Related
I'm deciding on a web framework for an upcoming project, and I'd appreciate any advice. We've decided to use jQuery for the JavaScript, and are heavily leaning toward Python or PHP (more Python) for our server-side logic. I'm especially interested in web2py because of its jQuery integration.
About our project
Our project is to develop a security console for a complex
cybersecurity system operating within an organization's internal
network.
This console will be largely server-driven, as messages come in from the network and must be pushed by the server to the user.
The user will also be able to initiate security actions, the implementation for which will likely be in C++.
The interface we've planned will be relatively rich, and I want to leverage jQuery's power as much as possible.
We have some control over the browser environment we'll be running in (e.g., we don't have to worry about clients with JavaScript disabled).
Our site is likely to have only a few, long-lived client connections.
We are looking for software components with permissive licenses, though we're using some copyleft components (I see that web2py is LGPL while Django is BSD, so +1 to Django)
We have about a month to create a functional demo of our system, of which this interface is a small (but visible) part.
About us
We are two developers with about 5 years of programming experience, but little web development experience. I have several years of Python experience and a summers' worth of experience messing around with PHP. My coworker has some Python experience and has never touched PHP.
I used Django once back in 2008, and was frustrated by the file and code structure, which I found highly unintuitive. Perhaps this structure is inherent to the MVC model (I've had similar experiences with Django and CakePHP since), and I just need to bite the bullet and memorize it.
My Question
Given the information above, what are the relative advantages of the various Python/PHP web frameworks for our project? As mentioned above, I'm especially interested in web2py because of its jQuery integration, though Django's dominance is (once again) hard to ignore.
Thank you very much for your time!
Before deciding on a framework, you should first decide if you want to commit to a language you are unfamiliar with.
You said you've both got minimal PHP experience, so you have to weigh up the advantages here; Will the pros for going PHP (if any) out weigh the amount of time the developers will need to spend to retrain?
(Although depending on your background experience, PHP should be very easy to pick up.)
If you frame it like that, PHP would have to have a pretty convincing offering to give you. From what I'm seeing, specifically Django vs web2py, they both seem very close in functionality - which is good, but doesn't provide the "you must use x!" scenario you may be after.
However, If you will be bringing more people in later and feel finding people to work with web2py will be difficult, it may tip it to PHP. You said your self, Django's popularity (and BSD license) is hard to ignore, and it should make it easier to find people for later expansion.
If it were me, in your shoes, I would go with web2py. Assuming the development team will continue to be Python focused for the foreseeable future.
Python vs PHP: Python
With python, you can always write wrappers for C code so you won't have to mess with starting other processes and passing args to them. That might be useful for your security functions.
Web2py will allow you to easily write a webservice for this too, to more easily integrate the C portions with the web-site infrastructure.
If you already prefer python, I would go with that. If you need to bring on web-developers later that are trained in PHP, teach them Python. It won't take long, and I'm sure they'll appreciate it in the long run. Plus, moving from a PHP MVC framework to web2py or even django would make things easier. I've used CodeIgniter for PHP and find that web2py was so much simpler and easy to understand.
Also as for the directory structure, django is not actually true MVC -- it's MTV (model, template, view).
I find web2py's organization a little more straight-forward. But yes, either way it can seem strange at first. I would say YES, you should bite the bullet and use MVC.
In web2py, the "view" is html markup with the ability to write raw python code. The controller extracts data from the model (database), attaches any needed files (css/js etc) and the model of course simply defines the structure of the data and allows you to access it in an OO way.
Lastly, I wouldn't tip my hat in favor of web2py just because of jQuery integration. It does use it, and a some of the built-in framework stuff (like response.flash/session.flash, the LOAD function that loads a page or data from another controller) rely on jQuery, but using it in another framework only means you have to write an include statement (e.g. ).
But, the way it allows/forces you to focus on development is what takes the cake for me.
I've been using Django as part of my work for a couple years now and truly enjoy it when I can make it work. Unfortunately, and maybe it's just me, but I end up spending hours working on configuration every time I start a new server, or try to make it work in a development IDE.
It's relatively simple to start a new project and start coding. But there are all sorts of little catches that keep things from working if you deviate from the norm. Things like if you want your django project to serve from a subdirectory like example.com/django. The information is out there to make it work. But it's hard to find.
I can't tell you if web2py has those same problems or not. I only just learned about it from your question. It does look slick and simple though. I can tell you that after the hassles of getting the applications to serve properly from whatever server configuration I'm using, django is way more fun to program with than plain php. PHP frameworks may differ.
From my understanding the project not usual web application, you must need event driven program, web server in python.
Django won't help you here.You should look into Flask, Flask has inbuilt console too.http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/, you might need to use twisted, gevent,Flask jquery.
I would recommend asking about web2py on its mailing list -- you'll get lots of help and advice there. Regarding the LGPL license, note that it only applies to the framework, not your application -- you can license your application however you like, including closed source/commercial.
It sounds like you'll need some server push functionality, but if you'll really only need a few long-lived connections at a time, you might not need to bother with solutions like Twisted or gevent. If necessary, though, web2py does include this (requires Tornado, and works using WebSockets, though can be adapted to use other methods).
I appreciate there are perhaps better ways of making a PHP application scale than the above, however I'm wondering more on principle. From what I've heard, Python is faster than PHP and I'm trying to decide which language to learn next, as a PHP developer.
Python's a very good language to learn for a number of reasons, including its clear syntax, its excellent standard library, its multi-paradigm support, and the helpful community that surrounds it.
However, scalability has more to do with your system's overall architecture than with the programming language you choose. Often, the database is the main bottleneck, and the performance of the programming language that's talking to the database will not have much impact on overall site performance.
I don't think rewriting in Python will help you that much, it is very hard to say anyway without knowing your exact scalability problem. When it comes to real scaling issues, every problem is unique and there is no one true solution.
That being said, Python is an interesting language, and if you've time on your hands and want to learn something, it sounds like a good idea to look at it closely. I would also look at JavaScript more closely though, be it using NodeJS (which is also pretty damn fast for some things) or just in a browser, it's a language that is not going away anytime soon. If you're a web developer, you can't know enough JS imo.
For web applications I would personally learn Python after PHP, but if your a Windows fan consider ASP.NET.
I cant comment on the difference in scalability of a website but i have had very positive experiences using frameworks such as django for small time websites. I really love the separation of code and templating (i know you can do this somehow with php too).
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm planning on moving to Python and I have a couple of additional questions along with the title:
did you have more fun with python?
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
what made you change to python?
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
Your answers would really be useful for us PHP devs wanting something more I guess :)
Thanks in advance!
I was a PHP dev for about 5 years before switching to Python almost exclusively a year ago. The experience has been a mostly positive one; I'll answer your questions but also list a few gotchas I ran into.
Definitely. I continually find surprisingly powerful features/expressions in Python that do a great deal in a small amount of code (yet still being more readable than Perl).
Far more productive. It might just be my style, but Python's functional programming tools, generator expressions, list comprehensions, etc. allow me to accomplish tasks correctly with less code and less time invested than PHP.
I had an analytics project that needed a powerful stats package, so I went with Python+numpy. Then I found Turbogears and loved the syntax. Eventually I discovered coroutines and cooperative multitasking, and there's no going back. I use bottle, gevent, and gunicorn to crank out lean, fast, scalable web apps in record time.
Not if I could help it. PHP's verbose "everything is a long-named function call" syntax is just hard on my eyes at this point. I find it tedious to optimize as well (every page load reinterprets the source code in a default configuration).
Here are a few of the gotchas to be aware of:
For cheap, low-traffic sites, it's much harder to find a web host with a good python environment.
Apache isn't really a typical setup for Python in my experience. Python webapps are usually daemons that are exposed to the public with a reverse proxy webserver in front (nginx is very common). A number of corporate environments balk at new-fangled technology like nginx. It also takes some adjustment to think about your webapps as daemons, and it can take some effort at first to get your daemonizing correct and consistent.
If you use mysql, you will have some pain switching for a while. There just isn't a Python mysql library that is highly compatible with PHP-style mysql queries. For example, most of them don't use the simple "?" syntax for parameterized queries, so you can't just paste your queries over (you have to use printf-style "%s", etc.). Also, just the fact that you actually have to choose and install a mysql library is an extra step over PHP. This no longer bothers me, since I don't use mysql anymore anyway.
This is a broad topic with much, much more to say, but I hope this was helpful.
I'll try my best to answer your questions as best I can:
Did you have more fun with python?
I really enjoy how minimalist python is, having modules with non-redundant naming conventions is really nice. I found this to be especially convenient when reading/debugging other peoples code.
I also love all of the python tricks to do some very elegant things in a single line of code such as list comprehensions and the itertools library.
I tend to develop my applications using mod_wsgi and it took some time to wrap my head around writing thread-safe web applications, but it was really worth it.
I also find unicode to be much less frustrating with python especially with python 3k.
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
For simple websites python can be less fun to setup and use. One nice feature of PHP that I miss with python is mixing PHP and HTML in the same file. Python has a lot of nice template languages that make this easy as well, but they have to be installed.
what made you change to python?
I became frustrated with a lot of the little nuances of PHP such as strange integer and string conversions and so forth. I also started to feel that PHP was getting very bloated with a lot of methods with inconsistent naming schemes. I was referring to the PHP documentation quite frequently despite having a large portion of the php library memorized.
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
I would develop a PHP project again, it has a lot of nice features and a great community. Plus I have a lot of experience with PHP. I'd prefer to use python, but if the client wants PHP I'm not going to force something they don't want.
Well, I started with PHP, and have delved into Python recently. I wouldn't say that I've "moved to", but I do use both (still PHP more, but a fair bit of Python as well).
I wouldn't say that I have more "fun" with Python. There are a lot of really cool and easy things that I really wish I could take to PHP. So I guess it could be considered "fun". But I still enjoy PHP, so...
I'm more productive with PHP. I know PHP inside and out. I know most of the little nuances involved in writing effective PHP code. I don't know Python that well (I've maybe written 5k lines of Python)... I know enough to do what I need to, but not nearly as in-depth as PHP.
I wanted to try something new. I never liked Python, but then one day I decided to learn the basics, and that changed my views on it. Now I really like some parts (and can see how it influences what PHP I write)...
I am still doing PHP projects. It's my best language. And IMHO it's better than Python at some web tasks (like high traffic sites). PHP has a built in multi-threaded FastCGI listener. Python you need to find one (there are a bunch out there). But in my benchmarks, Python was never able to get anywhere near as as fast as PHP with FastCGI (The best Py performed it was 25% slower than PHP. The worst was several hundered times, depending on the FCGI library). But that's based on my experience (which admittedly isn't much). I know PHP, so I feel more comfortable committing a large site to it than I would PY...
I run a self-developed private social site for 100+ users. Python was absolutely fantastic for making and running this.
did you have more fun with python?
Most definitely.
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
Mostly yes. Python coding style, at least for me is so much quicker and easier. But python does sometimes lack in included libraries and documentation over PHP. (But PHP seems second to none in that reguard). Also requires a tad more to get running under apache.
what made you change to python?
Easier to manage code, and quicker development (A good IDE helps there, I use WingIDE for python), as well as improving my python skills for when I switch to non-web based projects.
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
Perhaps if I were working on a large scale professional project. PHP is so ubiquitous on the web A company would have a much easier time finding a replacement PHP programmer.
Last year I switched job to get away from PHP and work in Python. I'm very much satisfied with the decision I made :)
To answer the individual questions:
did you have more fun with python?
Yes!
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
More productive I'd say. But the overall increased experience in programming also had something to with that.
what made you change to python?
You are not expected to be a jack of all trades in non-PHP jobs. (Photoshop/Web Design/Flash is required for many PHP jobs, and I hate Flash). And I liked Python/Django a lot.
4. Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
If it's small stuff that's better done without any framework, then yes.
I've never really worked with PHP (nothing major) and come from the .NET world. The project I am currently on requires a lot of Python work and I must say I love it. Very easy and "cool" language, ie. FUN!
.NET will always be my wife but Python is my mistress ;)
yes
yes
curiosity, search for better languages, etc. (actually, I learned them somewhat in parallel many years ago)
yes, if a project requires it explicitly
disclaimer: I never really moved from php.
did you have more fun with python?
Yes. Lot more.
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
No. I think more.
what made you change to python?
Django.
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
Only if it is required.
Why is PHP the most used programming language for a web based platform?
PHP:
is easy to learn;
has been around for ~15 years;
runs fairly efficiently;
is cheap to host; and
actually scales really well (some of the largest sites on the internet use it).
PHP is basically the ultimate grass-roots success story.
PHP is:
Built for the web, that is not an extension of an existing language like Perl.
Free of any default framework; this allows it to be fairly lightweight and powerful, a good example of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle.
Because software that values simplicity over everything else propagates faster.
Probably because PHP is easy to learn and it was really simple at first start. With the upcoming of OOP from PHP4 we cannot really say it's simple anymore but at least it tries to keep simple.
Plus from the start the language was really Web oriented, easy access to get/post variables.
You can also note the PHP community is really wide and Zend do a great job to make it a real concurrent of Java/Dotnet/all the others.
Perl/Python/Ruby are also good scripting language but they require some libraries to develop web application
While most CGI language extensions require you to write HTML/JS/CSS within that languages syntax, PHP is able to be used within the contents of an HTML file structure. For someone who doesn't really get the concept of CGI (like I did a while back), it's really nice and offers room to grow with libraries and a universally familiar syntax.
It's also a strategic isue to
choose PHP over Java/Ruby/...
Because you will find PHP
programmers every time, but it is
really difficult to get (cheap)
Java/Ruby/... programmers.
PHP has become the third most be
liked programming language. * **
Its Open Source.
Its old and therefore very stable.
Its the best documented language in the internet.
It has the most string functions (necessary for web/HTML programming).
It has a very huge community, you will find the answer for every PHP question in the internet (or ask stackoverflow).
Its the only language which was designed for the internet.
PHP is fairly easy to install and fairly easy to understand. For that matter, you don't even have to install it. Fifteen dollars a month (or less) will get you a PHP webhost at hundreds of hosting companies.
There are no shortage of "Build a website in 5 minutes with PHP" books. Therefore, it's often the first choice to new web developers or people who want to get something done quickly.
PHP certainly has it warts, but done properly, it can be a good solution as well. Despite its warts, it runs an awful lot of successful websites.
I think it is easy to learn, it is faster, it has lots of forums, it has lots of example codes, it has ...
A lot of emerging php framework like Symfony, Zend, and Cake make rapid development, good mvc design easy. A lot of extremely popular blogging software/cms's are built using php eg. Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla!.
I've been doing html, css and javascript for quite a long time, mostly for my very own enjoyment. I would say I know fairly much, I've created many simple games and apps and experiments with javascript. However there is only so much that is possible to do in the browser, for any more "complete" websites I am constantly confronted with my ignorance on server side programming.
So, what do I need. I need to get my head around how to use databases and how to use some server side programming language, I guess. What is the right choice? What should I avoid?
Thanks.
PHP and MySQL have a pretty low barrier to entry (they're both free and ubiquitous). I'd start with those, since most hosts provide them for you. As an added bonus, they work really well together (and PHP isn't very hard to learn coming from a web development background).
Head First SQL is a great book for learning MySQL. All of the examples in the book are done on MySQL. The book even explains where to get it and how to install it. As for PHP, the introductory tutorial at official website is the best place to learn it.
Update: Head First PHP & MySQL is now available. I haven't read this one yet, but other books in the series and by the same author are great for learning new languages from scratch.
Download Python. Learn the Python language. Learn Object-Oriented programming.
Python includes SQLite, this makes it easier to Learn the SQL language.
Download the Django framework. This makes it easy to write server-side applications that work simply and reliably.
I would suggest PHP. Not because it's the best, most modern or cleanest language out there, but because it is easy to learn for someone coming from pure HTML.
You begin by just adding tiny bits of PHP to your regular HTML and magic happens :)
Ruby is a fantastic language and the frameworks for web stuff generally teach you some good practices. Try it. The Learn to program book uses Ruby, maybe you'd like to check it out.
I noticed in your question you mention that you've been using javascript. If you're comfortable progamming javascript, I've recently begun working with server side javascript in the form of EJScript on linux and using jscript on windows. It's been fairly painless, and the documentation has been pretty good so far on both.
If you're more interested in learning this with another technology then Django & Python or ASP.NET & C# (or IronPython) are both fairly low barrier to entry platforms available on windows, *nix, etc...
I would say that if you're comfortable working in Linux, then go for PHP and MySQL. If you aren't comfortable working in Linux, then download the free Visual Web Developer version of Visual Studio Express, and get started using that. This lets you program in VB.Net or C#, and use the .Net web development framework. It's really miles ahead of anything PHP in terms of how nice a platform it is to work on. There's also a free developer edition of SQL Server that lets you store up to 4 GB of data.
There's plenty of .Net hosts out there now too. Although, due to increased license costs, Windows hosting plans will usually cost more and give you less space/bandwidth than Linux hosting plans, you can still get enough room to play around with and deploy some apps on the web. If you develop something really cool, and outgrow what your hosting account provides, it's probably time to upgrade to a VPS, and post ads on your site to start paying the bills
I'd recommend PHP for folks who are familiar with HTML but are newish to programming. Here's why:
I'm currently an ASP.Net developer, and I think that ASP.Net abstracts waaaaay to much to make it a good first programming environment. I say learn how to generate and manipulate straight HTML with a language like PHP instead of trying to understand GridViews, etc., which have no bearing or relevance to programming in the broader sense.
I wouldn't say ASP.Net is "the Dark Path" or anything, but if you start out by learning it, you'll tend to favor the warm and insulating arms of the framework. ASP.Net is pretty much a code-generator when compared to more explicit (some would say reckless, messy, and tedious, but I'm not one of them) methods like PHP.
With PHP you'll see the effect your code has on the actual HTML when you view source. With an ASP.Net page, you'll be baffled by the amount and complexity of the HTML it spits out.
After you get your hands dirty in PHP, you can explore the pros and cons of frameworks like ASP.Net that "do a lot of the work for you".
I was exactly in your situation 3 to 4 years ago and, like some of the commentators suggest, I tried PHP because of its low barrier of entry.
That was a mistake! Oh sure I was able to achieve some things here and there, including using a contact form from a book which was so flawed that it was later hijacked by big time spammers and got my domain banned from most email servers out there.
Later on I tried to learn how to create dotabase driven sites with object oriented programming following the guidance of the excellent books, blog posts, and forums from Sitepoint and other sources. It was just too hard for my little brain. I just could not do it.
So what happened? 2 1/2 years ago I decided to learn Rails, which had just turned v. 1.1. It has been fun since the beginning and extremely rewarding. Working with Ruby is a pleasure, much easier to learn than PHP, and the Rails framework is so well put together that you can, with little effort, produce some very elaborate web sites with advanced features all while learning how to do proper object oriented web programming.
I used my new knowledge to recreate from scratch the site of my non-profit organization (with a new domain ;-) and, with a friend who is a talented designer, created a web development firm.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that easy, if you want to learn programming you need to put a lot of effort into it but in my own experience Rails can bring you some instant results while letting you get deeper and deeper over time.
I recommend two main sources of knowledge:
The excellent, official Rails
guides.
The free screencasts
from Railscasts.
Whatever your choice will be I wish you the best and a fun and fulfilling experience
I recently came upon this question myself. I really liked the way PHP integrates with HTML making designing a site more natural in my opinion. Design your site as you would with static content and then switch the static with the dynamic. However, I wanted to choose a "good" language. I looked at PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python, as they are the most popular, open source options. I didn't need any powerhorses, if you will, like Ruby on Rails or Django, since I just wanted to mess around with server side stuff and some SQL—nothing serious. I don't remember why nor do I care to remember why, but I chose Python. But I still wanted that integration with HTML. I came across Karrigell. It's a neat piece of Python that essentially handles the integration. It comes with a little web server which you can use on its own or use something like mod_proxy with lighttpd. The devs don't limit you to only Python inside HTML, though. Their server parses: Python inside HTML, HTML inside Python, plain ol' Python scripts, and Karrigell services. It may not integrate as well as PHP does, but it's pretty damn good.