[Produce]

> I use Python because it balances getting stuff done with having that stuff not fall over as soon as I turn my back.

Uhh... Heard of automated testing?

It makes absolutely no difference what language you write your code in, whether it's PHP, Python or Brainfuck - reliability is dictated by your testing strategy, not the language. In the PHP applications I write, the only things that break are the things I didn't test.

[eevee]

Have you tried automated testing on a large complex web application? It's an insanely monumental task.

I actually mentioned Haskell in the post because coworkers have lamented not having its type system, which would immediately find problems at compile-time that we otherwise have a very very hard time thoroughly covering with tests.

[aangjie]

Hi, Can you elaborate a little more on some use-cases or some examples from your troubles?. Am writing a web application(moderately complex) in python and find myself annoyed by the amount of unit test cases needed. My reaction so far has been to write them whenever i seem to test more than a couple of times. But, have a feeling dynamic typing is actually creating problems by enlarging the number of test cases. Don't know enough haskell to comment on it's type system, but curious to learn. P.S: Feel free to mail me, if you don't want it to be blog post.

[eevee]

There are plenty of cases where a data type doesn't sufficiently capture semantics, and without static typing, Python isn't very well built for checking that values have the right semantic type. A float could mean money or time or a percentage; a string could be plain text or HTML or JavaScript or a filename.

The really really hard part is still checking that a given page "isn't broken"—something that's easy for a human to spot but hard for a computer—for all possible combinations of state. But very strict typing would at least make the output less likely to break.

[Produce]

>Have you tried automated testing on a large complex web application? It's an insanely monumental task.

What's so insanely monumental about writing unit, functional (i.e. like these http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/testing.html#functional-...) and Selenium tests to cover everything before committing new changes? It's just like any other code - test the main condition and edge cases and everything will be running smoothly next time you come back to that feature.

[lucisferre]

This is quite the oversimplification of the value vs. costs of automated testing while also being completely orthogonal to the discussion. I'd never accept "automated testing" by itself as a strong argument to prefer PHP or anything for that matter.

[Produce]

I merely provided a rebuttal to the argument that PHP, or any other language, for that matter, is unreliable. I did not make the case that automated testing somehow makes PHP a preferred choice. How you test the code is what dictates reliability, not the language.

[lucisferre]

I'm not sure how you can possibly separate the concept of a rebuttal from that of making an argument. And as I've alluded, how you test code does not, in fact, dictate any form of quality or reliability in and of itself.

I suggest watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G77f9_tOSM

Also reading this https://plus.google.com/u/0/104920553571646483561/posts/fmyZ...