PHP vs Python: Features & Comparison in 2023

I'm a Sr. Web Developer for an overseas contracting company for 2 years. I've been developing web sites with PHP for over 20 years. I consider myself very experienced in HTML / CSS / PHP and MySQL. I also develop standalone Python applications, primarily on raspberry pi, for IOT / GPIO manipulation. For the last 6 months, I've delved into Django and flask, and I just have to shake my head when I hear anyone recommend either of them or python in general for web development. Are you deliberately trying to make the process stupid? Back to PHP. Version 8 rocks!

Thank you so much for your nice, complete and professional essay about python and php

Really appreciative content which very helpful well understood to read.Thank you.

This article is not useful as its very prejudiced only for criticizing PHP.

SQL Injection is super old news. That's a thing of the past.

Esta un poco sesgado y se nota la falta de imparcialidad, primero no es por un margen marginal que gana Php 7.x a la ultima versión de Python que se regocija de su velocidad pero pierde frente a php... Sino que fue un margen realmente considerable.
Segundo no es justo sacar una y otra vez las vulnerabilidades de php, ya que desde la versión 5.6 en adelante ha mejorado y ni hablar de php 7 que a diferencia de Python 2.x a 3.x que fue incompatible creando mucho problemas para los usuarios de ese lenguaje al actualizar el python obigandoles muchas veces en rehacer el proyecto, en el caso de Php, simplemente se puede agregar poco a poco codigo de php 7.x sin necesidad de que afecte lo ya hecho en versiones anteriores y eso permite a las empresas que tienen sistemas hechos en php irse actualizando sin problema alguno además de la gran mejora en seguridad que ofrece php.
Otra cosa los marcos o framework que veo que convenientemente no nombró acá como LARAVEL, CODE IGNITER entre otros, tienen mucha mas documentación actualizada y están a la vanguardia tecnologica que no tienen nada que envidiar de los nombrados en Python y yo en mi caso prefiero mil veces irme por Laravel sin problemas alguno. Sin mencionar que el mejor gestor de contenidos para web sigue siendo Worpress que se sostiene y es escrito en PHP y sigue liderando el mercado, cuya tendencia por ahora sigue en crecimiento constante.
Otro fallo, PYTHON es mas antiguo que PHP, Python salio alrededor de 4 años antes que PHP, si vamos al caso en el desarrollo web fue PHP el que se hizo con el mercado del desarrollo web y constantemente tiene mejoras. No es un mal lenguaje, es un lenguaje muy permisivo donde el buen programador aprovechará al máximo las cosas buenas de php, pero el programador flojo aprovechara las libertades para escribir mal código. Realmente es una falla mas del programador que del lenguaje. En 2020 en programación web pura y dura, PHP sigue siendo mejor opción, que fue el área para el que fue concebido, para todo lo demás puede usar Python. Actualmente trabajo con ambos lenguajes.

hmmm its ok

No write-up can be more biased and prejudicial.

4+1. Ok, 5 points.

Points 1, 4 and 5 are actually the same: "All the hot machine learning stuff gives python first-class citizenship". Heck yes, that's true, and even playing around doing fun stuff, python is getting more and more involved in my workflows because tensorflow nets and friends are just so fun! I think if you build a website in PHP there will come a point where you introduce some python tooling. Imagine thinking that php couldn't be used for web scraping.
Python wins here. But it's just one reason, not three.

Point 2 hasn't convinced me that either language is safer than the other. You mention "SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, cross-site scripting, etc" as the focus. PHP has protections for these things built into its standard library (eg PDO). There's no option here. You either develop with PDO, filters etc, or you reinvent the wheel! I don't think that python is any worse in this regard. Have you seen the damage you can do by writing careless C? Does it mean that C is less secure than PHP? Nah. I don't see how an intelligence agency using python shows that it's any more or less secure than every other language on the planet. The CIA is using python, not java. Java has a much stricter type system and forces you to be aware of certain types of exceptions. Can you say that java is inherently less secure than python just because the CIA (or your friend from school) is not using it? No.
There is no evidence in your post that either language is intrinsically more or less of a security risk than the other.

Point 3 is garbage. Python is ""slow"" and it always has been. Try using it in a quick shell script. Writing code loop for loop and value for value, any task you can think of will complete on php before the python interpreter is even fully loaded. Even java executes faster than python. PHP7, what? No, try PHP5. "PHP’s earlier versions, PHP 5.x, were much slower than Python"? Rubbish! Even with php5 it was normal to use an opcode cache - php executes bytecode. Why the bizarre implication that PHP can't do any form of compilation? It's a stateless bytecode machine. Python can't compile the entrypoint, PHP can. Say no to drugs.
I do agree, however, that php wins this one.

Also it's pretty strange to cherry-pick a few sites and say "these use python therefore python is better". Facebook was largely built on PHP. They were attached enough to create hacklang and the hiphop virtual machine. Things that were written in PHP have been ported or transpiled to compiled languages to increase capacity. Does Wikipedia run its mediawiki software on python? No, it's PHP. Check their article Programming_languages_used_in_most_popular_websites (which I don't think lists their own site) and you see that most big sites do not use python! About the same penetration there as PHP. So really I can hand-pick sites to say whatever I want, even that C++ is the best language for web.

Anyway, all-in-all you make 3 points. Evaluating them sensibly, one goes to python (machine learning), one goes to php (speed) and one is not even a language-level issue (security).

Now me, I'm enjoying python a lot more than php right now. I feel a little more comfortable leaving python up as a long-running application. It's got a bazillion GUI modules which just don't make sense in PHP, and it's really mature in terms of interacting with C symbols from within python, or embedding python in other applications.

Great article, has generated a lot of discussion. But your arguments lack substance or foundation. They're split into points but the points are redundant and full of fluff and buzzwords.

Anyway, I wouldn't try to steer anyone away from writing in python or php, provided they were playing fun and responsibly. Sometimes you're going to find that PHP is a lot easier to handle, and sometimes you're going to find that PHP is just a stupid choice. Sometimes python will offer what you need through just 4 lines of code, and sometimes it just won't have what you want. Personally, I pick a language because I want to use tool x which is well supported by it. I don't pick a language because I think it's some panacea for speed and security or because I think it has pretty syntax.

You clearly do not know anything about web development if you think python is better then PHP for MVC apps, why would you want to worry about indentation? If you are going to use Python use it for machine learning or something it was intended for.

How is Python my versatile? I can install php with ease on almost all servers, most come with php and apache installed by default, your points are mostly invalid in this article...

Lol...

“ the reason being the flexibilities which python provides such as the absence of pre-defining data types of variables, dynamically bindness and many others.”

Disregarding, the very informative “many others” point, dynamic variables and bindness (which is not a word) are literal descriptions of PHP as well.

I'm a python/php developer and Love both languages. I'd suggest anyone who is starting to try Python over PHP but.. I strongly desagree wehn you say that PHP comunity is no as large as Python's.

The funny thing is this website was built by WordPress :))
Anyway, i love both PHP and Python

So far the only thing that really turns me off from Python are the endless stream of articles like this and every IT person I've ever met insisting that it is just so superior to PHP. Python pushers aren't really doing the language much of a service with their superiority complex.

If you want to promote Python, how about supporting (or starting) hosting companies that offer Python-specific servers and services. Or help to develop Python's web- and security-related tools and functions to make it more viable for straight web development. Better yet, take your case to CEOs and Project Managers - you know, the people who actually decide which types of projects to develop (and usually which languages to develop them in).

The fact is, PHP is the clear winner because it dominates 99% (or more) of the market - and has done so for well over a decade. A budding developer has choices. He can learn PHP and have thousands of jobs to choose from developing real projects in the real world to solve real problems (no matter how ugly). Or he can learn Python and feel good about himself for writing "pretty" code. I agree, it might be more elegant code - but that doesn't much matter much if nobody is buying it. At least for those of us who care about supporting ourselves (and our families).

In summary, savvy developers react to market forces and learn to do what the market actually desires - and create things in the real world. Idealists, educators, and commentators then get the luxury to sit back in their high towers and criticize them for daring to create something because they didn't use the most ideal tools to do it. Tale as old as time.

While PHP7 kill Python eaaaasily, look for PHP8.

It will be a game changer.

I can't say it will better than an node backend, but this will clearly kill a couple of web backend language.

PS: this is so much funny people think that PHP is ONLY for web ?.

I just finished an React Native project using PHP rest API (my backend was already made) and this is now on Android, iOS and Windows using PHP as backend.

Fast and secure.

I work in php webdev about 13 years, for about 6 I use python for iot and ml. I relay have to say few words:
1. Each language is so elegant as developer is, and if you look around You can see both good and bad examples. So point 1 is not true. (no winner)
2. My first language was C so in my case PHP was VERY easy and i think in general for anyone whit C-like background PHP wins. So in point two it's depend of individual background. (no winner)
3. I use Symfony, Django and Flask. Picking winner is easy and it is Symfony. Why? Easy, robust, well documented, clean. (PHP winner)
4. Most people says that python is easy to read - probably they did not see code that was written as "write and forget". But it is same as first point - developer depend. It true that python force you to do indentation, but ( it may by my C background ) i relay prefer " { } " (no winner)
5. Are we again in point 2 or in 4? :) (no winner)
6. Did you use debug in Symfony ? Probably no :) (PHP winner)
7. Did you ever see composer? Get it on https://getcomposer.org/ :) But its true PIP is awesome (Python winner)
8. OK, lambda is great, in php you have anonymous functions ;) (no winner)
9. True, php is mostly for web, while python is good for prototyping everything else. (PHP winner)
10. Python have big community around python and everything, php have smaller community around php and webdevelopment :) (no winner)
11. You forget about hosting (PHP winner)
12. You forget about security (PHP winner)

Let's say this clean webdevelopment - PHP (plus JS on fronend :) ) else ( if writing in C/C++ take to long ) Python.

With the help of python programming you can easily makes your website in a better way. As its a advanced programming you will get to also work in AI, Machine Learning.

Python and Php both are great langages. Php is much more in web development but Python has much wide sectors like web development, ai, machine learning etc.

very useful blog, nice explanation, but little difficult to understood the content.

Graeme you are 100% right

Biased much? I'm familiar with PHP and am learning python for its use in machine learning and blender scripting. This article caught my eye but did such a poor job of arguing that python is viable for web development that considering it over PHP is clearly just silly unless for some reason in particular python was needed for an unusual project.

And the irony of this trash being posted on a wordpress site is also a nice touch. lol

This article triggers me! It makes me cringe really. Badly written, no basis! Just bad. I bet whoever wrote this is a die-hard python fan, or not really programming in php.

I use both PHP and Python on a regular basis, You're going to have a hard time convincing me that a programming language that uses whitespace for structure is superior and more elegant. Sure, I'll give python credit in that it's maybe easier for someone with no previous experience in real structured programming languages to learn. That's really it's ONLY advantage though. Python is not more robust or powerful than PHP, it's just the latest fad for script kiddies and people with little to no actual programming experience.

You don't even mention Laravel?? Halfway through this "article," I had to scroll up to look at the date because I figured it was 10 years, or more, older...I stopped reading when I realized it was written a few months ago. And... "but there probably aren’t any code bases using it to the extent that PIP...does" ... o.O are you high? You're trying to say pip is superior and in more production environments than composer?!? Wtf? You are clearly a python developer trying to get noticed and no nothing about modern PHP and seemingly not that much about OOP or web development in general, either.

Starting out web development with Django is probably not a good idea if you want to understand "web programming." A huge part of the work has been done for you. You don't even see the logic sometimes, but it works. So with Django, you do not need to write a lot of back end logic, just stick to the Django-rules.

I am going to say here that anyone who wants to program the web and also wants to know how and why things are done the way they are should start with something else, not a framework. And PHP is a good start.

This is so ridiculous. Kindly read the benefits of PHP because there are many.

I am really surprised at how bad this article is. The author clearly does not have any knowledge of PHP, OOP or modern PHP frameworks. For instance, the use of lambdas. PHP does support lambdas but you simply don't need them in OOP.

And what about the disadvantages? Like the fact that PHP is easy to run on most modern hosting servers without much setup, yet Python is not and requires more expensive hosting packages to install the necessary software to compile and run your code? Not gonna lie, I was hoping for a more wholistic argument to help me with my problem, not your “python-is-better” article.

It is not PHP or Python, but which one works better for the project you are working on. People should have the freedom to choose for themselves whatever is going to work best for them. Both languages are easy to learn and a developer doesn't have to choose one or the other nowadays. Why not both? PHP has advantages over Python for simple websites and doesn't rely upon some IDE for web development like Python (unless you want to code all of that yourself).

You clearly dont know much about modern PHP

Good evening sir, am a young aspiring developer from Nigeria, please just tell me which to learn PHP or Python??

Most of your arguments regarding PHP are severely outdated. Since 2012, the language that has made the most significant advancements is PHP.

For instance:

Composer beats the snot out of PIP for package management.

PHP 7 is a complete smoke show compared to previous versions, and I’m stoked that a JIT compiler is finally being included in v8.

Laravel right now is the clear winner for PoC development and Symfony for Enterprise applications.

Forget Drupal, WordPress or Drupal as those are applications and do not properly represent PHP as a whole. Those are just segments of a much wider, active and thriving user base, that is not nearly as toxic as some of the other language communities I’ve been involved with.

Nice writing and I am writing you at 2018! :)

I agree with you only with the last point. But I seriously think you should look at 5.6 or greater, specifically php 7.2. You may also check PSR. In context of programming and better programming practice php 7 is playing a great role. Now-a-days php libraries are glue and exchangeable! These all are amazing for programmers' community.

The main problem I find is lack of good php developers. As php is a forgiving language even now, lots of people start programming in php and able to make something visible! They need to be trained up with professional software engineering technique and best practices.

Otherwise, php has lots of features like type hinting, interface, traits and obviously class. If someone follow the correct techniques, this is even better language than ruby or python in context of web development.

In theory, lots of people says about needle haystack issue. But with a good IDE its not so much bigger issue! Even python have "self" which is a design mistake and its not a big deal. At day end, we produce softwares by writing codes. If we have enough knowledge, we make things correct!

Thanks!

I have been a programmer since 1974, just looking too deepen my Python experience as I think about converting some Php AI applications to Python to too merge too chatbot technologies together.

While I did enjoy reading this piece, but it was way short of providing anything more than opinion. If you do update it with some references or examples, please email me.

Cheers,

I liked the post. However, I felt during my read as though few of those points are rather opinionated than comparatively defined.

I have spent 2 years building my online reservation system and backend Administrator portal using HTML/CSS on the frontend, javascript/jquery with ajax functions and php scripts. I understand Python is so popular now a days but I am having a tough time understand what part of my html + css + javascript/jquery + ajax + PHP I would replace with Python? And why would I replace it with Python?

I've learned Django and I agree that this is not something you will do on one rainy Sunday afternoon. But the logic of the framework is very consistent. After a couple of days you can build a library-site or a blog-site with authentication (login) and authorization (perform special tasks) options. But before learning Django you should learn HTML, CSS and Javascript well; my advice is ignore the frameworks like JQuery and Bootstrap; start with the basics.

PHP is Server Side Scripting Language compatible with all known OS like Windows ,Linux etc .Nowadays, PHP frameworks are being extensively used by programmers to address to performance tuning issues faster and with ease.Thank you for sharing this amazing blog with us.It was very informative blog.

that haha moment when you build your website with php wordpress just to write php is bad compare to other language

I agree to some of your point but package management in php is still light-years ahead of Python even at this time.
Look at composer and packagist and compare that to pi, pipy and virtualenv. good lord.

Could you provide me some online websites names to learn python free of cost.

The article seems to have been written by someone who has not had a first hand experience with PHP. Readability of code for example depends on how the code is structured, which of course is dependent on the developer. The entire article seems full of opinions rather than researched work.

I went through the content and portfolio, I am new in both the langs, i.e PHP & python.

I have a simple question to ask you.

By using any language, why not a 100% standalone product get build, without post support work?

I am a total beginner who hasn't even known how to start, I want to know if Python can be used single handedly to build a cloth shopping website. Is it thesame Python 3 I want to start learning that I'll use, or is it that python for web development is a different thing than Python for normal apps like mobile? Please if this question is silly forgive me, I just need to know what's what.

I agree with Python's ever increasing popularity. And innumerable no. of third party libraries in several different verticals are available for Python.
Thanks to Guido van Rossum.

Nothing you've written about PHP is actually accurate, and the rest is opinion. But wonderfully "objective" little article you've written.

Definetively yes, that's why i move from PHP to Python.

But for novices, PHP is the quick way to create their little app's :D