For tiny sites, I’d use PHP as well, most probably WordPress.

For larger projects, Python + Django are way better !

It depends on the nature of the project, I guess. Maybe Python ain’t enough for some projects, but you can always mix it with something else.

Anyway… I won’t argue with you about JAVA. YET ! :D Who knows, maybe in the future I will have to learn it as well.

Btw… maybe you’d like to comment on why you dislike Django so much on this post: Python and Django Part 1.

And thank you for your recommendation ! :)

Please read the FAQ.

If I had to do a tiny website I would use PHP – it’s relatively lightweight, numerous solutions are available and I can get something up in less than an hour using either 100% custom code or one of the many frameworks and CMS software that exist for it. Apache + PHP is a very straightforward installation that takes a couple of minutes at most.

However, when I’m writing big stuff, like I do now for http://goBeepit.com – this is a multi-layered project with many facets and components. From a multi-faceted database, RESTful API for the Android & iPhone app, numerous web apps, and all the way to a simple website. PHP (and Python) start to break. It’s very difficult to bring another developer on-board without messing shit up big time. And that’s mostly to do with the not-fully-functional OOP implementation in both languages. In any language, it’s up to the developer to structure their code correctly. However, Java and other fully-realised programming languages don’t make you write more code. They simply guard you from mistakes that could (and would) take hours to debug.

When writing OOP, PHP and Python make you write more code because of their lacking implementations. It’s as simple as that. PHP was born out of a necessity back in the day. Python came out of comfort. But now, with affordable VPS services with full root access – it seems like the role of both languages is small when it comes to the web. BTW, I believe Python will outlast PHP because of its other uses, like small mods to games and software. In that regard – PHP is useless compared with Python. But both should die as web languages.

To sum up my argument (as frazzled as it is) – If I had to do something small for the web at this point in time I’d choose PHP because it’s the easiest and when I write my code, in a normal development environment – it’s clean, tidy, readable, and you will not notice the curly brackets etc. Maybe if Python grows in popularity and starts offering a web building solution better than Django, I’ll start giving it more thought. If I had to write something big, like I’m doing now. I would not choose PHP or Python. Both of these languages have the same faults when it comes to scaling the project and it’s simply counter-productive to use them.

P.S.
If you like Python so much, get an account @Rackspace. They’re dirt cheap and you get a magnificent service. Just install Python on your VPS via SSH and get going man. These days it’s easy and affordable to write in whatever language you prefer. It would cost you around £6 per month to get a 256mb machine. I am hosting around 12 websites on their 256mb machine and it’s actually an overkill. If you need more, it’s also cheap to upgrade, and super fast and easy without the need to re-install anything. Choose Rackspace.co.uk to enjoy their London Data Centre and avoid any future ridiculous US laws.

I have been trying to add the watermark and I don’t see the attachment_id. Where would this be?

Some may like PHP, some may like Python.

Yes, they can both be used to create a web site. Most clients don’t really care what’s driving it. But for me it’s those small (maybe not that small) differences that count. I just love Python. And not just because it has no curly braces, dollar signs or semicolons, but because of lots of other great stuff like string & array manipulation, generators etc. Those are very nice things to have. But I will get to them in some future articles.

Maybe there is not such a big difference between the syntax of the two, but like I said, those little differences really count for me. Why overcomplicate things when you can have them so clean and nice ? It’s pretty useless…

Oh and.. with Python’s syntax you won’t need to worry about coding standards that much as it’s pretty strict.

Yes, PHP is more used for web development than Python, but only because it’s a bit more accessible to newbs, it’s easier to deploy and had/has support from some big companies. And I think it’s more of a trend to use PHP. It’s like one of those fashion things.

Oh.. as for JAVA… well… I hate it ! You need to write so much code to do even the simplest things. As for the other aspects of JAVA, I really don’t know, nor do I care about at the moment.

So Python is a little more structured. Its syntax is a little cleaner (and I do mean a little, because if you wrote PHP well then your code should look 98% the same as your Python code). PHP trumps Python as a web development language (fuck Django). When you write PHP using a normal IDE like Eclipse or Zend you will never notice having to write curly brackets and all those other “annoyances” (which exist in pretty much any programming language) because the IDE takes care of that as you type. PHP solutions are much more widely available, and numerous. They’ve been around for longer, and as far as open-source goes – that’s a big advantage.

Bottom line – both languages are lacking where it counts – scalability. And I mean both code wise, and multi-developers wise. With the rise of affordable and scalable VPS hosting – I am considering going JAVA. If not for the comfort, then at least for ending this stupid debate about PHP vs Python.

Can you please try this and let me know if it solves your problem: http://marianbucur.com/watermark-my-image.0.22.zip ?