----- Original Message -----
From: "Zeev Suraski" <zeev@zend.com>
> If you use caching software, chances are PHP will be faster than Perl even
> without the optimizer.
Interestingly, Perl is getting bytecode caching soon, RFC 301 I think.
Probably about time.
> And it does that without any hassle or special
> planning, unlike Perl for that matter. If you use the optimizer - it gets
> as quick as Perl, and that's without caching. Couple the two together -
> and you have a serious performance screamer.
Yes, we have succesfully used PHP on a site getting 6 million hits a day.
Granted we wished we could have used fewer servers, but with caching and
proper design things can go pretty high. Performance wise I'd bet that 60%+
of folks are not getting even some of the obvious huge performance wins
(static compile, cache + optimizer, reverse proxy in front if lots of slow
connections, proper configuration and on and on and on).
> That said, in most real world
> situations, PHP will be faster than Perl even w/o these two. I don't
agree
> that Web apps are just made of small snippets like this. In Web apps -
> database performance, output handling and caching play a big role, which
> these code snippets don't measure.
Couldn't agree more. But of course if one language in a similar space can
get blazing speed in a little code snippet it's always nice to see if
something can be tweaked to improve things in your favorite language.
> FWIW, I agree with you that 'code in C if you need performance' is quite a
> pointless statement, except for very specialized cases. One of the main
> points in using PHP is *not* using C, because of dev-time, maintenance,
> reliability, etc. etc.
Yes, dev time, good docs, maintenence, reliabity outweigh performance
concerns 90% of the time, and hardware is only getting cheaper. PHP's
biggest wins are in some of those areas.
What gets people riled up about these benchmarks is they see them as a whole
picture slam against their favorite language, even if the benchmark is
pretty clear about testing something pretty narrow which I think these are,
they are remarkably honest for a benchmark.
- August