From: Ed Carp
Date: April 29 1999 3:42pm
Subject: Re: Need an opinion - C vs PHP
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/2633
Message-Id: <199904291542.KAA03432@wats-ts4-12.ppp.iadfw.net>
Content-Type: text
Attachment: [text]
> .. the difference is so minimal its not funny, but overall PHP has got to
> win for web based stuff
Not at all. It all depends on what you're looking for, and what your
experience level is. If your site is going to get a lot of hits, C is the
best tool, because it's the fastest. If you have limited programming
experience, PHP or PERL will perhaps fit your needs better, because it's
more of a RAD tool than C is, but you trade off speed and flexibility.
But no interpreted language will be faster than compiled native code,
that's just common sense.
For example, I have a web page that uses MySQL to generate an index of
news headlines and links. I wrote this in C, because it had to be fast -
when you're searching a database of 24,000+ headlines, and have multiple
people banging away at the server, it pays to make it as fast as possible,
and the HTML was no harder to generate than it was in any other language.
PHP or PERL would've been at least half as fast (I know because I
benchmarked the same app written in C, PERL, and PHP).
There's a saying in certain programming circles that people who don't know
how to program choose PERL or PHP, people who do choose C or C++, and I
think there's a certain amount of truth in that. Why is MySQL qritten in
C, rather than in PERL? It would've certainly been easier. Why is most
system software written in C? Why is it that most every modern operating
system is written in C or C++?
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@stripped 940/367-2744 cell phone
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