4 ms·

PHP has always ben slow, its getting slightly faster, but still REALLY, REALLY slow for anything CPU heavy. This is why the ML crowd sticks with Python (numpy)

PHP has always ben slow, its getting slightly faster, but still REALLY, REALLY slow for anything CPU heavy. This is why the ML crowd sticks with Python (numpy) thats incredibly fast. PHP is still lacking, there is no unicode support, and for a web language this is really bad. Also, the way PHP functions, makes modern web (like websockets) use impossible, there is hacks around this but they all kind of suck.

chippiewill 2y ago
Actually PHP itself is very fast compared to Python, especially for an interpreted language. Python only seems fast because all the heavy duty number crunching libraries are actually written in C.
- phplovesong 2y ago
  Yet, just a pip install away. In PHP this is not possible.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Just a composer require away.
  - nucleardog 2y ago
    http://pecl.php.net/packages.php http://pecl.php.net/packages.php `pecl install Tensor`?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- talkin 2y ago
  This comment and all siblings fight over PHP vs Pyhton etc, but that just isn’t the bottleneck in most apps. By far, for most apps, the biggest bottleneck is the database.
larsnystrom 2y ago
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. PHP has been faster than Python for a long time, but numpy is not written in Python, it's written in C. Just like PHP, coincidentally :)
- Kwpolska 2y ago
  Python is also written in C.
- phplovesong 2y ago
  Its not wrong, numpy is a pyrhon package (written in c) but you can USE it just with an pip install.
PaulRobinson 2y ago
Python is slower than most of the horses I bet on. That's pretty slow. The important - CPU intensive parts - of numpy, pandas, pytorch, and all the other "fast python" libraries out there, are actually written in C. Pure python should not be used for anything that requires good performance: it is programmer ergonomic, not CPU ergonomic. It is great that through the use of FFIs it has access to powerful libraries written in a language that isn't slow, but that does not make it as a language itself, fast.
- phplovesong 2y ago
  Thats my point, pyton the is one of the slowest languages, and still have high quality, high perf libraries like numpy. PHP has no way to install deps that actually are written in asm/fortran or c.
  - Dachande663 2y ago
    PHP still has PECL[0] which is a huge collection of C extensions. [0] https://pecl.php.net/ https://pecl.php.net/
  - arkh 2y ago
    > PHP has no way to install deps that actually are written in asm/fortran or c. https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.ffi.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.ffi.php is not enough for your needs?
0points 2y ago
> This is why the ML crowd sticks with Python (numpy) thats incredibly fast. That is not why. You stick to python because it's your common denominator. You all picked it up in school. Python the most popular language around, and one of the slowest.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I tend to use PHP for my backend work. In my experience, it’s actually very fast. That may be partly because of the way I write the code, though, and my backend code isn’t really too massive.
cess11 2y ago
PHP has decent FFI, nothing is stopping you from using the same libraries as you would with Python. Here's someone's quick hack as an example: https://github.com/dstogov/php-tensorflow https://github.com/dstogov/php-tensorflow For an interpreted language PHP itself is ridiculously fast and the VM is rather small so you can use something else coughElixircough for parallellisation. I use it all the time for data wrangling stuff and database imports because it's robust, fast and PsySh is a pretty neat environment. The array data structure is quite nice too. It's built on simple parts that are foundational to the VM itself, and very flexible, similar to lists in Lisp-like languages but without the seek lag when data grows due to the indexing.
- acomjean 2y ago
  PsySh I’ll have to check this out. Though not popular php can be a surprising decent scripting langauge.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    There were many many times I'd start writing a bash script, but then switch it to a PHP script. I've done this so many times that now I just start writing in PHP.
  - cess11 2y ago
    https://psysh.org/ https://psysh.org/ It's very popular, as in a lot of businesses use it, it's just not fashionable. I think it's a great tool to have. It had gradual typing before it was cool. You can type in like a page of code including the layout and render whatever in a PDO-supported database on a web page, served by the builtin web server, which is great for data exploration and things like SQL optimisation. At the moment I'm handling some data flows and conversions in a project with something like a terabyte of email and office documents that need to go into RDBMS, because there are some liberally licensed lightweight libraries (in contrast to the bulky stuff in Jakarta-land) and the performance is good enough to not be a bottleneck. Edit: And when a library isn't good enough, I can usually trivially fix or extend it because it's in a familiar language and written by a simple minded person like myself. There's a degree of clunkiness and incoherence in built-in API:s that might be off-putting at first but the included batteries and PsySH make for a quite decent tool anyway.

chippiewill 2y ago

Actually PHP itself is very fast compared to Python, especially for an interpreted language. Python only seems fast because all the heavy duty number crunching libraries are actually written in C.

phplovesong 2y ago
Yet, just a pip install away. In PHP this is not possible.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Just a composer require away.
- nucleardog 2y ago
  http://pecl.php.net/packages.php http://pecl.php.net/packages.php `pecl install Tensor`?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
talkin 2y ago
This comment and all siblings fight over PHP vs Pyhton etc, but that just isn’t the bottleneck in most apps. By far, for most apps, the biggest bottleneck is the database.

larsnystrom 2y ago

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. PHP has been faster than Python for a long time, but numpy is not written in Python, it's written in C. Just like PHP, coincidentally :)

Kwpolska 2y ago
Python is also written in C.
phplovesong 2y ago
Its not wrong, numpy is a pyrhon package (written in c) but you can USE it just with an pip install.

PaulRobinson 2y ago

Python is slower than most of the horses I bet on. That's pretty slow. The important - CPU intensive parts - of numpy, pandas, pytorch, and all the other "fast python" libraries out there, are actually written in C. Pure python should not be used for anything that requires good performance: it is programmer ergonomic, not CPU ergonomic. It is great that through the use of FFIs it has access to powerful libraries written in a language that isn't slow, but that does not make it as a language itself, fast.

phplovesong 2y ago
Thats my point, pyton the is one of the slowest languages, and still have high quality, high perf libraries like numpy. PHP has no way to install deps that actually are written in asm/fortran or c.
- Dachande663 2y ago
  PHP still has PECL[0] which is a huge collection of C extensions. [0] https://pecl.php.net/ https://pecl.php.net/
- arkh 2y ago
  > PHP has no way to install deps that actually are written in asm/fortran or c. https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.ffi.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/book.ffi.php is not enough for your needs?

0points 2y ago

> This is why the ML crowd sticks with Python (numpy) thats incredibly fast. That is not why. You stick to python because it's your common denominator. You all picked it up in school. Python the most popular language around, and one of the slowest.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I tend to use PHP for my backend work. In my experience, it’s actually very fast. That may be partly because of the way I write the code, though, and my backend code isn’t really too massive.

cess11 2y ago

PHP has decent FFI, nothing is stopping you from using the same libraries as you would with Python. Here's someone's quick hack as an example: https://github.com/dstogov/php-tensorflow https://github.com/dstogov/php-tensorflow For an interpreted language PHP itself is ridiculously fast and the VM is rather small so you can use something else coughElixircough for parallellisation. I use it all the time for data wrangling stuff and database imports because it's robust, fast and PsySh is a pretty neat environment. The array data structure is quite nice too. It's built on simple parts that are foundational to the VM itself, and very flexible, similar to lists in Lisp-like languages but without the seek lag when data grows due to the indexing.

acomjean 2y ago
PsySh I’ll have to check this out. Though not popular php can be a surprising decent scripting langauge.
- dylan604 2y ago
  There were many many times I'd start writing a bash script, but then switch it to a PHP script. I've done this so many times that now I just start writing in PHP.
- cess11 2y ago
  https://psysh.org/ https://psysh.org/ It's very popular, as in a lot of businesses use it, it's just not fashionable. I think it's a great tool to have. It had gradual typing before it was cool. You can type in like a page of code including the layout and render whatever in a PDO-supported database on a web page, served by the builtin web server, which is great for data exploration and things like SQL optimisation. At the moment I'm handling some data flows and conversions in a project with something like a terabyte of email and office documents that need to go into RDBMS, because there are some liberally licensed lightweight libraries (in contrast to the bulky stuff in Jakarta-land) and the performance is good enough to not be a bottleneck. Edit: And when a library isn't good enough, I can usually trivially fix or extend it because it's in a familiar language and written by a simple minded person like myself. There's a degree of clunkiness and incoherence in built-in API:s that might be off-putting at first but the included batteries and PsySH make for a quite decent tool anyway.