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On PHP and Scaling

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the web-pages-served-fresh-all-day dept.

jpkunst writes "Chris Shiflett at oreillynet.com summarizes (with lots of links) a discussion about scalability, brought about by Friendster's move from Java to PHP. Chris argues that PHP scales well, because it fits into the Web's fundamental architecture. 'I think PHP scales well because Apache scales well because the Web scales well. PHP doesn't try to reinvent the wheel; it simply tries to fit into the existing paradigm, and this is the beauty of it.' (The article is also available on Chris' own website.)"

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. A few things that could lead to scalability by Dozix007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    PHP inherntely will not lead to scalability, however, if you ever try to create any applications that use a DFS-type algorithm, it can happen. PHP (I know it is web-based, shouldn't ask too much) does not allow for extremely simple soloutions in DFS type algorithms that are apparent to most users. Many will end up with too many "while()" statements and bring down script efficency exponetialy.

    1. Re:A few things that could lead to scalability by Dozix007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Depth-First-Search. You can use PHP to create a simple search engine by using arrays, fopen, fread, and while() loops. If done improperly, you can eventually loop your script into oblivion creating big time inefficency.

  2. Yahoo. by downbad · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Yahoo is a prime example of PHP's scalability. Although they still use some legacy C code, nearly all of their new developments use PHP and BSD.

    I worked in a small shop developing web apps, and while it wasn't mission critical stuff like banking, it wasn't exactly brainless "dump data from MySQL" stuff either. I was lucky that my boss wasn't picky about languages. But if anyone I work with doubts the power and simplicity of PHP, I usually bring up Yahoo.

    IMHO, PHP rocks. It's suitable for pretty much any and all web development. It can be used for quick hacks, or you can code it like a pro with objects and stuff.