> Scripting and command line automation is executed better by Python and Ruby, which excel for writing Unix scripts and tools.
Python has a ridiculous time it needs to start up, it is not suited for any batch task that requires a lot of process creation.
> PHP has one of the most abhorrent language syntax designs this side of Perl and the standard library is wildly inconsistent.
At least it has a standard library that is both usable (in contrast to the JS ecosystem, remember left-pad?) and actually not that inconsistent if you have experience in developing C - most of what is described as "inconsistent" comes right from there.
And: the stdlib of PHP can easily be expanded upon by a rich variety of Composer libraries that can easily be deployed. Let's compare that to... Java, for example. Three popular dependency managers (and build tools): Ant, Maven, Gradle. Plus classpath worries if you're using Tomcat or other application servers which means you also have their libraries in the mix.
Changing code in production? In PHP it's as easy as changing the file using rsync and automatically all new incoming requests will use the new code, vs Java where you have to restart the server (which for large project means minutes of downtime).
Python has a ridiculous time it needs to start up, it is not suited for any batch task that requires a lot of process creation.
> PHP has one of the most abhorrent language syntax designs this side of Perl and the standard library is wildly inconsistent.
At least it has a standard library that is both usable (in contrast to the JS ecosystem, remember left-pad?) and actually not that inconsistent if you have experience in developing C - most of what is described as "inconsistent" comes right from there.
And: the stdlib of PHP can easily be expanded upon by a rich variety of Composer libraries that can easily be deployed. Let's compare that to... Java, for example. Three popular dependency managers (and build tools): Ant, Maven, Gradle. Plus classpath worries if you're using Tomcat or other application servers which means you also have their libraries in the mix.
Changing code in production? In PHP it's as easy as changing the file using rsync and automatically all new incoming requests will use the new code, vs Java where you have to restart the server (which for large project means minutes of downtime).