4 ms·

> ...about just shifting from PHP to a more performant language We already shift lots of things out of PHP into more performant (c++, java, etc) languages when

by lbrandy 14y ago

> ...about just shifting from PHP to a more performant language We already shift lots of things out of PHP into more performant (c++, java, etc) languages when we are building services and/or extensions and/or other computationally intensive things. But I think more to your point (and if not, let me indulge in the strawman), since this comes up frequently on reddit/hn: php is not somehow -uniquely- broken. While PHP might be uniquely broken as a language (ha ha), it's not -uniquely- broken as a platform/runtime. Everything you think is performant is broken at a large enough scale. Put another way, it's not just about the switching costs of rewriting in some other language. If we could magically snap our fingers and convert the entire codebase from php to some other language, that's just the beginning of understanding, tweaking, and occasionally rebuilding everything about the runtime/libraries/etc to make it work. At the end of the day the language itself is given way too much attention in discussions like this.

dkhenry 14y ago
So is your argument then that there is so much vested in facebook in dealing with and optimizing for PHP at scale that the real cost would be acquiring that knowledge a second time on a different platform since you _will_ run into scale problems no matter what language you use ? From my experience in dealing with PHP performance warts. You can make it somewhat fast, but man the insides are so messed up every time I get into the core and try to do anything I want to rip my hair out.
nicholassmith 14y ago
Thanks for the response. That's a big part of my point, but Facebook seems to have invested a lot in the HipHop compiler and VM as a way to tackle the rough spots from using php. All languages are in their own way rough in places, but I was more curious about whether anyone has gone "this is great but maybe we're at the symptoms and not the cause". But you're right about the total investment being way, way larger than just a code base rewrite. Interesting to learn that you do use multi languages for different things, a lot gets made of HipHop and Facebooks use of php that I didn't think to guess that different levels of the service might be getting built with different tools, at least not at scale.

by lbrandy 14y ago

dkhenry 14y ago

So is your argument then that there is so much vested in facebook in dealing with and optimizing for PHP at scale that the real cost would be acquiring that knowledge a second time on a different platform since you _will_ run into scale problems no matter what language you use ? From my experience in dealing with PHP performance warts. You can make it somewhat fast, but man the insides are so messed up every time I get into the core and try to do anything I want to rip my hair out.

nicholassmith 14y ago

Thanks for the response. That's a big part of my point, but Facebook seems to have invested a lot in the HipHop compiler and VM as a way to tackle the rough spots from using php. All languages are in their own way rough in places, but I was more curious about whether anyone has gone "this is great but maybe we're at the symptoms and not the cause". But you're right about the total investment being way, way larger than just a code base rewrite. Interesting to learn that you do use multi languages for different things, a lot gets made of HipHop and Facebooks use of php that I didn't think to guess that different levels of the service might be getting built with different tools, at least not at scale.