[KLUG Members] Scripting language

[bill]

Adam Williams wrote:

> > Postgres is difficult to learn, but useful for -other- things.
>
> Well, I disagree.  PostgreSQL is in no way more difficult to learn than
> MySQL.  It supports more features, but if one doesn't use them they
> don't get in the way.  MySQL SQL statements will run in PostgreSQL and
> vice versa for all basic stuff.

Still a different focus. I gave up on PostGres the first time I had to recreate a
whole table just to alter a field.  MySQL is extremely fast, handling many, many
connections and queries almost simultaneously.  That's a trump card for the web.
Plus, almost all websites will have greater database needs to do other things
tomorrow.  MySQL is extremely adaptable.  PostGres is useful for other things, MySQL's
primary focus is the web, and it does that better than anything I've seen.

> > Php was developed for the web.  It is easy to learn, and rocks like nothing else
> > for the web.  It works with almost anything, and if the humoungous code base
> > available doesn't have what you want, it has the best support newsgroup I've
> > ever seen, so you can roll your own.
>
> All true.
>
> > All other arguments have some other non-web related reason for using them.
>
> It is very important to ask if your web application needs to work with
> other systems on the backend, so I wouldn't discount "non-web" related
> reasons.

In which case they would not be non-web related reasons.  But the point is many
arguments for other systems use non-web related reasons.  (e.g., "Learning perl is a
useful skill because it's a valuable language for many things besides just writing the
backend for a website").  If you want to create a web site, and if creating it is a
"test of [your] ability to learn new types of scripting" there is really no better
solution than PHP.

> > Anything from MS is security challenged.
>
> And expensive!

And buggy and difficult.  I've had more than one contract because the MS people simply
couldn't accomplish a project.  I felt for them.  I would have had trouble
accomplishing those things if I were using their scripting language too.

> > Avoid javascript.  Any serious script will crash half the browsers and they'll
> > blame your code.  Some browsers will have different capabilities and it will
> > work weird, and they'll blame your code.  Some browsers have all client-side
> > scripting turned off, so you lose all your functionality, and they'll blame your
> > code.  Been there, done that, don't do it anymore.  Do your scripting
> > server-side.
>
> Agree.  If you *need* Javascript and other DHTML-ish things there are
> client browser sensitivity "modules" for PHP (and other languages I
> assume).

Client-side scripting demands that you create two or three websites.  One for those
who have it.  One for those who don't, and one for those who have another flavor.
Even those who -have- it often have some version of windows limping along that a
difficult DHTML-involved script will overwhelm.  Client side scripting is wonderful if
you can control their environment.  On the web you need to be more democratic, "Send
us your poor, your hungry, your downtrodden browsers..."

kind regards,

bill