Re: Why PHP ? - devil's advocate

Not sure if you meant to reply to me, or the original poster, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here... As much as I respect and promote Linux/PHP/etc., I've run into SO many problems sometimes which make me realize why Windows is still such a popular web platform - I can't speak to the intricacies of developing other types of apps, as we only focus on web stuff. The big reason - it pretty much just works. Maybe doesn't work as great as alternatives, but it works, out of the box. Yes, I have to pay for it, and yes I have to pay for 'enterprise level' plug in objects, but damn it, it works. I have lost track of the times that we've spent trying to get specific packages to work with Linux and Linux/PHP. The pdflib is a good example. ./configure make make install only works for us about 60% of the time. The other 40% it's ./configure make make install read INSTALL read README oops - it's README.TXT OK - 300 lines of crap that don't apply to my situation Search google Search deja Search PHP mailing lists Find others with same install problems Find no solutions Search more Post 20 questions on NEW mailing lists I had to subscribe to Get flamed to RTFM Get told 'it works for me, fsck off' Get told 'works for me, get a REAL distro like <fill in blank of whatever distro I *don't* have>' Oh, *eventually* discover that on MY distribution, I have to 'export LDFLAGS='blah/:$LDFLAG', etc. ./configure make make install WARNING messages thrown that scroll off my screen too fast (is it too much to ask MAKE files to log their errors someplace? I see PHP does it now, but I don't remember that always being the case). and so on. With a Windows situation, yes, even tho I pay for it, I can go grab a binary, unzip, place in directory, stop/start server, *poof* - it works. My success rate installing objects/libraries on Windows has been about 85%, with failures getting resolve more quickly as the people we bought it from were either responsive or included better docs. Better docs are not ALWAYS true, but I rarely have to read install docs to install Windows stuff. So, although you do save $ on PHP, for smaller projects, you may eat up that difference in the time it takes to track down compilation problems because your Linux distribution has a different version of gcc or bison or flex than the people who wrote it. I know - I know. If I was a kewl linux hax0r with mad phat sk1llz I wouldn't have these problems - *everyone* knows you need to export CFLAGS when compiling PHP with PDFlib 3.01 (NOT 3.02!) into the latest Apache as a DSO! Don't know what I was thinking! Seriously, though - I do believe this type of problem frustrates many would-be Linux/PHP people, to the point where it's just easier to stay in Windows. Yes, IIS crashes more. Yes, ASP has limitations. But if I can be up and developing in 2 hours instead of 6, that's 4 more hours of coding/productivity I can put on the project. As for mailing lists, yes, you can ASK here, but you don't always get an answer. I've had some really good experiences with open source support, and some rotten ones. You don't always have to ask Bill Gates things, just like you don't ask Rasmus or Zeev or Andi things every day. Many knowlegeable people exist in the PHP camp, as well as the ASP camp, and they all pitch in when they can. It's just that often times people on all sides of the game aren't trying to do things we're doing, and so haven't come across the problems we have (scaleability, speed, installation, etc.) Joe Stump wrote: > > > Again, WHY does it suck? What's wrong with VBScript? It is VBScript, not > > > Visual Basic that ASP uses, but remember you can also use PerlScript, > > > JScript or any other language you want (as long as there's a scripting > > > module for it). You could probably even use PHP, if you had the desire to > > > write your own module. But what's important here, I think, is providing > > > specific examples of why one should choose PHP over ASP/VBScript or > > > whatever. > > Pretty simple - it serves 2 pages more per second (look up the article in the > list archives - I'm lazy) and it's about $1M cheaper on an enterprise level > solution. So many times at my old work I would say "Why don't we do this?" and > the answer would be "ASP won't do that....". Plus you need to look at the > OVERALL picture of PHP vs. ASP - can I pipe, grep, sed, awk and output to /tmp > easily with ASP? No. Is wc -l there? No. Can I choose how big my binary is? No. > Can I get into the source and tinker with it to make mods I need for my site? > No. Can I log onto the ASP list and ask Bill Gates why it's not working? No. > Is there a SHITLOAD of free enterprise level ASP code laying around the > internet? No. > > A lot of No's and not a lot of Yes's IMO. > > --Joe > > --- > Joe Stump > PHP Programmer > www.Care2.com -- ========================== Michael Kimsal http://www.tapinternet.com PHP Training courses http://www.tapinternet.com/php 734-480-9961