and how about that emacs eh, it got nothing on vim!
On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Svip svippy@gmail.com wrote:
On 28 July 2013 18:43, Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com wrote:
And as I already stated once, I didn't start this discussion to start a war (not that I wouldn't like it) I just wanted to find out what's so cool on python and why in the world would people prefer it over php.
To give you an answer that isn't just PHP bashing (by the way, I am no big fan of Python myself); I think it has a lot to do with more corporations having skin in the game. Large companies like Google have invested in Python, but few have invested in PHP. Well, at least not prominent ones like Google.
This gives Python a sense of 'serious language' compared to PHP's 'hobby language' sentiment. And some programmers looks down on PHP's hobby language status. You can argue whether that is fair or not.
But Python is a different beast all together; its initial purpose - as I recall - was fulfil those programs that were too large for bash scripts, but too simple for C-programs. It was not created for the web, it was later applied to it; and this you can tell in the language as well as its standard library. Python feels like a script language, it has not very good threading and concurrency mechanism, which have been added to the language later.
Google even tried to improve Python, but eventually abandoned that plan and came up with Go instead.
There doesn't exist popular frameworks like Django (which I also loath) for PHP, because PHP's standard library (well bindings) fulfils much of task itself.
I don't mind Python's indentation syntax, but I don't like its underscored standard functions (like __init__) and whatnot; they look incredibly ugly. I also don't like that you have to create a __init__.py file in a directory to make it a package; that seems silly to me (and ugly).
As for why Python is cool? Because it tries some new things (look at the syntax) and it is a language more designed to the nature of being interpreted than compiled (which is a syntax PHP mimics). I remember personally being excited about Python when I first really met it back in 2007. But now that excitement has vanished.
My issue with Python isn't so much setting it up (which is a pain itself, don't get me wrong), but it's the fact that it's standard library are rather missing on functionality for the web (there are plenty of frameworks, and whatnot, but not in its standard library), so I have to ask myself; what's the purpose of writing in Python rather than PHP?
I'd rather write in neither. But hating PHP has traction, and you don't want to be the uncool guy who writes in PHP, so to some people, Python is the only option.
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