To be frank, at this point in time when I'm developing for the web, just about the only thing I care about when it comes to what language I'm using is that it's not PHP.
I understand why people use PHP, but as someone who has a decent amount of experience with a variety of languages, I really want a language that's designed sanely, especially for things like web-(sites|apps). I'll gladly take a hit on the language-speed side, or on the ease-of-finding-hosting side for the sake of not having to put up with PHPs craziness.
Why? For just the reason you pointed out - the vast majority of websites don't get enough traffic to make the language matter. I'd imagine that things like learning how to configure apache and/or a caching tool like memcached would handle most of the performance bottleneck on a site that did get that level of traffic.
Seriously - if a language is "fast" enough to allow the creation of responsive GUI apps, it's "fast" enough for web-apps.
PHP might not be the most elegant in the world, but for a small- to mid-size web application, using a solid PHP5 framework (like KohanaPHP) along with a PHP accelerator and you have an easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy application.
For small to mid-size web apps, I far prefer python and cherrypy (http://www.cherrypy.org). Easier to use, and easier to deploy assuming you have hosting that gives you control over your hosted machine (here's looking at you, slicehost).
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Oh, god. How many times does this point need to be made? Yeah, cool. The compiler is fast.
Probably 1% of all websites on the internet ever manage to get enough traffic to make the language matter, right?
To be frank, at this point in time when I'm developing for the web, just about the only thing I care about when it comes to what language I'm using is that it's not PHP.
I understand why people use PHP, but as someone who has a decent amount of experience with a variety of languages, I really want a language that's designed sanely, especially for things like web-(sites|apps). I'll gladly take a hit on the language-speed side, or on the ease-of-finding-hosting side for the sake of not having to put up with PHPs craziness.
Why? For just the reason you pointed out - the vast majority of websites don't get enough traffic to make the language matter. I'd imagine that things like learning how to configure apache and/or a caching tool like memcached would handle most of the performance bottleneck on a site that did get that level of traffic.
Seriously - if a language is "fast" enough to allow the creation of responsive GUI apps, it's "fast" enough for web-apps.
PHP might not be the most elegant in the world, but for a small- to mid-size web application, using a solid PHP5 framework (like KohanaPHP) along with a PHP accelerator and you have an easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy application.
I agree in general, it's just not for me.
For small to mid-size web apps, I far prefer python and cherrypy (http://www.cherrypy.org). Easier to use, and easier to deploy assuming you have hosting that gives you control over your hosted machine (here's looking at you, slicehost).