[fat0wl]

Also, I have to admit that I used to be wayyyy too stoked on scripting languages until I did a thought exercise realizing that the most interesting thing I could then ever do in the web-world is make an RPC to a far more interesting service.

Do you know about Facebook's architecture? I'll give you a hint which was brought to my attention a couple weeks. PHP is sitting on their front end, but trust me it is NOT doing any heavy lifting...

Lately I feel much more like "everything has its place" and I'm not so invested in hack hype. Java I'm seeing is a great language because it's kindof nestled between C++ and the web scripting/framework world. Lots of possibility for unique, almost C++ desktop-software-level but many strong frameworks and libraries for the web as well. And there are a lot of JVM languages that tie neatly together, so there is kindof a well-knit multi-lingual toolkit that is slightly less daunting than working with alien PHP-to-C++ RPCs (though this may be all psychological).

[bmelton]

I'm not sure of the implication you're making there, and it confuses me.

Defined 'frontend' in that context? Also, are you referring to the HipHop compiled PHP as the 'backend', or are there some fancy Go/Erlang/Lisp/whatever tricks acting as MQ layers, shuttling data around that I'm not aware of?

[fat0wl]

I was implying that PHP wasn't doing any of the heavy business logic, but then I re-read some articles (most notably this one) & I'll admit I'm a bit confused.

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2010/02/02/hiphop-...

I WAS referring to PHP as frontend, but based on the article it seems like there may be a lot more HipHop PHP than I suspected, because they mention that it would be too niche to write a ton of C++ code. However, there is this line which I think clarifies somewhat -- "HipHop allows us to write the logic that does the final page assembly in PHP and iterate it quickly while relying on custom back-end services in C++, Erlang, Java, or Python to service the News Feed, search, Chat, and other core parts of the site."

It seems like even though PHP is compiled & heavily utilized, it is still used mostly for page assembly on top of a Service-Oriented Architecture, with services written in C++, Erlang, Java, & Python.