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

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 10:37:50AM +0000, Phillip Baker wrote:
> 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).

Fortunately it's only broken the other way around (if I use new 2.6
magic in 2.4). But as long as the code tries to stay good to 2.4 (or, at
least 2.5), then it'll mostly work in 2.6, 2.7, etc.

> > 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.

:-) Most frameworks (maybe all? at least all the ones I've used..) are
created to bring MVC into the system.
I'm not a huge fan of MVC, and I pretty much hate all ORM's, but to me
Django, RoR, Smarty, etc provide a couple of very useful things:
  1. Templating. This can be done without frameworks, but they make it
easier.
  2. Separation of code / presentation.
  3. Modularisation. I love modularisation :-) It helps a lot with code
maintainability.

All of these can be achieved without frameworks, sure.
But the frameworks have all of this pretty much built in.
MVC took me a *lot* of getting used to. Mostly the Model part. I'm used
to talking directly to the DB myself, from where I want, when I want.
I still don't really like the Model part :-)
That said, I look at the bright side: At least with MVC I can think less
about the database. I'm a systems administrator by trade, not a
programmer, and I advocate doing things the fastest, simplest, laziest
way possible so you can move on to the next thing :-)

> > 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.

Absolutely!

> > 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.

True! I suppose we could say that it's best to use the right tool for
the job. Then we can argue about the job and what the right tool might
be ;)
I'll admit I have a little bit of hammer syndrome - python is my hammer,
and everything looks like a nail. PHP would be a good tool for Vexim 3
if I was *good* at it. But the feature list for v3 is long, and far out
of my ability to implement in PHP.

> 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.

I'll probably be here coding too ;-)
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!