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Why PHP is still the right tool for the job

27 March 2007 PHP

Of course, there is no "better" language, each language has its own strengths and weaknesses. When starting a new project, you need to chose the right tool for the job.

For me, the right tool is still PHP.

If I was starting a web development business tomorrow morning, I wouldn't be writing my codebase in Python or Ruby (although they are nice languages), I would chose PHP for the following reasons:

  1. Everyone knows PHP
    PHP experts are never hard to find, which means a greater selection of job candidates.
  2. There are more PHP resources available

    There are many PHP commmunity websites, tutorials, frameworks, classes and articles.
  3. PHP is well supported
    Most linux web hosts supports PHP4, and more are starting to support PHP5.

When you're betting your business on a language, you don't want to take any risks. At the moment I see PHP as still the safest choice.

Chapaev

1. And everyone _thinks_ he is a PHP guru. But when you are trying to find someone who knows for example PHP5 & Symfony it's not so simple, though likely every Ruby developer knows Rails.

2. More doesn't mean better. I mean frameworks/classes.

3. Who needs shared hosting?! I've forget when I used it last time. We currently use VDS or DS. And even if you need it -- there is a plenty of Ruby/Python hosts. Of course, not so much as PHP ones, but enough for choosing.

Aaron Saray

As much as its nitpicking, I completely agree with the comment about #1. There are sooo many people who claim to be PHP experts just because it has an easy beginners learning curve. However, there is a specific level of prowess that is needed to back up this claim when it comes to business PHP cases. I can fully attest to this from my experience reviewing code samples from self proclaimed PHP geniuses (I even laugh at my own code 2 years ago! I sadly look forward to laughing again in 2 years at the stuff I do today).

I think it comes down to the level of accepted quality for PHP applications that determines if the coder thinks he's qualified. For example, with say... C, you could make a 2D scrolling game (a PHP 'guru' application) or you could end up coding a device driver (something more like a real quality PHP programmer - the hard to find ones - would code).

However, I still think PHP is the right tool still for me too!! (I've recently been foraying into the command line scripting techniques as well!)

-aaron

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