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Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

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Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#111

Post by coldtea »

testrun wrote: post #83
coldtea wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why you guys ganged up to downvote on something obvious - PHP is loosing grounds to HHVM already. Perhaps because some on HN are computer scientists, so to convince them it takes actual numbers and not some anecdotal evidence of what you personally use. Judging from all available data sources, you are an outlier. HHVM doesn't have that large a community (mostly FB people), is not installed in the overw…

> Perhaps because some on HN are computer scientists, so to convince them it takes actual numbers and not some anecdotal evidence of what you personally use. And then goes on to say: > HHVM doesn't have that large a community (mostly FB people), is not installed in the overwhelming majority of hosts, still has compatibility issues, has few posts about it, there are very few mentions of companies using it, and, for wh…

>With zero references to any data

The difference is that I gave objective and easily checkable statements.

References? I referred to specific items (hosts supporting it: just check the top 10 shared hosting providers), mentions of companies using it (how many have you seen on HN?), compatibility issues (those are documented on the project page), etc.

All of those are references to data sources you can actually check. I'm not going to crunch the numbers for you, but unlike the parent, you don't have to take my word for it.

Pointing to the data themselves is actually more scientific than the "references to data", if by that you mean some websites and news sources feeding you with ready made data points ("20% of developers are thinking of adopting HHVM, we know, we asked 100 of our pals").

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#112

Post by coldtea »

kolev wrote: post #79
coldtea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it normally works with those kinds of re-implementations. Heck, Python 3 hasn't even replaced Python 2 -- and people will dump PHP for Hack? A language which doesn't even have a community at the moment, it's 99% Facebook people.

Also, if we have to use Python as an example, then PyPy was a better analogy than Python 3.

Only I compared PHP to Hack above. PyPy would be a better analogy to HHVM-PHP.

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#113

Post by coldtea »

kolev wrote: post #77
coldtea wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why you guys ganged up to downvote on something obvious - PHP is loosing grounds to HHVM already. Perhaps because some on HN are computer scientists, so to convince them it takes actual numbers and not some anecdotal evidence of what you personally use. Judging from all available data sources, you are an outlier. HHVM doesn't have that large a community (mostly FB people), is not installed in the overw…

I have nearly 30 years of professional experience and my intuition is pretty reliable. If HHVM wasn't what runs the largest PHP app in the world, things would have been much different. Hack brings many language people that Zend for one reason or another didn't not deliver all these years.

>I have nearly 30 years of professional experience and my intuition is pretty reliable

Any other examples of it panning correctly?

In any case, let's check back in 2 years. I doubt Hack/HHVM will have more than 20% adoption even then. Criteria:

Number of hosting providers supporting it. Number of posts on HN from startups using it. Number of relevant community (forum and blog posts, contributors etc) Number of new projects written for it (GitHub) Number of new books appearing for it. Rank in the Tiobe programming language index.

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#114

Post by mtbcoder »

jafaku wrote: post #86
nacs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I ran a benchmark against CodeIgniter on a test box recently and was suprised that a single query app performance went from around ~20k req/s with raw PHP (no framework) to around ~3k req/s with CI and thought that was bad for a framework. I didn't realize Wordpress performance was so much worse especially given its popularity. Most Wordpress sites use a caching plugin like WP Super Cache or Varnish-type setu…

CI is a badly designed and outdated framework. For real speed you should use something more professional like Symfony2.

I won't disagree with you that CI is outdated, but it was originally created to work around the limitations of PHP4 and early versions of 5.x. Looking back in hindsight, it may seem "badly designed", but that would be taking it out of context.

Also, CI out performs Symfony in the web framework benchmarks: http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/. I certainly would never equate Symfony to "real speed".

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#115

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #111
testrun wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps because some on HN are computer scientists, so to convince them it takes actual numbers and not some anecdotal evidence of what you personally use. And then goes on to say: > HHVM doesn't have that large a community (mostly FB people), is not installed in the overwhelming majority of hosts, still has compatibility issues, has few posts about it, there are very few mentions of companies using it, and, for wh…

> With zero references to any data The difference is that I gave objective and easily checkable statements. References? I referred to specific items (hosts supporting it: just check the top 10 shared hosting providers), mentions of companies using it (how many have you seen on HN?), compatibility issues (those are documented on the project page), etc. All of those are references to data sources you can actually check…

[deleted]

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#116

Post by philjohn »

porker wrote: post #108
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can name two. First, list comprehensions. In PHP, what you might write as this: $image_urls = []; foreach ($images as $image) { $image_urls[] = 'illos/' . $image['url']; } can just be this in Python: image_urls = ['illos/' + x['url'] for x in images] And, closures in Python -- and to be fair, just about any language that isn't PHP -- close over variables in the scope they're defined automatically, without having to…

> can just be this in Python: In PHP 5.3+ you can write: $image_urls = array_map(function($image) {return 'illos/'. $image['url'];}, $images); Not as concise, but I'd postulate easier to read for people not familiar with list comprehensions. In PHP 5.5+ there may be another way, but we're stuck with 5.3 in production for most clients, so I'm not up to speed. > And, closures in Python -- and to be fair, just about any…

this

(javascript pun intended)

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#117

Post by pbhjpbhj »

adamors wrote: post #63
Kiro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so good about Symfony compared to other PHP frameworks?

It's a mature, well designed and cleanly written piece of software that is very modular. It also has a great documentation and knowledgeable community around it. Other PHP frameworks lack some or most of these features: some are either very opinionated and rigid (Yii, Cake) huge and sparsely documented (Zend 2) or just old and approaching abandonment (Codeigniter, Kohana).

>It's a mature, well designed and cleanly written piece of software //

Just went to the Symfony site for my first time, to have a look. OK, I'll install it ... requires use of Alpha software (Composer) to install? Also, they tell you to pipe that script straight through PHP - don't appear to be any sha hash sums given or anything. Doesn't seem terribly mature and well-designed so far.

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#118

Post by camus2 »

debaserab2 wrote: post #93
meowface wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many good PHP web frameworks out there today, yes. These don't somehow erase PHP's core flaws as a language though. You can make a new project in Symfony or Laravel, sure, but you'll get that same niceness plus way more goodies if you use a popular Python or Ruby framework.

I think you need to qualify that a bit - what are "way more goodies" exactly? Can you name something that Python can do that PHP can't?

Real production ready servers ,complex scientific calculations, 2d, 3d games , to name a few things. PHP is not general purpose. Python is.

PHP has type hinting and interfaces that makes it "java" like(it's a strength).

Python doesnt have interfaces but allows type hinting through decorators.

    @typecheck
    def gimmeFloat(a:int, b:list, c:tuple=(1,2,3)) -> float:
        return 3.14

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#119

Post by stephenr »

kolev wrote: post #110
stephenr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the original HipHop C++ compiler I guess?

No, not anymore. All you guys comment negatively and cowardly silently downvote and I'm sure most of you haven't even bothered to look into HHVM.

I've looked into it.

a) it's run developed by a company whose policy is "move fast and break things". I have seen the result of this mantra first hand in their fucking terrible Facebook "api" where something breaks every time anyone anywhere in the world farts.

b) the number and nature of incompatibilities are too vast.

c) their intention is pretty clear with "hack" - they want a php-like language but not php. That's fine they can do that but I won't use it.

Re: Refactored PHP engine makes Wordpress 20% faster

#120

Post by debacle »

kolev wrote: post #15
trebor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a year or two. Seriously! 5.5 was just released a little while ago and 5.6 is just in beta now.

Just try to imagine HHVM in year or two. Zend PHP will be irrelevant by then.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. Don't know why the downvotes are coming - it's very clear to see that FB is going to be better for PHP than Zend.
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