A complete php web application that involves php for say, hello world, is one line of php code. For perl, it's more complex because php hides a lot. 
<? print "Hi!" ?>

[download]
vs 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\nHi!";

[download]
So there's two pieces of complexity. The shebang and the header. Want to refer to variables? In php, it's "easy".

Perl is so modular, you can mix and match things to get a lot accomplished. You can create a module with your core logic, like in php, then reference it via soap, http, command line or corba... unlike php.

Documentation for php leads people to realize, to call a php function, you just call it. In perl, you have the nasty import statement. oh noes!

Then it starts to break down. php needs recompliation for postgresql access and other moduels. In perl, you need to do it as well, but you never have the false idea from the perl documentation that something pre-exists.

Then you run into consistency issues. Perl is not innocent from this, since there's 100 ways of doing anything via modules, but perl is upfront with that. In php, there's usually one way of doing it and you have to find it.

But to solve any of these issues and the others, php has momentum. Providers install a db, php and some core stuff, and you never need recompilation.. until one day it bites you. php has a LOT of people who will point you in the right direction, until the one day you can't do the one thing the way you want to. versus perl which is "too complex" from the getgo and kinda makes people think up front.

There's a touch of sarcasm, and believe-you-me, I favour perl because it makes you think and gives you that flexibility w/o trying to do the web too-well.

In reply to Re: The REAL reason for why they choose PHP over Perl. by exussum0
in thread The REAL reason for why they choose PHP over Perl. by Spidy

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