| Re: Why PHP? [message #180662 is a reply to message #180660] |
Fri, 08 March 2013 09:03   |
Michael Vilain
Messages: 88
Registered: September 2010
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In article <17a9677a-3785-4b5f-a4cf-e78ffd5191a1(at)googlegroups(dot)com>,
clayjar(at)gmail(dot)com wrote:
> I'm a developer at a small but fast growing team at a university medical
> group. We've had a separate team working on an EMR system for many years on a
> Windows platform (using C# language), and it's still a big mess mostly due to
> early but poor architectural decisions. I've been working on a (non-patient
> data) administrative data system for over 3 years on a LAMP platform. The
> system I've developed, including the framework designed around the needs of
> our team, is very stable, easily extensible, user-friendly, and multisite
> capable.
>
> We're at a point where the EMR system has to be refactored completely inside
> out for it to be sustainable and viable for mobile access and for other
> needs. We need to get buy-ins from the .NET/C#/Visual Studio/Windows team as
> well as from our boss. A particular individual on the C# team likes the word
> "enterprise" a lot and still believes PHP to be a mere toy that kids play
> around with to build Personal Home Pages. Apparently, he hasn't been keeping
> himself up-to-date on web development scene.
>
> I need to present a strong case for choosing the LAMP platform, and PHP in
> particular. I have a very strong, intuitive notion about why LAMP is more
> suited for web applications than Windows-based alternatives, and experience
> to back it up, however, I lack professional knowledge about the difference
> between the two. What page or what information would you recommend to
> convince somewhat that LAMP platform is better suited for web apps? (Or PHP
> vs. C#). I have searched enough and pursued this information online, however,
> it is difficult to ascertain the objectivity due to salient biases and other
> factors.
>
> I've been using PHP to build many websites for over a decade, and I try to
> avoid any type of argument for or against a language, because it really
> depends on how one uses the tools to get something done, although the quality
> of tool being used does matter to certain degree. The point of this exercise
> really comes down to trying to convince others to use the framework I've
> built over the years which is now capable enough to accommodate for more
> complex systems. The language I happened to use is PHP and the platform is
> LAMP. If I had started on JSP using Java I wouldn't be doing this, as my
> friend in our Windows-platform team believes Java to be "enterprise-ready"
> but not PHP. I'm sincerely asking the PHP community here to point me to some
> objective materials to help convince my (very pro-Microsoft) coworker and our
> boss that LAMP stack is a VERY viable alternative to other proprietary
> platforms.
>
> Thank you for your help.
First off, I have a bias towards open systems and no love for Microsoft.
But I'll try to keep my prejudices to myself in giving you another view
on this problem. I often wonder why a specific language or technology
is chosen for use with specific project. Early on, I knew FORTRAN and
VAX BASIC best with some C. Then I picked up various shell programming
languages and added Perl and PHP. I've stayed pretty much on UNIX and
MacOS.
While you may not be able to make this determination, do you see your
applications growing or moving away from a Windows-based environment?
Do you a development team that can code with equal facility in php and
C# or is there retraining required? Is the company willing to pay the
yearly Microsoft developer's 'tax' (they call it maintenance and
licensing) to keep the development tools up-to-date and current?
All things being equal, I would think that developing something depends
on how well your developers know their tools. I was originally sent on
a consulting project because the customer thought they'd be developing
it in FORTRAN. A couple weeks in, they switched to Pascal, which I
_could_ do but loath. The project manager got a more senior person who
could do the Pascal coding and went on to something else.
I don't know C# or Java but according to Wikipedia, they're both
object-oriented languages. All the features you describe are similar.
The difference is that Java is supposed to be portable across multiple
platforms and O/S. My experience is it's write-once and debug
everywhere.
php isn't really the same sort of language as Java and I'm guessing C#.
It can run as a discrete process for each page using the CGI model. Or
it can run as part of the threaded Apache server as a module. AFAIK,
Java and C# talk to an application server using the browser as a front
end OR as a stand-alone program. I'm sure some C# people will be
jumping on me real soon for getting it wrong.
I'd nail down what 'enterprise ready' means for the C# people. My own
thought is 'does it scale?'. To often, applications aren't built with
large concurrent user communities in mind. As a sysadmin, I had to
clean up implementations that didn't allow for downtime and backups or
left lots of temp files around. But slobs are slobs in C, FORTRAN,
Java, or C#.
--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]
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