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I always admired PHP’s runtime for the way it serves web requests. I think it’s a similar ethos to that described in the post, even though Erlang and PHP are q

I always admired PHP’s runtime for the way it serves web requests. I think it’s a similar ethos to that described in the post, even though Erlang and PHP are quite different. Start from nothing. No shared state with previous requests. Plough right through as many errors as you can. Log them, but don’t stop. Keep executing code until you run out of things to do.

TylerE 6y ago
I've always thought that's precisely why PHP is bad. It throws out the context baby with the state bathwater.
fn1 6y ago
This is probable the reason for why it's so popular (meaning wordpress), but also why it's so full of security exploits. Fail-fast leads to more stable systems.
- mping 6y ago
  Generally agree, but if erlang was as popular as wordpress we don't know what kind of issues hackers would find
  - rkangel 6y ago
    I think it would be ok, but part of the question is what you mean by "popular". WhatsApp famously runs on Erlang, as do large chunks of our telecomms infrastructure. It has an enormous number of users. What it doesn't have is an enormous number of developers. One of the good things about the Erlang (and Elixir) ecosystem is that there are a relatively small number of people implementing the bits you care about, and they all seem to be extremely competent engineers. The pieces are designed well, they are reliable and they fit together. They also have good abstractions so if you use good pieces then you get good results (e.g. with Phoenix you'd have a hard time creating a XSRF or SQL injection problem). PHP has a bit of a perfect storm of problems - it is so accessible that anyone can and did use it. This meant a lot of people implemented things using it, with varying levels of competence. This means a lot of problematic implementation of a lot of pieces, built on a language and framework that didn't really try to prevent security problems and so didn't really have the tools to do so. In contrast to Erlang/Elixir above, you can take a set of tools in PHP and easily implement a very insecure website.
toast0 6y ago
I love both Erlang and PHP, but the philosophy of what to do with errors in requesrs is like diametrically opposed. For PHP, usually it's log, but keep on going as best you can. For Erlang, it's log and stop, and the request handler will generally be restarted. I guess where they're similar is that an error is generally going to only affect that one request, the next request will have a fresh handler. (Of course, these are generalizations, you can always do things differently in either language).
vlovich123 6y ago
I’d recommending reading the post about the difference between erlang and php and reading the article again. This isn’t silently swallow errors. It’s saying start with fail aggressively but also don’t forget to identify situations resulting in failures in the first place and fix those bugs our handle the corner conditions properly. That’s diametrically incompatible with “log and continue” as at no point is that desirable according to this post.

TylerE 6y ago

I've always thought that's precisely why PHP is bad. It throws out the context baby with the state bathwater.

fn1 6y ago

This is probable the reason for why it's so popular (meaning wordpress), but also why it's so full of security exploits. Fail-fast leads to more stable systems.

mping 6y ago
Generally agree, but if erlang was as popular as wordpress we don't know what kind of issues hackers would find
- rkangel 6y ago
  I think it would be ok, but part of the question is what you mean by "popular". WhatsApp famously runs on Erlang, as do large chunks of our telecomms infrastructure. It has an enormous number of users. What it doesn't have is an enormous number of developers. One of the good things about the Erlang (and Elixir) ecosystem is that there are a relatively small number of people implementing the bits you care about, and they all seem to be extremely competent engineers. The pieces are designed well, they are reliable and they fit together. They also have good abstractions so if you use good pieces then you get good results (e.g. with Phoenix you'd have a hard time creating a XSRF or SQL injection problem). PHP has a bit of a perfect storm of problems - it is so accessible that anyone can and did use it. This meant a lot of people implemented things using it, with varying levels of competence. This means a lot of problematic implementation of a lot of pieces, built on a language and framework that didn't really try to prevent security problems and so didn't really have the tools to do so. In contrast to Erlang/Elixir above, you can take a set of tools in PHP and easily implement a very insecure website.

toast0 6y ago

I love both Erlang and PHP, but the philosophy of what to do with errors in requesrs is like diametrically opposed. For PHP, usually it's log, but keep on going as best you can. For Erlang, it's log and stop, and the request handler will generally be restarted. I guess where they're similar is that an error is generally going to only affect that one request, the next request will have a fresh handler. (Of course, these are generalizations, you can always do things differently in either language).

vlovich123 6y ago

I’d recommending reading the post about the difference between erlang and php and reading the article again. This isn’t silently swallow errors. It’s saying start with fail aggressively but also don’t forget to identify situations resulting in failures in the first place and fix those bugs our handle the corner conditions properly. That’s diametrically incompatible with “log and continue” as at no point is that desirable according to this post.