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Wikipedia on HHVM

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Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#21

Post by reitzensteinm »

nodesocket wrote: post #18

"Peak CPU utilization dropped from about 70% to 12%, almost a 6x improvement." That is substantial, and HHVM should bear to rest some of the claims (trolls) that PHP is not performant.

That you can claw back some performance by using a partially conforming alternate language implementation does not prove the "trolls" wrong.

Yes, with enough engineering effort you can move mountains, but if performance is critical and you don't have a legacy code base like Facebook does, reaching for the php hammer is insanity.

The real reason why performance isn't a big downside with php is that it usually just doesn't matter.

If a php implementation can service 100 req/s, and a Java implementation (an ad absurdum) 100,000 req/s, and your site peaks at 5 req/s, either is just fine.

In other words, "You're probably not Pintrest".

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#22

Post by azinman2 »

thehal84 wrote: post #13

This is great news to see. I have tested HHVM with our particular application load and I found it to be a bit tricky to tune just right. However PHP 5.6 has been solid in production for us handling 5 billion requests daily.

Wow. What are you running that's getting 5 billion requests daily?

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#23

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

azinman2 wrote: post #20
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I'm just saying that they have business motives to do so, it is not merely out of the kindness of their hearts. Though I am sure it is also partly the latter, they have some wonderful engineers. :)

As far as I'm aware, HHVM isn't something that FB is charging for. If that's true, what's the business interest?

The same one I mentioned before: getting other people to use it benefits them, as other people will help maintain it because they also have a stakehold in its success. It's a huge project to maintain.

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#24

Post by EGreg »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #17
eru wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use `fake' in speech, where you can convey more context, and `synthetic' in writing?

I'd say the other way around, honestly. In writing I can stick a * there so it's obvious that there's more to it than it seems. In speech, unless it's explained beforehand, it might not be a good idea.

I really thought that when you wrote "faked" that reflected on Zeev's character. That he was trying to pull a fast one. Only after encountering the disclaimer did I realize what you meant. Many people won't read the disclaimer, and therefore when dealing with someone's reputation you should pick a word which might avoid misunderstanding.

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#25

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

EGreg wrote: post #24
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the other way around, honestly. In writing I can stick a * there so it's obvious that there's more to it than it seems. In speech, unless it's explained beforehand, it might not be a good idea.

I really thought that when you wrote "faked" that reflected on Zeev's character. That he was trying to pull a fast one. Only after encountering the disclaimer did I realize what you meant. Many people won't read the disclaimer, and therefore when dealing with someone's reputation you should pick a word which might avoid misunderstanding.

Fair point.

I might say some things about Zeev, but I certainly wouldn't say he's a liar. He's a talented developer.

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#26

Post by EGreg »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #3
azinman2 wrote: post #2

Congrats to FB for donating their engineering resources to helping Wikipedia. How do we make this more the norm for large corporations with talent? Something akin to Google's 10% time but with a social-good focus? It might help silicon valley's reputation in a larger sense.

Bear in mind that Facebook has a vested interest in getting other large sites to use HHVM, so that they're not the only ones who want to maintain it. They're not doing this purely for the greater good. That said, I agree, Facebook is doing awesome stuff here.

That is even better! Because that creates incentives to continue supporting it.

In the last several years I've spoken to libertarians, conservatives, progressives, various schools of economics etc. It's become clear to me that when platforms are free, more wealth is created. When Netscape open sourced their codebase, we got Firefox and WebKit. Linux, Webkit, WikiWikiWeb, Git, in fact all those image formats you can display without paying royalties or risking getting sued, obviously led to more wealth creation than proprietary siloed codebases. Eventually even MS opensourced their platform, after years of copying by Mono.

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#27

Post by thezilch »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #21
nodesocket wrote: post #18

"Peak CPU utilization dropped from about 70% to 12%, almost a 6x improvement." That is substantial, and HHVM should bear to rest some of the claims (trolls) that PHP is not performant.

That you can claw back some performance by using a partially conforming alternate language implementation does not prove the "trolls" wrong. Yes, with enough engineering effort you can move mountains, but if performance is critical and you don't have a legacy code base like Facebook does, reaching for the php hammer is insanity. The real reason why performance isn't a big downside with php is that it usually just doe…

PHP performance is/was not a reason to not use it, if there was ever a reason you'd be "insane" to do so. Pinterest runs on a "slower" Python/Django stack, for that matter.

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#28

Post by MichaelGG »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #23
azinman2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, HHVM isn't something that FB is charging for. If that's true, what's the business interest?

The same one I mentioned before: getting other people to use it benefits them, as other people will help maintain it because they also have a stakehold in its success. It's a huge project to maintain.

Is it a huge project to maintain? I thought the first HipHop implementation was a 2-person side project. Relative to FB's size, does it matter even if they had to put 10 people on it?

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#29

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

MichaelGG wrote: post #28
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same one I mentioned before: getting other people to use it benefits them, as other people will help maintain it because they also have a stakehold in its success. It's a huge project to maintain.

Is it a huge project to maintain? I thought the first HipHop implementation was a 2-person side project. Relative to FB's size, does it matter even if they had to put 10 people on it?

Originally, yes, but it's grown since then, and bear in mind that it is critical infrastructure that Facebook are now completely dependant on.

Re: Wikipedia on HHVM

#30

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #21
nodesocket wrote: post #18

"Peak CPU utilization dropped from about 70% to 12%, almost a 6x improvement." That is substantial, and HHVM should bear to rest some of the claims (trolls) that PHP is not performant.

That you can claw back some performance by using a partially conforming alternate language implementation does not prove the "trolls" wrong. Yes, with enough engineering effort you can move mountains, but if performance is critical and you don't have a legacy code base like Facebook does, reaching for the php hammer is insanity. The real reason why performance isn't a big downside with php is that it usually just doe…

> That you can claw back some performance by using a partially conforming alternate language implementation does not prove the "trolls" wrong.

You're talking as if PHP is slow. It isn't, it's very fast, speed is actually one of its advantages (or was historically, anyway). Its alternatives (Python, Ruby) are sometimes marginally slower. With its next release, it will receive a significant performance boost, and minor versions usually include small but significant performance gains.

Yes, it's not as fast as say, C, C++, Java, C#. It doesn't need to be, nor does anyone expect it to be: it's a dynamic language that allows for rapid development. But to talk about it like it's something horribly slow that you'd never use in 2015 is simply wrong. It is competitive.

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