PHP to Python
I loved PHP. Take that back, I still love PHP. It still is my bread and butter, especially when I want to rock out a quick prototype. I’ve designed many many sites and based two companies (SkiReport.com & FantasyBook) on the php/mysql/apache stack.
With that said… PHP can also but a painstakingly frustrating. Here’s my short beef list with PHP….
No defacto framework:
CakePHP? Zend Studio? CogeIgnitor? Too many to choose from… and thus no one winner with complete docs and third-party support.
No threading
Ask Facebook their biggest challenge with PHP… no threading
Poor memory management
Effectively can’t create server side scripts
…
Switching to Python
So I dug in and made the switch to python. For all those stubborn php developers out there (i was one)… pull up your skirt and give it a shot. Here’s the stack I settled on below, suggest doing the same!
Python
Django
Virtualenv + PIP (isolated python environ, no version/dependency issues)
Apache/mod_wsgi
Fabric (streamline deployments & other tasks)
South (django app - db schema versioning)
