>For example, why would you write something in PHP when you've got an excellent choice between Ruby/Rails or Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView
You can make a simple website on PHP in ~30 lines of code (routing + boilerplate template) with nothing more than a text editor. It will have no dependencies beyond standard PHP modules, so you could then migrate this website to hundreds of cheap shared hosting providers just by copying files via FTP or SCP. It will run fast even on server with crap hardware. There is nothing remotely similar in any other language. All other solutions are less portable, require way more configuration and more infrastructure on the dev side.
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~15 years ago I made a website for a certain community using PHP. I still maintain it. On my own time, on my own dime. It doesn't cost much, thanks to properties I described above. So it's still operational. Think about that next time you talk about "maintainability" and "stability".
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I'd love to have the same ergonomics of deployment with other languages. You can make it work. Jetty + Apache Velocity, for example, can "feel" similar to PHP. But there are no hundreds of providers who will manage this for you with little to no configuration.
You can make a simple website on PHP in ~30 lines of code (routing + boilerplate template) with nothing more than a text editor. It will have no dependencies beyond standard PHP modules, so you could then migrate this website to hundreds of cheap shared hosting providers just by copying files via FTP or SCP. It will run fast even on server with crap hardware. There is nothing remotely similar in any other language. All other solutions are less portable, require way more configuration and more infrastructure on the dev side.
...
~15 years ago I made a website for a certain community using PHP. I still maintain it. On my own time, on my own dime. It doesn't cost much, thanks to properties I described above. So it's still operational. Think about that next time you talk about "maintainability" and "stability".
...
I'd love to have the same ergonomics of deployment with other languages. You can make it work. Jetty + Apache Velocity, for example, can "feel" similar to PHP. But there are no hundreds of providers who will manage this for you with little to no configuration.