I agree with Eric and Paul. The following is moving off topic a little, since it talks about concurrency performance of Node vs PHP. Node seems to be the cool kid on the block nowadays in Silicon Valley. It could be a fad, but I think there might be more to it. Paul, I'm trying to understand why Node may not good for scaling and/or concurrency. Maybe it's just not as good as Scala? Here are some resources that illustrate why it may be a good contender: 1. This link points to some potential upsides for Node over PHP, specifically concerning user concurrency. Does this only hold true for concurrency of < 1000 users? 2. You *may hav*e implied that after some threshold of concurrency (maybe >> 10k users), it may not make sense to use Python / Node or Ruby? If this is so, this link seems to say that Node can indeed handle a large amount of concurrency. This leads me to believe that for scaling, Node may be a good contender? 3. This also states that actors may not be good for concurrency, at least not anymore? Not sure how accurate this is. Unfortunately, since I've never actually implemented a Node server with high concurrency myself, most of my ammunition on this position is academic. On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Paul Mooring wrote: > I currently work mostly in the web-ops SaaS space and just wanted to > throw in my 2 cents here. Ruby, Python and node.js are all in the same > performance class. Ruby is perfectly capable of handling a full-scale SaaS > app, twitter just goes a bit beyond full-scale. We (Opscode) recently > migrated off running our main code base in Ruby as well. While twitter and > opscode both still run a fair amount of ruby in their infrastructures > there's one import thing you missed in your reply, they certainly are not > moving to python or node.js because that won't help for real scale. We > moved to Erlang and Twitter to Scala, notice those are both functional, > concurrent languages using the actor model for concurrency. > > I bring this up not to discourage using Ruby, Python or Node.js (well > maybe I would discourage node.js a little ;) ), but to bring up that for > 95% of the SaaS business out there the performance of the > language/framework will always be irrelevant and if they have less than > millions of users performance issues are probably in their code rather than > their tech stack. > -- > Paul Mooring > Systems Engineer and Customer Advocate > > www.opscode.com > > From: Eric Cope > > Reply-To: Main PLUG discussion list > Date: Friday, April 5, 2013 3:41 PM > > To: Main PLUG discussion list > Subject: Re: PHP lifespan > > I don't see PHP going away for a long time, unless the PHP core > developers fly off into left field and make some crazy decisions. > If I was going to learn new languages, I'd learn: > Ruby - because its becoming ubiquitous, but its too slow for full-scale > SaaS stuff, just ask Twitter :) > Python, node.js - for performance. > > Just my two cents. > > Eric > > > On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Paul Mooring wrote: > >> I think most of the technologies you listed got sunk by changes in the >> tech eco-system as a whole. FoxPro was killed by MS but COBOL and dBase >> are still alive in there own niche's. I think PHP will suffer the same >> fate, there's definitely better languages for writing full scale SaaS >> applications in (Ruby and Python seem like the big front-runners) but for a >> simple site you want to upload via FTP and forget I see no reason anyone >> would want to put much effort into "replacing" PHP. >> >> On a related note, much of PHP's reputation isn't really deserved in my >> opinion. There's a lot of awful code out there, but it's eco-system now >> has a pretty scale-worthy stack (laravel/symfony/ect, php-fpm and nginx) >> and like any language, it has some poor design decisions, but for the most >> part bad code is due to bad programmers rather than the language itself. >> >> -- >> Paul Mooring >> Systems Engineer and Customer Advocate >> >> www.opscode.com >> >> From: keith smith >> Reply-To: Main PLUG discussion list >> Date: Friday, April 5, 2013 12:25 PM >> To: Main PLUG discussion list >> Subject: PHP lifespan >> >> >> >> Hi, I do not want to start any flame wars. I would like to open a >> discussion though. >> >> I was thinking of what the life span of PHP might be. I have lived >> through a number of them. >> >> In the early 80's COBOL was still taught and was in use. I know it is >> still around, however I do not think anyone would choose COBOL for a new >> project. >> >> I also lived through the whole dBase, Clipper, FoxBase+, and Visual >> FoxPro cycle. FoxPro was acquired by M$ 15 or 18 years ago, which started >> it's slow decline. M$ finally killed it last year. >> >> So I am wondering about PHP. What might it's lifespan be? What might be >> the next big thing... etc. >> >> I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. >> >> ------------------------ >> Keith Smith >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > -- Vimal (rhymes with Kimmel) Shah Front-End / Infrastructure Engineer Sokikom Mobile: (480) 752-9269 Email: vimals@sokikom.com Web: www.sokikom.com Follow us: twitter.com/sokikom Like us: facebook.com/sokikom