Re: The REAL reason for why they choose PHP over Perl.

[adrianh]

So I'm wondering, and I'll ask you, the Perl community: why does everyone seem to prefer PHP nowadays? Is it because the creator of PHP's first name isn't Larry? Is it because the word 'PHP' is shorter than the word 'Perl'?

Because almost every web host on the planet has mod_php installed. Which means that people who want to mess around with interactive web applications have a very low barrier to entry with PHP. Upload the files to the web server. Done.

Compared to separate-process-CGI-scripts mod_php is a lot faster/simpler. Compared to mod_perl + templating library of your choice it's a lot more common.

And also, since PHP 5 (with 6 around the corner) it's a considerably less hateful language from a purely technical perspective.

(update: less hateful than previous PHP versions anyway)

[ikegami]

Shared hosts that use mod_php end up (in my experience) switching to the CGI version so that it can execute as the script's owner. This is usually done because of problems with outgoing spam. I wonder how big a draw "in process" really is for PHP.