Why PHP?

[cd34]

In the brick and mortar world, having multiple letters after your name signifies 'expertise'. Those companies put more weight on how many letters you have, and, Microsoft has many programs that add letters after your name while php (and the other available solutions don't).

When a recruiter or non-adult business looks at employees, they look for those extra letters. The people with those letters were trained in Microsoft, so, what solutions do you think they would offer?

One of my first jobs working for a government contractor had multiple levels of management and technicians that all had those certifications. When I was given business cards, I asked them to put S.E. after my name -- for Self Educated. Those two letters granted much quicker acceptance into the herd.

However, the largest ecommerce site and the largest search engine both are heavy users of open source. Amazon uses mod_perl (and used to use masonhq) and google uses mod_python (and ironically still uses apache 1.3 as a framework). Until IBM and Oracle and the others started to embrace Linux (or freebsd) as an alternative to the old-world solutions, Microsoft was really the only alternative. I believe Etrade and ameritrade both use apache, BankofAmerica uses sunone which is their rebadged Netscape Enterprise Server (unless they have again rebadged some other software). I would say that Linux/FreeBSD/Unix is making some inroads, but, as linux has strengths, Microsoft is adjusting their business to address those strengths.

I don't know whether I would say that Linux will dominate the financial services area -- reenigneering what is currently working surely isn't cheap, so, why move from Microsoft if your application already works. Sure, newer initiatives and capabilities might be written in linux, but, for some companies that means maintaining two teams of programmers, ones that speak microsoft, ones that speak linux. Many organizations won't split resources like that which makes a switch or co-development difficult.

[HappySpanker]

Would like to toss in a perspective. I have owned/operated a 'vanilla' web hosting company for about 10 years now. Since day one I've offered both Windows and Linux servers, at a point was up to about 50 servers (all of which I built) all told. Maybe a 60/40 split between Linux/Win servers - all of them for ecommerce/shopping-cart sites only, we never accepted static HTML web sites.

Do not know of any web host paying a monthly licensing fee to MS. I was a 'Certified Microsoft Web Host' for a while and even then - there were never any recurring fees. Maybe they enacted some wacky new rev share thingie, but they never pitched me on it at least...

There are some big differences between Linux and Windows:

1. Cost -- Linux is free - Windows is not. Costs me about $1300 per Win server in software (OS and add-ons), zero for a Linux system.

2. Load capability -- Linux can take a MUCH higher traffic load for any CGI-based (PHP, Perl, ASP, etc) sites. I have watched Win servers brought to their knees from 10k concurrent shoppers in an ecom store when a matching Linux box was barely breaking a sweat.

3. Security -- Windows server ware comes out-of-the-box with more security issues than an untended vendor cart at a rock concert. I spend maybe 8-10 hours hardening (and rebooting) each Win server, maybe 2-3 hours on each Linux server. A properly-configured Windows ecommerce server does not even run the 'server' or 'workstation' services.

4. Ease of Admin -- Win servers can be a complete pain in the ass to admin and update. If you so much as breathe on most any software component in the system you will end up having to reboot. We have to do monthly preventative reboots on all our Win servers - yet I have Linux boxen which have not been rebooted in maybe 5 years.

5. Client demands -- Linux systems come almost out-of-the-box ready for most any CGI script a webmaster can throw at them. And you can update scripting engines automatically. Running any PHP, Perl, Python, etc. script on a Win server requires a custom install and configuration of the server and its sites. And then constant, MANUAL checking for exploits or fresh releases of any parsing/script software.

6. Databases -- running SQL (or any flavor) on a Win server is a pain in the ass. GUI interfaces and high resource demands get silly - and you pay for the privilege.

7. User base -- Linux offers an aggressive and zealous user community always ready to help. Windows is a lifestyle based in and for money and the willingness of other server admins and/or webmasters to help out is miniscule in comparison. Webmasters like to use what other webmasters talk about and use. And VERY rarely will one web hosts' setup of Win match any other host, making the sharing of solutions even harder.

MySQL runs like a rock under Linux - because that's what it was written for. PHP runs well under Linux - because that it what it was written for. Perl runs rock solid under Linux - because that it what it was written for. Only ASP and .NET (cringe) were written natively for the Win platform -- everything else was "second thought" re-written or re-purposed for Windows.

Bottom line to us has always been that Win servers require 10 times initial cost and the labor required to install and maintain a decent web server.

PHP is selected more than any other scripting language because of its feature set compared to Perl, its cost, and its existing user base and application pool.

Thus concludes my overly-opinionated rant...

[MadCat]

Originally Posted by HappySpanker

MySQL runs like a rock under Linux - because that's what it was written for. PHP runs well under Linux - because that it what it was written for. Perl runs rock solid under Linux - because that it what it was written for. Only ASP and .NET (cringe) were written natively for the Win platform -- everything else was "second thought" re-written or re-purposed for Windows.

Not to rain on your post but Perl runs rock solid under any sort of *nix because that's what it's written for. Perl pre-dates Linux

PHP is selected more than any other scripting language because of its feature set compared to Perl, its cost, and its existing user base and application pool.

Perl's feature set is much bigger than PHP -- it's just that PHP has a lot lower entry level, which explains why it's common to see some seriously hideous PHP scripts out there -- Java has a slightly higher entry level but can still produce seriously fucked up code, Perl and Python require that you actually know what you're doing before you get started. Not meaning that you won't see crap code in Perl or Python... but less

Thus concludes my overly-opinionated rant...

I share your opinion though. I used to work at a webhost as sysadmin and we had I think, a grand total of 600 servers up and running at some point. 10 of those were Windows machines, and we thankfully had a dedicated windows admin for it. He was busier with his 10 boxes than my coworker and me were with the remainder (Linux, OpenBSD, and a few "legacy" FreeBSD machines).

The main issue though for PHP v.s. Perl is that PHP tends to work out of the box. For Perl you need to often ninja the configuration if you want stuff to not run as a CGI script. Think FastCGI or mod_perl, think the Catalyst framework (which requires a silly amount of additional modules off CPAN that not every host has installed or will install).

Anyway... </end rant>