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by IshKebab 1772 days ago
Yes all of those would be way better options than Python and probably PHP. Well maybe not C++. You'd have to be pretty crazy to have web developers writing security sensitive code in C++.

The "blame our co-founder for the choice" bit is exactly what that graph about the cost of defects vs how early they are fixed is talking about.

If they had just picked Go or Java right at the start they wouldn't have had to expend all this engineering effort to get to a still-not-very-good solution.

1 comments

This thread arose from a person that said "Use PHP", as an argument to using Python. It's a silly argument.
It was just a silly remark about the snail-like performance of Python.

Another silly thing:

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...

I'm not really seeing what's silly about what you're linking. I'm seeing Java blowing the doors off of PHP, which matches my previous assertion.
Much better comparison for typical web load, what this discussion is about.

https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r20&hw=...

Java wins as expected, but a typical setup with Spring versus the typical top PHP frameworks isn't blowing the doors off. Typical Python + Django is far behind, as someone pointed out.

However what we can see in the diagrams is that ORM layers, regardless of language, are more expensive than what most people realize, even for a compiled language like Java.

Why PHP wins is because it is fast enough, compared to other dynamic languages, but is a better fit for web development than Java or other compiled languages.

In the link you provided PHP is 53% as fast as Spring. I would argue that’s an insane performance reduction.

If Python weren’t fast “enough”, would it be used to power so many successful web backends?

That is for spring-webflux, is that a typical spring set up for web today?

I haven’t coded spring for a few years now, but I was thinking about the traditional spring setup that most use and that is comparable.

You can of course use Python successfully, my argument is that it is easier with PHP, not that it is not possible with Python.

It is a similar argument compared with Java, it is easier with PHP than Java in a web context. Java has other benefit thats fits better for web services IMHO, general higher performance is one.