Heroku (was Re: Lies in education [was Re: The "loop and a half"])

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 8:42 AM, Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet at bsb.me.uk> wrote:
> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet at bsb.me.uk> wrote:
>>> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
>>>> I abbreviated that down to nothing, but since you ask, here's a really
>>>> REALLY simple run-down of how to use Heroku:
>>>
>>> I think I see what you mean now.  You meant no configuration is needed
>>> because you use (or buy?) a cloud service that's all set up for it
>>> already?
>>
>> Correct - because the setup needed is completely generic.
>>
>>> From this and other posts I think the position is that I do need to do
>>> some server configuration (and essentially install a proxy server) to
>>> run Python web applications on my typical Apache set-up.  And I would
>>> then have to shop around for suitable hosting that is already set up for
>>> running them.
>>>
>>> <snip instructions>
>>>
>>> Thanks.  That's not quite what I was after but it's good to know how to
>>> do that should I want to that later.
>>
>> Yep, it's not too hard.
>>
>> And that's why it's cleaner to work with Python than PHP. To use
>> custom URL routing in PHP, you have to use custom server rules; to use
>> custom URL routing in Python, you use  "@app.route(...)" lines inside
>> your app, and perfectly standard server rules.
>
> That's one way to put it.  Another is that to use Python I need to buy a
> new service that is already configured.  If that's the way it's done,
> fine, but this sub-thread started with someone being surprised by the
> success of PHP.

Thing is, that's exactly the same for both languages these days. You
can get cheap (even zero-dollar) hosting that's preconfigured to be
able to support either. There USED to be a difference, and everyone's
acknowledged this - PHP built up some inertia - but there's now no
real reason for it other than "it's popular, therefore people use it".

ChrisA