> Is there any special reason to use PHP? There are
> a couple other scripting languages useable for the
> web which do all have better abstration available.
> (afaic even PHP does have some more abstration to
> just using pg* functions)
Well, yes, there are alternatives of course and I could write this stuff
in perl or python but it'd take me 10 times as long because my
experience is elsewhere. Learning new stuff is always good, but at the
end of the day I get paid for making stuff work on time and in budget
... mostly :-)
I think that PHP (like PostgreSQL, perhaps?) suffers from a reputation
hangover from years ago. PostgreSQL was supposedly "slow", PHP is
supposedly "undisciplined" and "unprofessional". You sure can still
write spaghetti with PHP5 if you want to, but you can also write decent
code with planning and standards. But good, bad or ugly, it's what I
personally am most productive in.
I have used PHP's PEAR DB abstraction class many times. It doen't really
save much time or effort writing code, and has a performance overhead. I
don't need to allow the possibility of switching to another database and
stuff like that.
Mick