Communicating with a PHP script (and pretending I'm a browser)

[Michael Torrie]

On 11/11/2014 10:30 AM, Larry Martell wrote:
> They are technically savvy. They are a 100% PHP shop. They have a big,
> complicated app that they've been working on for 10 years. No one
> there knows python or django. They want to put some new frontends on
> their app. I was bought in for another project (involving Google Tag
> Manager and Google Analytics), which I completed. Then they asked me
> about this project. I told them they should redo their app in Flask or
> Django.

Hmm, this is a red flag to me (unlike the other red flags others have
seen!).  If the shop is entire a PHP shop, and no one knows python, then
rewriting things in Python and Django is a really bad idea.  Who is
going to maintain the code after you're gone?  PHP might be a horrible
and insecure language, but at least they have a whole team of folks who
can hack on it.  With Python it seems like you are the only one.  In
this case, I'd say Python and Django, however superior, are not
appropriate.  I've worked in shops before where one person comes in with
a new language, writes some code, then leaves, leaving us stranded as it
were.  I'd say the same thing about Linux in an all-Windows shop.