Comments on: The Black Cat http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/the-black-cat/ A Behind the Scenes Look at the Best Hosting Provider in the World Sat, 08 Jun 2013 13:22:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: Anton http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/the-black-cat/comment-page-1/#comment-14540 Anton Tue, 15 Feb 2011 01:37:45 +0000 http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/#comment-14540 You've answered why independence trumps convenience, but not "why PHP?" :) There are other languages with at least as much independence (eg Ruby, Python etc) that have better web frameworks, and are far better languages for developers to work with. Even Java is sorta independent if you still want that kind of strict statically typed 'enterprisyness'. Generally (and I say this as someone doing a lot of Drupal stuff at the moment) the only times PHP is the answer are: * You need to (or your 'product' needs to) run on cheap shared hosting, * You need to work on top of another popular app written in PHP (eg Drupal or Wordpress etc) with a large community that gets you a long way there already, * You need to hire lots of cheap developers, * You don't know any better, * Or you just plain don't like your developers :) You’ve answered why independence trumps convenience, but not “why PHP?” :)

There are other languages with at least as much independence (eg Ruby, Python etc) that have better web frameworks, and are far better languages for developers to work with. Even Java is sorta independent if you still want that kind of strict statically typed ‘enterprisyness’.

Generally (and I say this as someone doing a lot of Drupal stuff at the moment) the only times PHP is the answer are:
* You need to (or your ‘product’ needs to) run on cheap shared hosting,
* You need to work on top of another popular app written in PHP (eg Drupal or WordPress etc) with a large community that gets you a long way there already,
* You need to hire lots of cheap developers,
* You don’t know any better,
* Or you just plain don’t like your developers :)

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