7 ms·

Rasmus Lerdorf - PHP frameworks? Think again.

20 points by ahold 18y ago

streety 18y ago
I can't find any further details on this claim. It wouldn't surprise me if it was true but benchmarks really do depend on the details. I want more info. Skipping over the use of "Hello World!" in benchmarks is anyone actually surprised by this? Frameworks aren't a silver bullet. I don't think they were ever meant to be, especially when it comes to performance. There is nothing stopping you from going in to the framework code and optimising it or even taking functionality over to C++ if that's what you want.
- christefano 18y ago
  For benchmarks with Drupal, see http://www.opensourcery.com/blog/jonathan-hedstrom/drupalcon-rasmus-lerdorf-php-performance-and-drupal-performance-correction http://www.opensourcery.com/blog/jonathan-hedstrom/drupalcon...
mseebach 18y ago
I did some consulting a few months ago. A FOAF had developed and launched a quite comprehensive online textbook, and their success was choking the the website. They don't know much programming, and had they not used a framework (and one of the slower ones at that), they wouldn't have launched. Period. I moved in, got them off shared hosting, replaced the built-in search with a Apache Solr, tuned the cache and a few other quick wins, took my money and left them my phonenumber. They live to fight another year or two, and I'll stop by and help again then. Scalability is not your problem, getting people to give a shit is. http://teddziuba.com/2008/04/im-going-to-scale-my-foot-up-y.html http://teddziuba.com/2008/04/im-going-to-scale-my-foot-up-y.... Frameworks helps getting people to give a shit, custom C++ extensions doesn't, so use a framework, unless Yahoo! called.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  The majority of Drupal users I know couldn't write a line of C++ to save their lives. Many of them can't write a line of PHP, either. I'm constantly impressed with the patience of these people, but they get results. In a world where every church, school, and small business could afford its own personal Rasmus Lerdorf, we'd all have much more efficient code that was lovingly hand-optimized for our specific applications. In the real world, hardware grows on trees, while Rasmus Lerdorf probably costs something like $400 per hour.
  - thomasmallen 18y ago
    I'm a PHP dev, but I'm always surprised by how seldom I have to code anything besides a theme in Drupal.
- MicahWedemeyer 18y ago
  Right on! An app which never launches due to premature optimization scales infinitely. Scalability is a problem we all dream of dealing with.
swombat 18y ago
What a load of crap. Quite surprising to hear that sort of tripe come from a respected figure like Rasmus Lerdorf... but then, he did invent PHP. First of all, requests/s per server is not a measure of performance, it's a measure of scalability. I can take the same system he's got, buy 9 other identical servers, and get 10 times the throughput. Does that mean they're higher performance? No, just higher scalability. Secondly, scalability is not your problem. Getting people to give a shit about your site/product is your problem. Scalability is a hard problem later, but it is only worth really worrying about once it is a real problem. Rasmus Lerdorf: -1.
- BlueZeniX 18y ago
  He wasn't really talking about scalability but req/sec which has more to do with speed/latency. Getting people to care about your website requires it being fast .. see Google: "Google found an extra .5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%." (http://highscalability.com/latency-everywhere-and-it-costs-you-sales-how-crush-it http://highscalability.com/latency-everywhere-and-it-costs-y...) But then again, if you want speed why use PHP at all ;-)
  - swombat 18y ago
    From TFA: He continues on by stating that PHP developers really need to think about performance for not only scalability reasons but for green reasons. Sounds to me like he cares about performance because of scalability. That's retarded. Upon second reading, I'm beginning to think that the writer failed to follow what was being said. I can't believe that someone like Rasmus Lerdorf would say something quite so daft, and the style of the article is erratic to say the least. So maybe it's just the writer who misinterpreted what RL said.
jonhohle 18y ago
"To get the speed that is necessary for truly massive web systems you have to use compiled C++ extensions to get true, scaleable architecture." But at the same time, even creating a simple procedural PHP extension is a huge undertaking (much more than it needs to be), accentuated by poor and out of date documentation all around, and large parts of documentation are missing from the PHP site concerning extension creation.
compay 18y ago
Rasmus is a one trick pony who sees the entire universe of programming through the prism of application performance.
- davidw 18y ago
  Is Guido a "one trick pony" too? That's pretty disparaging language for someone who came up with such a widely used programming language. That language is not something I'm particularly enamored of, but Rasmus is a bright guy, who created something that thousands (tens, hundreds of thousands?) of people the world over use. That's not bad for "a one trick pony". (BTW, would you call him that to his face?)
  - jawngee 18y ago
    I would.
  - compay 18y ago
    I'm not saying he's not bright and a bad guy, or that PHP sucks. I've been reading stuff from him since '99 when I first started working with PHP. I've seen him talk. As far as I can tell, the only thing Rasmus ever really gets excited about is performance - he's been saying the same thing for years.
altano 18y ago
So we should all abandon our frameworks entirely for C++ because we're going to be getting Yahoo levels of traffic, trees are people too, and no one's ever achieved 280 req/sec with a framework because things like caching don't exist. And the semantic web is cool. What the fuck? Why is anyone upvoting this link? It's completely insane.
aristus 18y ago
Ah, Rasmus. Rasmus is kind of like the last hockey player who doesn't wear a helmet and looks down on the rest of us pussies. We don't all have 500 million users, man. He's a got a good point: PHP is a framework. It's just not a very easy one. Clue, Ras: when your users ask you constantly for certain features (say, named parameters or templating) and you don't give it to them, they will go around you. Or they'll stop using your language.
- christefano 18y ago
  You had me until you said that PHP is a framework.

20 points by ahold 18y ago

I can't find any further details on this claim. It wouldn't surprise me if it was true but benchmarks really do depend on the details. I want more info. Skipping over the use of "Hello World!" in benchmarks is anyone actually surprised by this? Frameworks aren't a silver bullet. I don't think they were ever meant to be, especially when it comes to performance. There is nothing stopping you from going in to the framework code and optimising it or even taking functionality over to C++ if that's what you want.

christefano 18y ago
For benchmarks with Drupal, see http://www.opensourcery.com/blog/jonathan-hedstrom/drupalcon-rasmus-lerdorf-php-performance-and-drupal-performance-correction http://www.opensourcery.com/blog/jonathan-hedstrom/drupalcon...

mseebach 18y ago

I did some consulting a few months ago. A FOAF had developed and launched a quite comprehensive online textbook, and their success was choking the the website. They don't know much programming, and had they not used a framework (and one of the slower ones at that), they wouldn't have launched. Period. I moved in, got them off shared hosting, replaced the built-in search with a Apache Solr, tuned the cache and a few other quick wins, took my money and left them my phonenumber. They live to fight another year or two, and I'll stop by and help again then. Scalability is not your problem, getting people to give a shit is. http://teddziuba.com/2008/04/im-going-to-scale-my-foot-up-y.html http://teddziuba.com/2008/04/im-going-to-scale-my-foot-up-y.... Frameworks helps getting people to give a shit, custom C++ extensions doesn't, so use a framework, unless Yahoo! called.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
The majority of Drupal users I know couldn't write a line of C++ to save their lives. Many of them can't write a line of PHP, either. I'm constantly impressed with the patience of these people, but they get results. In a world where every church, school, and small business could afford its own personal Rasmus Lerdorf, we'd all have much more efficient code that was lovingly hand-optimized for our specific applications. In the real world, hardware grows on trees, while Rasmus Lerdorf probably costs something like $400 per hour.
- thomasmallen 18y ago
  I'm a PHP dev, but I'm always surprised by how seldom I have to code anything besides a theme in Drupal.
MicahWedemeyer 18y ago
Right on! An app which never launches due to premature optimization scales infinitely. Scalability is a problem we all dream of dealing with.

swombat 18y ago

What a load of crap. Quite surprising to hear that sort of tripe come from a respected figure like Rasmus Lerdorf... but then, he did invent PHP. First of all, requests/s per server is not a measure of performance, it's a measure of scalability. I can take the same system he's got, buy 9 other identical servers, and get 10 times the throughput. Does that mean they're higher performance? No, just higher scalability. Secondly, scalability is not your problem. Getting people to give a shit about your site/product is your problem. Scalability is a hard problem later, but it is only worth really worrying about once it is a real problem. Rasmus Lerdorf: -1.

BlueZeniX 18y ago
He wasn't really talking about scalability but req/sec which has more to do with speed/latency. Getting people to care about your website requires it being fast .. see Google: "Google found an extra .5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%." (http://highscalability.com/latency-everywhere-and-it-costs-you-sales-how-crush-it http://highscalability.com/latency-everywhere-and-it-costs-y...) But then again, if you want speed why use PHP at all ;-)
- swombat 18y ago
  From TFA: He continues on by stating that PHP developers really need to think about performance for not only scalability reasons but for green reasons. Sounds to me like he cares about performance because of scalability. That's retarded. Upon second reading, I'm beginning to think that the writer failed to follow what was being said. I can't believe that someone like Rasmus Lerdorf would say something quite so daft, and the style of the article is erratic to say the least. So maybe it's just the writer who misinterpreted what RL said.

jonhohle 18y ago

"To get the speed that is necessary for truly massive web systems you have to use compiled C++ extensions to get true, scaleable architecture." But at the same time, even creating a simple procedural PHP extension is a huge undertaking (much more than it needs to be), accentuated by poor and out of date documentation all around, and large parts of documentation are missing from the PHP site concerning extension creation.

compay 18y ago

Rasmus is a one trick pony who sees the entire universe of programming through the prism of application performance.

davidw 18y ago
Is Guido a "one trick pony" too? That's pretty disparaging language for someone who came up with such a widely used programming language. That language is not something I'm particularly enamored of, but Rasmus is a bright guy, who created something that thousands (tens, hundreds of thousands?) of people the world over use. That's not bad for "a one trick pony". (BTW, would you call him that to his face?)
- jawngee 18y ago
  I would.
- compay 18y ago
  I'm not saying he's not bright and a bad guy, or that PHP sucks. I've been reading stuff from him since '99 when I first started working with PHP. I've seen him talk. As far as I can tell, the only thing Rasmus ever really gets excited about is performance - he's been saying the same thing for years.

altano 18y ago

So we should all abandon our frameworks entirely for C++ because we're going to be getting Yahoo levels of traffic, trees are people too, and no one's ever achieved 280 req/sec with a framework because things like caching don't exist. And the semantic web is cool. What the fuck? Why is anyone upvoting this link? It's completely insane.

aristus 18y ago

Ah, Rasmus. Rasmus is kind of like the last hockey player who doesn't wear a helmet and looks down on the rest of us pussies. We don't all have 500 million users, man. He's a got a good point: PHP is a framework. It's just not a very easy one. Clue, Ras: when your users ask you constantly for certain features (say, named parameters or templating) and you don't give it to them, they will go around you. Or they'll stop using your language.

christefano 18y ago
You had me until you said that PHP is a framework.