Re: PHP/Python (was: RE: Vexim Digest, Vol 68, Issue 4)

Avleen Vig wrote:
>The version portability would exist with PHP also.
>For example, there are features of PHP 5.3 which aren't backwards
>compatible with 5.1 and 5.2 (which *many* people still have installed as
>their only supported or supportable version).

Right. My assumption from what you wrote is that large scale changes take place which means that code written for 2.4 would not function if you have 2.6 installed. It is very seldom in my opinion that subversions of PHP introduce anything so revolutionary that there is a good case to actually use it straight away (causing the backward incompatibility).

> I spent a considerable amount of time testing Smarty, a PHP framework,
> to see if that would be suitable and assist in the PHP development line.

I hate all frameworks. I've tried to play nice with them, but they all seem to be written by people who have their heads screwed on differently to me. My code isn't messy, but I hate MVC with a passion and nearly all the frameworks insist on using it. I prefer useful libraries and functions to entire frameworks.

> You're right about the vulnerabilities issue. What I can tell you
> though is that between them, Python and Django have had far fewer
> security vulnerabilities (to the best of my knowledge) than PHP. Python
> has been around since the early 90's and is quite stable at this point.

No doubt; PHP does not have a good track record, my point was more that dealing with PHP is well documented and we have a stable and secure setup we use that works for us which I would be hard pressed to move away from.

> The PHP version version certainly isn't "going away".
> I'll still be making security updates to it indefinitely. If people need
> help with it, help will *always* be provided. No-one will be shut out at
> all.

Well, you'd have to pry the code out of my cold, dead hands for a start :p But it's good to know that it will continue to be supported and maintained. Not that I think there are any skeletons lurking in the closet at this stage, but you never know for sure, especially when you're dealing with a moving target in terms of the version of the interpreter.

> For what it's worth, I spent 3 years at Google writing applications in
> Python + Django. May large organizations run this configuration, just as
> many places use Ruby. Both of these are becoming more "normal",
> alongside PHP.

There are a great many large sites that use whatever is trendy at the time because the only developer they have at that point likes it and it either shapes the people they employ and they stick with it or they end up switching later (sometimes at great pain). Ruby (on Rails) just makes me ignore a project altogether - it's a nonstarter for me, and I know choosing RoR has killed at least one web startup who subsequently couldn't find any people to come on board to finish the project after their developer got bogged down in other projects. Ultimately organisations have to pick whatever suits their use case and their development team best. Right now IMO nothing is as portable and easy to get going as PHP code. If you're building a single app/site on a dedicated platform however, the rules are
  entirely different.

> Thanks Phil!

Thank you! I hope you have a nice new years, if you're doing anything. Personally, I'm staying in and coding. I think I must be getting old.

Phil