1. 10 minute to learn, simple syntax, rich functions
2. deploy with standard tools like ftp
3. easy scaling with php-fpm.
4. not exactly docker, but vhost works in most cases. And vhost can be containerized.
5. insta hot-reload
6. dirt cheap cost. Hi dreamhost
7. no vendor lock-in bullshit, supported by everyone everywhere
well, at least it was the case used to be
But yes, you're right that PHP is still a great choice for building the "web application" portion of your infrastructure.
SSL was provided by the php-fpm part, with either Apache or nginx, like most "platforms" do. Modern platforms may choose less-popular fronts like Caddy, and Caddy does support php_fastcgi.
Dokku in turn is a replacement for those platforms and makes it easy to host your own [insert some part of your platform stack here]. That is the purpose of a PaaS, which is what Dokku is and what PHP certainly is not. Yes, the OP maybe should've said "My favorite personal PaaS", but that is less catchy, and I think calling it a "serverless platform" is close enough to the truth and gets the point across.
> Dokku in turn is a replacement for those platforms and makes it easy to host your own
I tried to search
database site:dokku.com/docs/
or
queue site:dokku.com/docs/
But failed to find anything relevant. Am I doing this wrong? Where does Dokku as a "replacement platform" provide the database or queue capability?
> purpose of serverless is to provide scaleable infra which you don't need to manage
> Dokku is an extensible, open source Platform as a Service that runs on a single server (from https://dokku.com/docs/)
and how does Dokku on a single server solve the "scaling" problem exactly?
> As you noted, it doesn't even do the web-serving
Technically speaking, php can. https://github.com/swoole/swoole-docs/blob/master/modules/sw...
it's just not widely used.
Dont get me wrong, Dokku is a fine project of its own, but it doesn't seem to tackle the problems you mentioned either. On the other hand, if php is not enough, the LAMP can do everything.
Dokku is Docker + Buildpacks + Orchestration. You give it a buildpack (developed/popularized by Heroku) to specify your application, which is the main "serverless" part. Then you tell Dokku that you want datastores or queues or whatever, via plugins[1]. Dokku handles pulling the relevant docker images, running them, and linking it all together. In other words, Dokku is open-source Heroku, where you can add databases and such with a single command, specify your app with a buildpack, and you're off to the races.
If Dokku only did the application via buildpack part, people would not find it nearly as useful and PHP on a webhost somewhere would indeed be a good alternative.
But Dokku is not that, it is a PaaS, so it can also run your PHP application just as easily. And if you're self-hosting Postgres and RabbitMQ via Dokku, why would you run your PHP on Dreamhost? You probably wouldn't, you'd throw a PHP buildpack up there and call it a day.
[1] https://dokku.com/docs/community/plugins/?h=plugins#official...
And I really do hope scaling should be as easy as "pulling docker images"
> "I'd recommend reading more thoroughly about Dokku (or PaaS in general) since it is somewhat clear you don't understand the value prop."
My cynical and uncharitable translation of this and the rest of your post for the GP: We've invented platform or PAAS or devops so that we can carve-away work from devs that used to traditionally do this kind of stuff in partnership with infrastructure, and you're just not understanding it because you're coming from a dev perspective.
It's all just evangelism/marketing-push to gather the online webosphere mindshare and capture the development process so that all that's left for the downstream individuals (developers) is nothing but config/yaml/plugin-ecosystem and even that stuff only the ordained priests of DevOps understand (or are allowed to touch), again leaving developers with even less, making them glorified code-monkeys that need to spit out CRUD screens. It's either that, or put "DevOps" on your resume or title, almost like a mafia-style shake-down.
It works, sure, provides immense value sometimes and gets you to market quickly sometimes, sure, etc. But damn is it toxic and detrimental for our community in the long run. In an alternate universe or timeline we could have gone some other direction, but this is what we have for now, so we have to live with it. DevOps and UX will many years from now be known as two very bad paths that we allowed our industry to be dragged down into.
I am a dev, so your translation is indeed cynical and uncharitable (and inaccurate).
I also don't understand what you have against DevOps or UX. DevOps is just how you actually run the applications/services/etc (that you've written with code) in production. DevOps can be done by a developer or by people dedicated solely to that task. UX is just caring about how end users actually interact with the application/services/platform. This can also be done by developers, or by designers, or by UX specialists, or whomever.
These concepts exist regardless. Sure, you can choose not to care about how your application and its required dependencies are run. Sure, you can choose not to care about how your users interact with the things you are building. But not caring about those things doesn't mean they go away.
By that I mean that if the programming model has a way to automatically capture state, an implementation framework can manage it automatically on behalf of the application, while the user (person writing the app logic) doesn't have to care about the state.
> not exactly docker, but vhost works in most cases
You are understanding Docker and Vhost wrong then..
Have you tried write anything with those on serverless™ platforms? They don't do things properly, serverless makes coding harder, yield more errors and poor performance.
> better performance
PHP8 JIT offers outstanding performance.
> You are understanding Docker and Vhost wrong then..
chroot/jail'd multi-worker with inetd port fowardng solves the same problems as cgroup'd process and netns do. I'd argue it's a sidecar before it's cool.
If you take extra steps like wrapping LXC for your web workers, you may even call your platform, wait for it, Heroku. https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dyno-isolation
According to the first thing I googled, it’s more popular than Go, and even higher up the list if you remove languages like C/C++ that aren’t typically used for web.
https://www.hackerrank.com/blog/most-popular-languages-2023/