spoiled because I run my own 
server and don't rely on some hosting provider to tell me what I can and 
cannot do. :)

-- 
pkm ~ http://paulmcnett.com