Python v PHP: fair comparison?

[Paul Boddie]

John Bokma wrote:
> "Luis M. González" <luismgz at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I know, but would you consider a python cgi application a good
> > competence against php?
>
> php running as cgi you mean.

Perhaps not: he's referring to deployment on really cheap hosting
solutions which might support mod_php but wouldn't support anything
better than CGI for Python software. The suitability of mod_php and the
supposed unsuitability of mod_python for commodity hosting did come up
on comp.lang.python some time ago, a while before certain other trends,
and has seemingly been discussed every year for several years:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.lang.python/msg/ebf390af4ed6e92e

"Thus, for mod_python hosting to be reliable, you have to give each
user their own instance of the Apache server (proxied through a central
instance of Apache). This might, in fact, no longer be needed with the
latest mod_python, but I leave that to the mod_python experts in this
newsgroup to expound upon if so." (To which there was no response.)

This discussion only differs from those previous discussions [1] in the
sense that better hosting is now available for less, although you can't
get a virtual server for $1/month unless you have some contacts in the
business.

Paul

[1] http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?oi=djq&as_q=mod_python+PHP+hosting