PHP is horrible as a language, but it fills its niche very well:
* You can get it to run dang near anywhere.
* It has an extremely low barrier to entry for new devs (blessing and a curse).
* There's a large volume of code already out there.
* If you need something that's a little more than a static site but not a full blown custom system, it's one of the simplest ways to get something out the door.
* If you know how to use it, there's likely someone willing to pay you to do so on their behalf.
Eh, that's not really the case anymore either. It's made many improvements over the years. Not that I'm saying it's some wonderful language, but you can't really compare it to the PHP 4/early 5 days. I think credit is deserved to the folks who have brought PHP to where it is today.
Yes each of those websites still use PHP under the hood. But by that argument each of those websites can be counted as using C as well. As well as machine code.
It has nothing to do with the code being spaghetti or not. It's about a level of abstraction where I no longer consider something made with wordpress as something created with PHP. The PHP was allready created and then someone just clicked a few menus to choose what existing PHP he or she wanted.
The more fitting category would be just calling such websites "Wordpress" websites and not PHP websites.
The categorisation you are trying to make us accept is ridiculous.
I can deploy a python web application I have written to a new web server within minutes by clicking deploy in bitbucket.
So using your definition:
* The code is already written.
* I clicked a few menus and I had the python code I wanted running.
It isn't a python application. However the web application when it receives a request will run python code. It is clearly a python based web application.
I wouldn't consider it python code if it is a cookie cutter website where the creator didn't have to write a single line of python. It's not about deployment it's about the process of creation. Why don't you consider each and every website running PHP also a C website?
> I wouldn't consider it python code if it is a cookie cutter website where the creator didn't have to write a single line of python.
So if I got someone else to press the deploy button in bitbucket, it suddenly isn't python code? That doesn't make sense does it?
> Why don't you consider each and every website running PHP also a C website?
The web site/app logic is written in PHP, not C. The runtime for the vast majority of PHP deployments happens to be written in C.
Additionally while I did say interpreted earlier that really isn't true anymore. PHP runtimes these days tend to break the PHP script down into byte-code. There are alternative runtimes for PHP just as there is Java or .NET.
There are at least 4 I can think of. Two of those aren't C (C++ and .NET). However there is nothing stopping you from writing a runtime that runs on the JVM / Lisp / Go / Brainfuck / Lol code / 68k assembler.
> So if I got someone else to press the deploy button in bitbucket, it suddenly isn't python code? That doesn't make sense does it?
You completely ignored the most important sentence in my comment which addresses this.
> The web site/app logic is written in PHP, not C. The runtime for the vast majority of PHP deployments happens to be written in C.
The logic is written in PHP just as much as it is written in C. The logic is actually written in the language the creator used. Which is the wordpress UI.
In the enterprise world, very much so. PHP is super easy to deploy, requires little maintenance, and you can easily hire good admins to keep things running smoothly.
On the other hand, not even using a service like Heroku can save us from constantly having to patch or update the Rails apps.
