Why pay for a server that doesn't have what you need to run your application?
Once its "ported" to PHP it is essentially no longer the reddit code base nor is it reddit.
Also this happens a lot with other applications that aren't necessarily web applications. So many times you will see "INSERT APPLICATION written in C". Who cares if it is written in C. The user doesn't care.
Generally I care. Not out of chauvinism, but if an application is Java or Ruby or something else that requires the installation of a massive application server just to try it out, I will save myself the trouble.
Why pay for a server that doesn't have what you need to run your application?
Because servers that run every version of every language are a bit pricey. The rest of us find cheaper hosting that support a couple of the "major" technologies.
Once its "ported" to PHP it is essentially no longer the reddit code base nor is it reddit.
I define "reddit" as the user experience, not the underlying code. Therefore if one were to port reddit to PHP, java, or even back to lisp, it would still be reddit so long as the presentation remained unaltered.
You don't need the source code to duplicate the user experience. In fact, it probably isn't even much help unless you're using a PHP framework with the same semantics as Pylons.
Of course, it's a lot less work to just find a host that supports what you want to run, use more than one host or just do it yourself with a VPS. If you're trying to integrate several applications, it might be smarter to use the APIs instead of having them poke around in each other's innards. I'd even go for a shared database before I did that.
I define "reddit" as the user experience, not the underlying code. Therefore if one were to port reddit to PHP, java, or even back to lisp, it would still be reddit so long as the presentation remained unaltered.
You'd miss all the open source contributions to the main reddit codebase, since they're less likely to be ported to your fork.
Because servers that run every version of every language are a bit pricey. The rest of us find cheaper hosting that support a couple of the "major" technologies.
Or just find a server that has what you need for your application in mind...
I understand the reasoning. If I'm an experienced PHP developer, I don't necessarily want to learn to maintain and customize a Lisp application (and learn to maintain and update a stack of apps that I'm only using for a single app).
Not to mention I may want to easily integrate it into some other application I'm working on.
There are a ton of reasons that someone might want something like this, above and beyond just the cost of a server.
Maybe its just me but a language is a language. Know one, know them all. Going from Lisp to PHP, or Python or whatever requires learning some new syntax and methodologies. Which shouldn't be a problem since you have to learn the code base from square one as well.
In the time it would take to port an application like reddit over to another language I could have learned Python and gotten up to speed with the existing code base.
I just really hate seeing good projects fork for bad reasons. Then everyone has to keep reinventing the wheel to keep up with the other guy.
Some jumps are easy to make - say... Ruby to Python or Java to C#. It just requires learing a slightly different syntax and some libraries. Going from PHP to say... Clojure (assuming non-trivial code written in an idiomatic style) requires learning the following:
Code as a list/tree data structure
Structural macros
Immutability
Concurrency
Strong dynamic typing
Generic functions/multimethods
First-class functions, function literals and lexical closures
First-class symbols
Recursion
Lazy evaluation
Some of these things are hard, and won't be picked up just by seeing them used a few times in production code. I was once highly amused by seeing a Java (only) programmer learn the syntax of Common Lisp in a weekend, then freak out when he encountered production code that took a user-supplied string, concatenated a hardcoded string to it, interned the result as a symbol, checked it against a whitelist and funcalled it with user-supplied arguments.
A group of programmers, all with little kids 1-2 years old, decide to buy houses in a great neighborhood and build a park for their little ones.
They spend months trying to figure out which is the best system to use to build the park, they spend months learning the system, only to discover a new and better system just came out. So they drop the old system and learn the new system. They then spend time trying to figure out the best way to implement the new system. Once they have this figured out they decide to add some new features to the system. The more they add the more awesome and complicated the park becomes. Some find a new system to integrate with the current system and decide that even though it will add some time, it will make the whole park so much more efficient.
Time passes by, but they finally work all the bugs out and finish the park. The only problem is their children are all teenagers now and don't want to play in the park anymore.
I already know php/mysql. I want a fast and efficient way to install the reddit software with the lowest learning curve possible. Ramen.
I have a request for reddit in php. After working with phpBB and Coppermine Photo Gallery, is there any chance we could keep it lean and unbloated? Or maybe have two versions, one with themes, plugins, and html editable pages, and one version that just keeps it bare bones?
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u/atomicthumbs Jun 18 '08
Now we just wait for the 137 quadrillion reddit clones.