In a recent post to his blog, Michael Kimsal asks a question that I'm sure PHP developers everywhere are wondering - why did Google choose to go with Python as the programming language of choice for their new App Engine service.

TechCrunch is announcing Google's new "App Engine" service being launched this evening. The basic service is a full app stack hosted and managed by Google, providing a web framework (maybe I'm misreading this?) and the Google 'big table' database service. [...] My question is "why was Python was chosen instead of PHP?"

There's been some great responses since it was originally posted including everything from agreement to rationalizations for the move (though there is a fair amount of PHP and Python bashing going on - an obvious occurance).

On the Enterprise PHP Magazine (part of PHP Magazine) site today, there's a look at why Groupe Girard chose to go with PHP over J2EE to create their ERP.

Le Groupe Gerard is an european leader in furniture transportation. By choosing PHP, groupe Girard divided by ten the development time of its ERP software which using more than 400 screen. The maintenance is also much more easy. Explained Valentin Moyano, IT Director of the groupe.

They list out some of the resons why those went with PHP:

• PHP, a very permissive language
• The development time divided by ten