Comment by that_guy_iain
Comment by that_guy_iain 7 days ago
No, it's because I've got productive things to do that do benchmarks that have already been done repeatedly. The only way to get PHP to the same speed as compiled languages for web requests is to use experimental tooling.
I notice your benchmarks are over 10 runs?! That's not a good sample size. And even more importantly, it's not in the same context.
Sure once you compile PHP and have it running it'll run fast. But PHP has a very specific usage which is web applications. It's been well-known for years that PHP's performance issues are related to the fact it's an interpreted language that has to be interpreted everytime but if you compile and run repeatedly it can perform extremely well. Which is why every performance related PHP nerd is working on experimental tools to do that.
> That's not a good sample size.
Like I said in the blog post, if I tell you the sky is blue and you don't believe me; run them yourself. FWIW, C# is faster now for that particular use case. Also, like I mentioned in a previous blog post ... which one would you rather maintain:
- https://github.com/TheAlgorithms/C-Sharp/blob/master/Algorit... -- merge sort in C# 130 lines
- https://www.w3resource.com/php-exercises/searching-and-sorti... -- merge sort in PHP 60 lines
PHP is often far more concise than C#, and many other languages. I code more in Go than C# or PHP these days, but even Go has its limitations where it would be easier to express in PHP than Go. There are even certain classes of algorithms that are butt-ugly in Go but quite pretty in PHP.
PHP is still my favorite language, even though I hardly get to use it these days.
> PHP has a very specific usage which is web applications.
Originally, yes. But it outgrew that about 10 years or so ago. It's much more general purpose now.[1][2]
[1]: https://nativephp.com/ -- desktop applications in php
[2]: https://static-php.dev/ -- build self-contained, statically compiled clis written in php