

Ask HN: What are the benefits of using PHP today? - denysonique

Knowing Python, Ruby, Node.js, Meteor etc.
Should one still consider PHP for some projects?
======
benzesandbetter
1) PHP is a great high-school job. Much better than a paper route, flipping
burgers, or working at the car wash. If you freelance you can set your own
schedule which can work well around your school schedule.

2) Hosting is cheap so your parents will probably let you use their credit
card.

3) It's so approachable that it can help you get started with programming so
that some day you can move on to better languages.

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kephra
The combination of lighttpd, fastcgi, php has a very low memory footprint.
This is a benefit on Xen servers.

PHP also offers a build in function for nearly everything.

The main drawback of PHP are the tutorials, using mysql without the i, and
teach how to implement a website that is vulnerable to SQL injection.

~~~
blibble
16GB of ECC RAM costs £150 to buy, how much RAM your webserver threads use
should never be an issue.

PHP's advantage is "apt-get install php5", copy your .php files in, and you're
done.

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gdp
The advantage of any programming language, framework, or library is that you
know it already and it allows you to achieve things. I wouldn't personally
advocate learning PHP today, but the idea that any language has intrinsic
value divorced from its ability to achieve your purposes is mostly untrue.

------
sbank
It is widely used and sought after. Any average to decent PHP programmer can
find work. Any average to decent Haskell programmer can't.

~~~
dwc
Depending on your intent, this may be a great reason to _avoid_ PHP, or at
least to leave PHP out of your job description.

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yelnop
I'm a longtime database developer, starting my first web 2.0 app. After much
research (including Python, node.js, Go, Perl, Ruby, etc.) I've all but locked
on PHP. While I can see that it has idiosyncrasies, I can also see that it's a
very mature product.

For example, when I search for "PHP function list", I not only get a function
list as the first item, it's an amazingly comprehensive list. The hurdles I've
had so far, I've been able to jump over them quickly (quicker than in any
other language I've learned) if only because the community support is so good.
Usually a simple web search finds the question and answer I'm looking for. I'm
pretty blown away by the sheer volume of good info on PHP.

Python is my second choice. There's a lot that I prefer of it, over PHP, but I
find that in general its hurdles are higher.

Having developed many industrial-strength apps using less-capable languages,
I'm confident I can do the same in PHP.

------
27182818284
I feel like it is pretty unusual these days to hear about a company moving
_to_ PHP from some other language. On the other hand, you often here about a
company switching or adding one of the other languages you mentioned to their
company's stack

------
andrewhillman
Another benefit... it's fairly easy to find a php contractor for any portion
of your project that you want to outsource. The cost for a php contractor is
relatively inexpensive compared to contractors for other languages.

------
Rust
Requisite link to <http://appwithphp.com/> \- some basic minimal knowledge and
stuff to make sure what you write is written as right as possible :)

------
glimcat
<?php include("header.php"); ?>

Between the above and the huge range of existing PHP projects, I always
install PHP regardless of what else I'm using.

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gopi
In my opinion the great benefit of PHP especially for non-coder founders is
the big offshore talent pool.

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rmATinnovafy
The tool does not define the problem. It goes the other way around.

