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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

Websites are a small corner of the Python world, but all of the PHP world.

Everywhere I look, when new programmers ask what language to learn first, they are most often told to learn Python.

C is too low-level, Perl's too old and crufty, Ruby's too trendy, Scheme is too esoteric, Haskell's too difficult, Lua doesn't have enough libraries, Java's too verbose and corporate, ... the list of reasons not to go with other languages is a mile long. Note: PHP is usually never even mentioned.

Then the new programmer asks what language they should use for web programming. At this point, everyone looks at the floor, scratches the back of their neck, clears their throat a bit, and says that, well, you should probably use PHP because that's what everyone else is using.

So, in most corners of the programming world, many experienced programmers are recommending Python.

You know how to get "everyone else" to use Python for web development? You make it easy to deploy -- just like PHP.

"Everywhere I look ... they are most often told to learn Python ... in most corners of the programming world ... recommending Python"

Combined with

"Ruby's too trendy"

There's that cognitive dissonance again.

"Then the new programmer asks what language they should use for web programming. At this point, everyone looks at the floor, scratches the back of their neck, clears their throat a bit, and says that, well, you should probably use PHP because that's what everyone else is using."

wow! This is some seriously fucked up advice. if someone were to ask me what language he should learn first, the answer is Python. When "Then the new programmer asks what language they should use for web programming" the answer is still Python - use Django with its awesome documentation and uber friendly community- (and PostGres as a database).

This steers them clear of two terrible (but popular) pieces of software, PHP and MySQL.

I usually tell people "Use Python and Django" when they ask me what language they should use for web programming.

I agree though, Python apps should be much easier to deploy on the web. Just because it's currently the best solution doesn't mean it can't be better.

I usually tell people, you are not a mathematician, a crazy scientist or lonely sys admin, you are a web developer, go with PHP.

That corner is the largest, and is only going to get bigger. Python can ignore it at its own peril.

Bigger how? PHP can't be used for anything but simple web templating. Python is used across nearly the entire spectrum of computing.

PHP runs some of the largest websites out there - hardly "simple web templating."

You can write administration scripts in PHP, deploy scripts, hell, you can even write Windows apps in PHP (though it's horrifying).

Just because you don't use it for anything more than simple templating, doesn't really mean much. PHP is everywhere.

It runs the surface layer of them, sure. Put this text here, put that JPEG there. Do you think Facebook is traversing the social graph or routing chat or doing any interesting computation with PHP?

I'm not saying that whitewashing a fence or mowing a lawn isn't honest work, but it's a bit of a stretch to compare it to building an entire city.

When the boss says to make the website in php, they mean the whole website. You usually don't get to just do the presentation in php and use $your_language_choice for everything else.

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