[GLLUG] PHP vs Python

[Richard Houser]

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Nicholas Kwiatkowski wrote:
> While I agree that programming style and efficiency will always determine
> how quick an application runs, J2EE (don't associate J2EE applications with
> Java Applets or Java Applications) applications run QUICK.  Java and .NET
> scale, cluster and outperform any platform out there.  Please, show me a
> benchmark to back up your claim that shows Java is slow compared to PHP,
> Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.
> 
> I have seen applications and full-blown servers run on nothing but Java.
> All the phones at the campus of Michigan State University are powered by two
> Pentium 3, 600Mhz boxes running RH Linux.  The actual communications
> manager?  A Tomcat EAR file.   The Cable-TV headend that Comcast runs to
> send video signal to Lansing?  A series of Java applications.  Novell
> Netware?  It's been a Java application since version 5.  
> 
> Java IS enterprise.  Java is quick.
> 
> -Nick

I'm working as a J2EE programmer and deal with some very large
applications, so I certainly wasn't thinking of standalone applications
or applets.  I never said, nor intended to imply that scripting
languages were faster than J2EE code.  In fact, I don't really have the
performance numbers to compare it against the other byte-code
interpreted languages like Perl or Python (neither of these are pure
interpreted languages).

When I agreed that it is slow, that was in comparison to the more
traditional compiled languages.  There are a lot of things that the Java
VM requires that hardware can do so much faster (and is taken advantage
of in native code created from C++ for example -- take a look at the
i++; instruction for an idea of some of the limitations).

I personally suspect that the two best languages for this project would
be either Python or Java.  Each language has it's strengths and weaknesses.
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