4 ms·

> PHP is no one's standard for "fast". PHP is my standard for "fast" in the realm of scripting. Just behind Perl. Python is slower in every prototype benchmark

• hasenj 9y ago
  Fast would be something like Go or D or any of the other compiled languages.
  • jack9 9y ago
    I'm not sure how that relates. None of those are scripting languages, although when you start talking about "compiled" it gets a little messy with definitions. Either way, it's not what I'm talking about.
    • weberc2 9y ago
      You're the one who invoked "scripting" out of the blue. There's no reason to artificially limit the conversation to scripting languages, especially since "scripting" is itself poorly defined (what constitutes a scripting language? An interpreter? Where do interpreters end and VMs begin? Python's "interpreter" is a VM; is Python not a scripting language? Python even compiles to Python bytecode--is Python then a compiled language?). If you're going to scope the languages being evaluated, do it by something meaningful, like problem domain--for example, "web applications". I can't speak to D, but Go is certainly a competitor in this space, and speaking from experience, it's much, much more performant than Python and PHP by virtually all metrics. Maybe you mean data science, in which case Python and Go can be compared, but I don't know that anyone is doing real data science work in PHP. Maybe you mean "general purpose language", in which case all of the previously discussed languages can be compared, and in which case Go and D completely outclass Python and PHP.
      • cygx 9y ago
        what constitutes a scripting language? It's indeed a bit fuzzy, but program execution without separate compilation (which is not a feature of a language per se) is something I'd look for. As far as intrinsic language features go, a lack of boilerplate in the sense of print("hello") vs class Hello { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("hello"); } } is a good indicator, as is dynamic typing.
        • weberc2 9y ago
          This isn't a meaningful definition because compilation and execution under a single command is trivial for any compiled language, including Go and Python and PHP. As for lack of boilerplate, Haskell and many statically-typed, compiled functional languages have less boilerplate than PHP or Python. Dynamic typing is more meaningful, but regardless of definition, I fail to see why it's useful to restrict the scope to scripting languages. However, even if you make this restriction, there are many, many languages that are dynamically typed "scripting" languages that are much faster than PHP and Python (JRuby, Lua, JS, Wren, most lisps, etc).
          • igouy 9y ago
            > dynamically typed "scripting" languages that are much faster than PHP and Python (JRuby ? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=python3&lang2=jruby http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...
            • weberc2 9y ago
              That's not the graal backend. The TruffleRuby project uses Graal to make JRuby much, much faster. I don't know what the specific information, but generally "competitive with Java" is my understanding. Perhaps "TruffleRuby" is the name I should have used; it's not apparent and I'm only nominally familiar with the project.
              • 9y ago
    • hasenj 9y ago
      It relates because we are not talking about scripting. We are talking about programming. Python/Ruby/etc.. are slow. D/Go/C/Rust/etc.. is fast.
      • jack9 9y ago
        I constrained my point. You are now making your own determination. Good Luck with that.