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PHP feelings?

Charlie Clark charlie at begeistert.org
Sat May 19 09:56:01 EDT 2001 
> Im an average python addict, on the edge to learn/install/use/adopt
> PHP,
> on a linux machine. And I dont like it.
Don't use it then. I don't like it either but it is nice for once of
web-stuff.

PHP "encourages" mixing content and application logic together. This
means you can get stuff working very quickly but it also makes code less
easy to maintain. Most of the work I encounter in php is of the write
once/copy paste approach. This doesn't mean you can't write more tidily
but the temptation is always there not to.

www.zend.com has a lot of good articles about php.

PHP is optimised for web work so it comes with specialised commands for
database manipulation and common functions (parsing forms). This and
embedding the interpreter in the server makes PHP very attractive. This
means that if you change databases you're going to have update your code
and also that the command set for PHP is bigger than Python. I imagine
most Pythoneers would write a layer to abstract the database connection
in anticipation of having to change it.

In addition PHP is object enabled but not object orientated and classes
are a hack (at least they were the last time I looked) and namespaces
are strange: functions actually have to ask to access global variables.

> Question 1: I need to design a website, or rather a web-accessed
> application, that will
> give access to a database: add, update, delete. Medium size, 50k to
> 500
> k records, about 10 users, needs to be reliable. I dont have time or
> money to develop a fancy app. Do I have a (python driven, for
> instance)
> alternative to PHP?
Yes. Python has modules to do all that. You can even use PSPs (Python
serber pages) or DTML (Zope's equivalent) to do all that.

> Question 2: how good (or bad) is PHP? grammar, system reliability,
> etc.
not really in a position to comment. There are of plenty of reference
systems running wonderfully solidly on PHP and I've never heard people
complaining about its speed or reliability.

> Id like to hear from people with solid professional experience.
> Question 3: I had a look at Zope, it seems to be a tool to manage web
> content (versionning, concurrent access, etc), doesnt seem to be able
> to
> do what I need. But maybe it does, or some app using Zope does?
When it comes to Zope, most people come to the same conclusion: Zope is
cool. Zope gives me the same kind of feeling about content management
and application servers that Python does about programming: doing things
the right way. It has a few rough edges but more than enuff goodies to
make up for them and the pace of development is extraordinary. It is
component based and extensible so if what you are looking for isn't in
the standard distribution the chances are high that there will be a Zope
"product" (component) that does it and if not you can write your own in
Python or perl or...

You should easily be able to do what you need in Zope.

Charlie
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