I've been doing web development for a decade now, and I can quite easily say that there are a few different types of web developers out there.

For those that come from a programming background, we know how much extra power there is from a real programming language, as opposed to these text-preprocessing language.

But for the person who's just looking at cranking out a quick prototype, that doesn't requlre some of those special features, stuff like ColdFusion and PHP can be more productive. There's the issue with keeping style and content seperate, that we've been doing with templating for years -- but I can do the same thing with text-preprocessors -- I've done pages where it's almost exclusively Apache SSI calls, save for a call to a CGI (include virtual), where I deal with the features that I can't do in a given language.

Why do I do this? Well, part of it's what's tool for the right job, but most of it is what group I'm working with, and what the common language is -- I don't want to be the only person who can maintain something, as we all know that changes are going to be needed in the future, and I don't scale all that well.

Now, when I'm dealing with programmers, even for application (not necessarily web-based), Perl seems to be a good language that we can standardized on. If I'm dealing with designers, they might know the HTML, but they don't know a real programming language, and need the best bang for their buck -- if all they need is stuff that's been done before (feedback forms, search engines, guestbooks, weblogs, etc.) They're not pushing the edge of the text-preprocessing language -- they might push the design edge, but that's it.

If I were a teacher, trying to teach a class of 20-30 students, with heterogeneous backgrounds, I'd probably go the PHP route, too. I'd have to get them up to speed on design, HTML, database, and HTTP concepts -- I might have enough time to teach them bad Perl programming, but I'd rather teach bad PHP. (well, I'd try to teach them good PHP, but how much can you really expect to be learned in a single semester class? They're not going to be some HTML/SQL/programming prodigy after an introductory class)

In reply to Re: The REAL reason for why they choose PHP over Perl. by jhourcle
in thread The REAL reason for why they choose PHP over Perl. by Spidy

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