On 28 July 2013 18:43, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)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.