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Comment by samuellevy | Hacker News Reader

Not quite; I'm also factoring in support costs (both to me, and the client), as well as the ability to sell a higher-costing hosting solution to the client.

I'm quite comfortable deploying python projects, and I've done it for a number of clients, but the problems I'm faced with are:

- Sometimes the client comes with hosting for a previous site, and insist that it has to be hosted in the same location

- There isn't much in the way of reliable, cheap hosting where the client will get support for anything other than PHP.

- I am not going to manage a client's server for them. They do not pay me enough to justify waking up in the middle of the night to restart a linode that crashed. I am not in the hosting business (I used to be), and I like it this way.

I will often try to push the client towards managed business hosting, where there's a bit more freedom to move, but even then, it's an uphill battle. PHP is a (the) reality of my line of work.

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Right, but you're still confused. In these cases, it's not that PHP is a tool for the project, it's that PHP is a part of the project.

Honestly, shared hosting rarely even handles PHP - I don't know many hosting places that will support the code you write. I can't see going to your host and complaining that your site is down because you wrote a script with an infinite loop that's eating up Apache.

They won't support the code; that's not their job. They will restart the server when it goes down, and handle firewalls/security/keep their servers clean of root kits, etc.

Dreamhost, as an example (seeing as I use them), just upgraded all of their servers to support PHP 5.4, which is much better than any of the other hosts I've found. They're cheap, give relatively good support, and have recent versions of PHP available. If there's a problem with PHP or apache, that isn't broken application code, they'll fix it.

With python or ruby, you're on your own.

So in other words, the application will work just fine the day you sign off assuming the client doesn't update the language core.

Which is no different than with Dreamhost in this scenario. If, for example, PHP 5.X or 6.X ends up breaking your code, it's not like Dreamhost is going to debug it.

There's no functional difference here between PHP and any other language except that the hosting provider will automatically update PHP. And there's no guarantee that won't bork something else (which they will also not support).

  > just upgraded all of their servers to support PHP 5.4...

They start supporting the newest version, not upgrade everything to 5.4. They do not force you to upgrade, you decide if you do that.

No responsible webhost would just roll out a new major version of PHP without warning. Dreamhost have made their servers support it, which means that it is now an option that you can pick, along with PHP 5.2, and 5.3, in multiple modes (cgi, fastcgi, etc.).

But even so, if I build some PHP code that isn't future-proof for even the warranty period that I offer on any code, then I've got to fix it at my cost. If I build some code that, in 3 years time becomes incompatible with a new version of PHP, then it can be fixed then. I can't be expected to predict the future of PHP and build forever-proof code, though.

How often does the language core actually break, though? That's an absolute fringe case.

So what you say is true: they won't support code, but they'll restart the server and handle core updates. That isn't a big enough benefit for someone who detests a language that much.

I still think you're more comfortable with PHP than anything, which is how your valuation is being assembled.

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