9 ms·

PHP vs. Node.js: The REAL statistics

14 points by prahladyeri 12y ago

TimWolla 12y ago
> PHP might be still having the “king of web” status, but with node.js in the town, I don’t see that status staying for very long! I doubt that. PHP will stay because of Path dependency, most webhosters provide PHP, because software is written in PHP. Software is written in PHP, because it is most widely supported. I like node better, though.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  PHP is a lot easier to use. Which is pretty much why it's already king.
daveslash 12y ago
The truth is out. node.js was faster than PHP by more 14 times! These results are astonishing. It simply means that node.js IS going to be THE de-facto standard for writing performance driven apps in the upcoming future, there is no doubt about it! While I enjoyed the benchmark test, I believe the conclusion that this is going to be de-facto as a result of it's high performance is a bit premature. There are so many factors (both right and wrong) that contribute to the widespread adoption to a language/framework/technology, performance often being less important than you'd at first think. EDIT: I'm not suggestion node will or will not be a de-facto. I'm suggesting that the factors contributing to a languages widespread adoption are varied and complex.
- Shorel 12y ago
  I think D lang's vibe.d can take that performance crown with good documentation and some more libraries.
- prahladyeri 12y ago
  >>I'm suggesting that the factors contributing to a languages widespread adoption are varied and complex. Yup, thats true, and being performance oriented isn't the only selling-point for node.js. The fact that all node apps are single-threaded (and thus conserve cpu capacity), combined with the functional-programming approach of javascript (which makes things like async I/O easier, don't hurt either.
  - sportanova 12y ago
    I wouldn't say that single-threaded is a good thing, or that JavaScript is a functional language
    - prahladyeri 12y ago
      @sportanova - If callbacks are available for everything, then what is th need for multi-threading. You can handle everything in your own thread. When required, runtime will give you a callback. JavaScript indeed has functional programming features. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript
      - sportanova 12y ago
        1) While it's possible to take advantage of multiple cores with Node, it's easier to do it with a system that supports multi-threading out of the box. Node's event loop model (and interface, in the form of callbacks) works well for IO intensive purposes, but hardly obviates the use of multi-threading (especially when some CPU intensive processing comes into play). 2) I think functional programming languages are best viewed on a spectrum, and Javascript falls pretty low on the spectrum. Higher than Java, but far behind Scala and way, way behind Haskell. It has closures and higher order functions, but so does Java 8, and I wouldn't call Java a functional language. Off the top of my head it's missing immutability, referential transparency, pattern matching, lazy evaluation, tail recursion, and monadic structures. Just because a language has or is missing a few of these doesn't mean it is / isn't functional, but relatively speaking, Javascript is pretty low on the spectrum.
ksherlock 12y ago
It's not really a node vs php comparison, it's a node vs apache/php/unknown config comparison. HHVM can be 40-80 times faster than php for some benchmarks. Maybe try that?
- chc 12y ago
  HHVM still isn't perfectly compatible with PHP. I think the I recently experimented with migrating a fairly complex WordPress site to HHVM (since it claims 100% WordPress compatibility), and I found that some queries would return different results or silently fail under HHVM. So I think not comparing bleeding-edge stuff like that seems fair. It'll probably be relevant in the not-too-distant future, though. (For anyone wondering about performance, it served pages about twice as fast on average as PHP-FPM 5.4.4 on the same box, and with drastically lower memory usage in all cases. Didn't delve too much deeper into that, though, since the page not rendering correctly was a showstopper.)
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  nginx + FastCGI would probably put PHP on a more level playing field. The test isn't completely invalid, but there is a lot more going on than what is described. It's a bit misleading to say that the server blocks waiting for file_get_contents. Actually, only the thread running the PHP script blocks. Other threads/processes can run. This experiment isn't quite a test of blocking versus non-blocking I/O. It's more a comparison of a heavy apache + PHP stack versus a lightweight, single-function node.js http server, which also probably benefits from non-blocking I/O. But non-blocking I/O is only one of many things that make the node script faster.
  - prahladyeri 12y ago
    >>Actually, only the thread running the PHP script blocks. Other threads/processes can run. Yup. But imagine a situation that suddenly around 10000 requests have arrived at your server and sitting on the queue. Now that "one php thread" suddenly becomes a life-saver.
    - mtdewcmu 12y ago
keithnoizu 12y ago
If you're really worried about performance just look at chicago boss or raw Yaws with Erlang and or Elixir. The real question for most projects should be which is faster to develop with and has a better ecosystem.
hamburglar 12y ago
Wow, is this a parody? The lack of rockstar ninja references is confusing me. "Hey guys, I was wondering if node really is faster than PHP, so I checked. It is! End of story."
pmelnichuk 12y ago
The really approximated excluding concrete version information and using only read and write to disk commands statistics* Personally i prefer http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ reply if anyone knows something better than that one
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gexla 12y ago
As long as there is software built in PHP which are used by huge numbers of people (Wordpress, Drupal, etc) then it will continue to be important to huge numbers of people. For many of the people using these tools, the benchmarks don't matter. Most people do okay with their Wordpress or Drupal sites. Application developers understand that the limitations of attempting to use a CMS as a platform and they have wide choices (not just PHP or Node.)
ttty 12y ago
Some time ago at school the teacher asked to make a crawler so, as always I do it in node.js and mongodb. The site to crawl has around 80K pages and 300 records on each page. My script crawled and saved all that data (80K * 300) in less than 1 hour with around 100 concurrent requests. The other students that wrote in ruby, python and php took days to do the same thing. Also they had to do by parts because if they requested all by once their pc would crash because of memory. Also I didn’t need any test because since the first time I ran node.js it was instant fast, not like php, ruby or python.
- prahladyeri 12y ago
  Yup. And thats only because of precious CPU time saved by doing async I/O which the functional paradigm of JavaScript supports so well.
  - frowaway001 12y ago
    I really can't figure out whether you two guys are trolling. Thinking about it, I actually hope so, because everything else would be embarrassing.
Bostwick 12y ago
I'd like to see the author make an attempt with the React library [1] in PHP as well. You don't have to abandon your language of choice to gain the ability to do asynchronous I/O. [1] http://reactphp.org/ http://reactphp.org/
codygman 12y ago
Just for fun, here's an unoptimized and un-async'd haskell version I threw together: http://lpaste.net/105557 http://lpaste.net/105557 It takes about a second. I expected it to be faster than node and php, but it being this much faster makes me think I got something wrong. The files generated aren't all the same.

14 points by prahladyeri 12y ago

> PHP might be still having the “king of web” status, but with node.js in the town, I don’t see that status staying for very long! I doubt that. PHP will stay because of Path dependency, most webhosters provide PHP, because software is written in PHP. Software is written in PHP, because it is most widely supported. I like node better, though.

mtdewcmu 12y ago
PHP is a lot easier to use. Which is pretty much why it's already king.

daveslash 12y ago

The truth is out. node.js was faster than PHP by more 14 times! These results are astonishing. It simply means that node.js IS going to be THE de-facto standard for writing performance driven apps in the upcoming future, there is no doubt about it! While I enjoyed the benchmark test, I believe the conclusion that this is going to be de-facto as a result of it's high performance is a bit premature. There are so many factors (both right and wrong) that contribute to the widespread adoption to a language/framework/technology, performance often being less important than you'd at first think. EDIT: I'm not suggestion node will or will not be a de-facto. I'm suggesting that the factors contributing to a languages widespread adoption are varied and complex.

Shorel 12y ago
I think D lang's vibe.d can take that performance crown with good documentation and some more libraries.
prahladyeri 12y ago
>>I'm suggesting that the factors contributing to a languages widespread adoption are varied and complex. Yup, thats true, and being performance oriented isn't the only selling-point for node.js. The fact that all node apps are single-threaded (and thus conserve cpu capacity), combined with the functional-programming approach of javascript (which makes things like async I/O easier, don't hurt either.
- sportanova 12y ago
  I wouldn't say that single-threaded is a good thing, or that JavaScript is a functional language
  - prahladyeri 12y ago
    @sportanova - If callbacks are available for everything, then what is th need for multi-threading. You can handle everything in your own thread. When required, runtime will give you a callback. JavaScript indeed has functional programming features. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript
    - sportanova 12y ago
      1) While it's possible to take advantage of multiple cores with Node, it's easier to do it with a system that supports multi-threading out of the box. Node's event loop model (and interface, in the form of callbacks) works well for IO intensive purposes, but hardly obviates the use of multi-threading (especially when some CPU intensive processing comes into play). 2) I think functional programming languages are best viewed on a spectrum, and Javascript falls pretty low on the spectrum. Higher than Java, but far behind Scala and way, way behind Haskell. It has closures and higher order functions, but so does Java 8, and I wouldn't call Java a functional language. Off the top of my head it's missing immutability, referential transparency, pattern matching, lazy evaluation, tail recursion, and monadic structures. Just because a language has or is missing a few of these doesn't mean it is / isn't functional, but relatively speaking, Javascript is pretty low on the spectrum.

ksherlock 12y ago

It's not really a node vs php comparison, it's a node vs apache/php/unknown config comparison. HHVM can be 40-80 times faster than php for some benchmarks. Maybe try that?

chc 12y ago
HHVM still isn't perfectly compatible with PHP. I think the I recently experimented with migrating a fairly complex WordPress site to HHVM (since it claims 100% WordPress compatibility), and I found that some queries would return different results or silently fail under HHVM. So I think not comparing bleeding-edge stuff like that seems fair. It'll probably be relevant in the not-too-distant future, though. (For anyone wondering about performance, it served pages about twice as fast on average as PHP-FPM 5.4.4 on the same box, and with drastically lower memory usage in all cases. Didn't delve too much deeper into that, though, since the page not rendering correctly was a showstopper.)
mtdewcmu 12y ago
nginx + FastCGI would probably put PHP on a more level playing field. The test isn't completely invalid, but there is a lot more going on than what is described. It's a bit misleading to say that the server blocks waiting for file_get_contents. Actually, only the thread running the PHP script blocks. Other threads/processes can run. This experiment isn't quite a test of blocking versus non-blocking I/O. It's more a comparison of a heavy apache + PHP stack versus a lightweight, single-function node.js http server, which also probably benefits from non-blocking I/O. But non-blocking I/O is only one of many things that make the node script faster.
- prahladyeri 12y ago
  >>Actually, only the thread running the PHP script blocks. Other threads/processes can run. Yup. But imagine a situation that suddenly around 10000 requests have arrived at your server and sitting on the queue. Now that "one php thread" suddenly becomes a life-saver.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago

keithnoizu 12y ago

If you're really worried about performance just look at chicago boss or raw Yaws with Erlang and or Elixir. The real question for most projects should be which is faster to develop with and has a better ecosystem.

hamburglar 12y ago

Wow, is this a parody? The lack of rockstar ninja references is confusing me. "Hey guys, I was wondering if node really is faster than PHP, so I checked. It is! End of story."

pmelnichuk 12y ago

The really approximated excluding concrete version information and using only read and write to disk commands statistics* Personally i prefer http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ reply if anyone knows something better than that one

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

gexla 12y ago

As long as there is software built in PHP which are used by huge numbers of people (Wordpress, Drupal, etc) then it will continue to be important to huge numbers of people. For many of the people using these tools, the benchmarks don't matter. Most people do okay with their Wordpress or Drupal sites. Application developers understand that the limitations of attempting to use a CMS as a platform and they have wide choices (not just PHP or Node.)

ttty 12y ago

Some time ago at school the teacher asked to make a crawler so, as always I do it in node.js and mongodb. The site to crawl has around 80K pages and 300 records on each page. My script crawled and saved all that data (80K * 300) in less than 1 hour with around 100 concurrent requests. The other students that wrote in ruby, python and php took days to do the same thing. Also they had to do by parts because if they requested all by once their pc would crash because of memory. Also I didn’t need any test because since the first time I ran node.js it was instant fast, not like php, ruby or python.

prahladyeri 12y ago
Yup. And thats only because of precious CPU time saved by doing async I/O which the functional paradigm of JavaScript supports so well.
- frowaway001 12y ago
  I really can't figure out whether you two guys are trolling. Thinking about it, I actually hope so, because everything else would be embarrassing.

Bostwick 12y ago

I'd like to see the author make an attempt with the React library [1] in PHP as well. You don't have to abandon your language of choice to gain the ability to do asynchronous I/O. [1] http://reactphp.org/ http://reactphp.org/

codygman 12y ago

Just for fun, here's an unoptimized and un-async'd haskell version I threw together: http://lpaste.net/105557 http://lpaste.net/105557 It takes about a second. I expected it to be faster than node and php, but it being this much faster makes me think I got something wrong. The files generated aren't all the same.