Advantages and disadvantages of PHP?

[Jonathan Sachs]

I'm a programmer learning PHP. I'm looking for some input on its
strong and weak points compared to other server-side programming
environments, e.g., Java Server Pages.

Please note, this is not a religious question. Programming languages
are tools to me. I just want information about where different types
of solutions are likely to be optimal.

[McKirahan]

"Jonathan Sachs" <js******@sbcgl obal.netwrote in message
news:dr******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

I'm a programmer learning PHP. I'm looking for some input on its
strong and weak points compared to other server-side programming
environments, e.g., Java Server Pages.

Please note, this is not a religious question. Programming languages
are tools to me. I just want information about where different types
of solutions are likely to be optimal.

Take your pick: PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Perl, Python, Java, et.al.

What does your Web server support? What languages do you know?

The answer usually boils down to the above.

What Every Webmaster Should Know: PHP, Perl, ASP.net
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006709.html

[The Natural Philosopher]

McKirahan wrote:

"Jonathan Sachs" <js******@sbcgl obal.netwrote in message
news:dr******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

>I'm a programmer learning PHP. I'm looking for some input on its
strong and weak points compared to other server-side programming
environments , e.g., Java Server Pages.

Please note, this is not a religious question. Programming languages
are tools to me. I just want information about where different types
of solutions are likely to be optimal.

Take your pick: PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Perl, Python, Java, et.al.

What does your Web server support? What languages do you know?

The answer usually boils down to the above.

What Every Webmaster Should Know: PHP, Perl, ASP.net
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006709.html

And as usual, what fits your style and the application is better than
what is the Best Thing..
Coming from C I found PHP mainly good, but irritating because of weak
typing and inconsistency of syntax..this isn't a fault per se, just
something you have to be equally careful of as you do in wobbly if you
do operations on different types. In PHP they are invisibly converted
with sometimes unexpected results.

Its more than good enough for what I want tho..

[Gilles Ganault]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:38:50 -0600, Jonathan Sachs
<js******@sbcgl obal.netwrote:

>I'm a programmer learning PHP. I'm looking for some input on its
strong and weak points compared to other server-side programming
environments , e.g., Java Server Pages.

First, are you totally free to choose a language, or are there some
constraint somewhere that would narrow things down? For instance, if
you'll host your app on a shared server, just about every hoster
offers PHP, while other languages are much more rare.

If you'll be using your own server, you'll have to check if the app
has any dependency, in which case you'll have to check if those
externalities can be called from the language.

Finally, what language do you already know? In terms of productivity,
Python is probably the best, because it's very rich while offering a
very simple syntax, while PHP is much more common simply because it's
been offered by hosters for about ten years now.

The web is pretty restrictive in what you can do compared to desktop
apps anyway, because of the nature of HTTP and HTML, so ultimately,it
doesn't make much of a difference what language you choose on the
server. You can probably even write most of it in JavaScript and call
routines from the client through AJAX :-)

[Betikci Boris]

On Feb 17, 3:38 pm, Jonathan Sachs <js070...@sbcgl obal.netwrote:

I'm a programmer learning PHP. I'm looking for some input on its
strong and weak points compared to other server-side programming
environments, e.g., Java Server Pages.

Please note, this is not a religious question. Programming languages
are tools to me. I just want information about where different types
of solutions are likely to be optimal.

As you asked for optimization, here is a list that i made, considering
investment & operational cost, and time saving features, etc. Ofcourse
i suggest open source, big companies like yahoo, google, nasa,
youtube, facebook,etc. use;

1-Python
2-PHP
3-Perl
4-Java

[Gilles Ganault]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:23:34 GMT, Jonathan Sachs
<js******@sbcgl obal.netwrote:

>I'll repeat that I'm guessing here. My guess is based on the fact
that PHP is (as far as I know) an interpreted language, while Java is
a JIT compiled language.

Does someone have data on whether JIT-compiled Java is faster than
cached PHP opcode?

>The fact that Java and C# are strongly typed languages may also have
an effect on the scalability of applications, as well as their
robustness and maintainability .

That's a good reason.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Jonathan Sachs wrote:

>

Speaking technically, it seems to me that PHP is likely to be a poor
choice for large-scale services where hundreds or thousands of users
will be hitting the web site at the same time. I'm guessing, though,
and I wouldn't know how to judge how large is too large. Perhaps
there are other areas where PHP is particularly weak or strong, which
I do not yet know enough to wonder about. Hence, my question.

The current trend eems to be to throw processor power and RAM at such sites.

If you have such, you probably would also have an Oracle Database
underneath, not MySql :-)

I picked PHP because I wanted fast prototyping of sonething running on a
cheap platform, for moderate traffic only.

Its actually pretty good. I am more bandwidth limited than processor
bound, and probably RAM would be the first thing I would add.

There is no doubt that writing in C would be immensely more efficient
than an interpreter, but then you have the usual compile/link/install to
do every time you make a change.

However there is no reason why you could not pretty much recode any time
critical bits into 'C'..r write a whole PHP library in 'C' that did your
clever bits.*

In the end execution efficiency is almost never a dominant issue..with
PHP, MYSQL and Apache, especially on a Linux OS, you have an ideal
platform that costs next to nothing to develop applications. A thousand
concurrent users hitting it would probably cripple it sure, but by then
you should have the money and the reason to migrate to something top
end, if that's what's needed.

I would regard the above as the de-facto standards for small to medium
website development.

*Where does one find out how to do this? I might need to one day...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Gilles Ganault wrote:

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:23:34 GMT, Jonathan Sachs
<js******@sbcgl obal.netwrote:

>I'll repeat that I'm guessing here. My guess is based on the fact
that PHP is (as far as I know) an interpreted language, while Java is
a JIT compiled language.

Does someone have data on whether JIT-compiled Java is faster than
cached PHP opcode?

>The fact that Java and C# are strongly typed languages may also have
an effect on the scalability of applications, as well as their
robustness and maintainability .

That's a good reason.

As is the difficulty of ripping off the source if for some reason the
3rd party server suddenly delivers pages of PHP source to you ;-)

It happens..

[Jonathan Sachs]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:16:25 -0500, Jerry Stuckle
<js*******@attg lobal.netwrote:

>You will find that often java is slower than PHP.

Don't guess. Get the facts.

Can you refer me to a source of information on this, or at least
explain why it is so?

I value facts, but I do not have the ability to pull them out of thin
air. The value of USENET lies in the ability of like-minded people to
share information, so that each person does not have to reinvent or
rediscover the wheel for him or herself. Please share a little.

[Animesh K]

Jonathan Sachs wrote:
<snip>

>
Speaking technically, it seems to me that PHP is likely to be a poor
choice for large-scale services where hundreds or thousands of users
will be hitting the web site at the same time. I'm guessing, though,
and I wouldn't know how to judge how large is too large. Perhaps
there are other areas where PHP is particularly weak or strong, which
I do not yet know enough to wonder about. Hence, my question.

I am not sure about the back-end, but at the front end, Facebook uses
Php and JS. Signing in takes you to the page below. Facebook's
popularity can be judged at Alexa.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...s/facebook.com