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Comment by jbrooksuk | Hacker News Reader

> Won't your prototyping be faster in Go/Python/Node/Ruby anyway, with a more stable surface to build upon it?

One of the most understated pros of PHP (IMHO) is that it's so easy to get setup with. You can start hacking on something so quickly. In my experience, Go has not been like that. Node.js also was never as quick.

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But other languages like Python and Ruby are even easier to get started with than PHP.

I worked with rails in the 1.x and 2.x days. Deployment was a joke and you had to restart the whole Ruby server to update scripts.

PHP you simply refresh your browser page to see the changes. This has all changed in recent years and rails deployment/debugging is much smoother.

Not really the case with Docker. I can spin up a container targeting any language in less than 10 seconds, mount a volume and start hacking away. Best of all, it doesn't pollute my system in any way. We shouldn't pick a language just by how easy it is to get started, a decision which often leads to a lot of regrets. Pick whatever is good for the project not your disposition.

But I am productive with PHP, I don't know docker or related tool chains, I am more productive in PHP then Python(because of my own experience and dilikes for Python like syntax), the ecosystems are equivalent for my task so I would use PHP. Buf if PHP was not good enough then sure I would always use the best task for the job(I used Java for a different project or even use a bash script and pipe UNIX tools)

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