[lamosty]

> Maybe it's improved, but: four times bitten, twice shy.

I see, happens all the time.

> On disk caching delegates this to the OS, which is pretty good at it.

Yeah, it's just a matter of preference and convenience.

> It seems as though very few plugin authors know what O-notation means (so many nested loops), what EXPLAIN QUERY is or that tinkering and and firing up a copy on your laptop isn't really testing.

This is the real issue. I know a very few WordPress developers who have a formal technical education. While you can learn it yourself, school forces you to learn this in a great detail. In a near future, I will hopefully write on these topics, though, I need to study on this a bit more first.

[jacques_chester]

Well in the old days, the operating system was there to help you. If plugins were standalone processes, they could be resource-constrained. But they all have to run in-process because of the LAMP architecture.

Hence -- cooperative multitasking.

I've been complaining about it for years. Eg: http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/07/10/shared-hosting-is-doomed...

[lamosty]

Thanks for the article, it's insightful and I & history agree completely with you. Nowadays, people are using prebuilt VPS images or automation scripts to provision their servers and shared hostings are becoming more of a VPS hostings with a good UI around these tools.

I see that you are a WordPress veteran, nice to hear your opinions :)