Looks like KBin has an edge over Lemmy now in terms of monthly active users.
It's obviously a pretty silly thing, and is not in any way indicative of which project is "better" or more "long-term viable" or anything — instances of both federate with one another, and with the rest of fedi, so it's all one happy family.
That said, it's notable. KBin is a relative newcomer to the "Reddit-like fedi instance" game, and also does not have the tankie baggage.
Anyway, the more, the merrier!
KBin: https://the-federation.info/platform/184
Lemmy: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
Discussion on fedi: https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/110527049024028986
Sorry guys, kbin is built on PHP.
If history has taught me anything - I would say that means that kbin will persist forever.
I mean, almost half of all the websites on the internet is built on WordPress, so maybe you're onto something here...
I think people get way too caught up on technical optimisation issues with a language.
The reason a language, programming or otherwise, catches on is ultimately based on how many people use the language. So the lower the barrier to entry, they more people who will use it. PHP has a pretty low barrier to entry to creating a website (however simple/bad) and it has a lot of cultural momentum. I don't see PHP going away anytime soon.
Yeah ‘built in $language’ literally only matters from the point of view of attracting volunteer devs, end users couldn’t care less as long as the platform works. Lemmy and Kbin could be written in Malbolge for all they cared as long as it loads properly and doesn’t annoy them.
While I wouldn’t start a new PHP project myself as it’s yet another language to juggle and not one I’m particularly interested in it’s a perfectly legitimate choice even in 2023.
Let’s not hate on tools. Php has its uses and has been proven to be useful in commercial applications. So has Rust. They are different but the choice of programming language means nothing for the core project.
I, too, can use a banana to hammer in a nail
hahah, this made me laugh. I will be stealing this from you.
To be a bit more verbose, I don't think all programming languages are created equal, and its a disservice to pretend it is.
Duck Duck Go was written in Perl. GitHub (originally) in Ruby on Rails.
Languages are tools only because they're general purpose programming languages. The real path to success is in choosing a tool that you're good at using (no matter how blunt), rather than pretending all tools are equal.
Sure but dissing on languages you don't like will only make devs who like those languages defensive. Not every dev is good only at languages you're good at.
Yeah, I generally prefer kbin's UI over lemmy's but given the backend is in PHP I have concerns that it might not be able to scale effectively with its growth.
Not saying that PHP is a complete showstopper but there are valid concerns in terms of maintainability...
Can you explain this in simple terms for simple minds like mine? And I only ask for other people like me who may wonder but not ask
Modern PHP is supposed to be a decent language these days rather than a collection of footguns so I wouldn’t write it off out of hand. It wouldn’t be my first choice of language but it still runs huge swathes of the web, interesting choice for a greenfield project though. What it will mean is it’ll be harder for Kbin to attract developers on a voluntary basis I think, if I’m giving my time for free I’d personally much rather spend it writing Rust than PHP even if PHP is decent these days.
Urgh... php.
Rust or die...
Is php as bad as it wad previously?
No. It's not perfect by any means but it's leaps and bounds ahead of where it was.
Are there any sites in the Fediverse written in .net? I'd like to contribute to these sites, but I haven't touched PHP in over a decade.