The guy who was interviewing me was sitting their shaking his head like that wasn't a valid answer.
I wonder what would be the proper answer. Also if there is a proper answer, they shouldn't ask what your favourite feature is.
I hate it when people ask questions where they expect some sort of exact question to see if you think in the exact same manner as they do. Just ask me what you want to know or I'll pack my shit and leave.
For a PHP deployment this is all handled by a fully standardized Apache httpd (at least back in the days, nowadays setups became more fancy) and the PHP.user just uses (s)ftp to copy the files in and all works magically. Need to update? - Just copy the new files. This is the unbeaten simplicity. (Of course that breaks at some point, like imma high traffic site simply copying the files via sftp will lead to some request in the middle having inconsistent state etc.)
If the binary fails for whatever reason the application is either down or you have to have something ensuring it stays running. With PHP if it breaks, it'll be ok for the next run.
You say you just drop a golang binary into any linux enviroment and it'll just run. Except it won't. If I just upload the file it won't just run. I need to run the binary. Literally, you need to do more than just upload the binary to the enviroment. Where as with PHP with many hosters you do just need to upload the files and it is deploy. As you said you can't get simplier than just uploading the files.
Secondary, if you have to make exclusions to proof your point of simplicity then it is not as simple as you state.
Thirdly, your deployment would be unstable. If an error occurs someone would manually have to restart it. For any production deployment you would need supervisior. And if you were going to deploy a new version you would have to stop supervisor, stop your process, upload and then restart supervisor. Quite simply your trival deployment is not production ready and would not be how someone would deploy it.
I get it you like golang, I like it to, but PHP has it beat on deployablity. It's got years on it when it comes to improving the ecosystem around it.
Whatever you think it is that is simple about php, I am certain there is plenty happening behind the covers that you are unaware of. An environment built around supporting php is required.
A compiled golang binary only needs a linux system. That is it. Very, very simple.
Doesn't restarted failed processes last time I checked. Maybe I'm wrong but I am pretty sure there is a reason every sys admin I know uses supervisord to manage long running processes.
> Whatever you think it is that is simple about php, I am certain there is plenty happening behind the covers that you are unaware of. An environment built around supporting php is required.
You are as wrong about that as you are as wrong about golang being as simple to deploy. You're just consisently wrong.
> A compiled golang binary only needs a linux system. That is it. Very, very simple.
Golang binary requires the deployer to have linux system knowledge. Uploading files does not require that it requires FTP client knowledge at most or in some cases the ability to use a web based file manager.
Requring knowledge core operating system functionality do deployments is not simple. Just because a techincal person can do it, does not mean it is simple. If you can not teach your grandma to do the deployment it is not simple.