[Gllug] Perl / PHP

[Bruce Richardson]

On 09/05/02, 16:34:32, Kristian Davies <kristian at ELIXIR-STUDIOS.CO.UK> 
wrote regarding [Gllug] Perl / PHP:


> Hi All,

> My first post, sorry if it is slightly off topic.

> What difference would it make when writing an intranet system (inc big 
mysql
> database) in perl rather than using php, performance wise?

Perl has a far better database library, for one thing.

Depends a lot on your skills, as to whether you can make the best of 
each.  Perl is a far more featureful language and a huge online library 
of code (CPAN) but has a dense syntax and is harder to learn.  PHP is 
lightweight but quick to learn and build simpler projects in. PEAR is 
supposed to be an equivalent to CPAN but has a tiny codebase and very 
variable quality.

IMO PHP doesn't scale nearly so well and can be an admin headache (for 
instance, adding new modules [as opposed to adding pre-packaged modules] 
means recompiling the whole of PHP where with Perl you will only need to 
compile the new module at most).

Many people, though, find PHP much easier to learn and use, particularly 
if their coding background is a "classical" one (C, Pascal, Lisp etc) 
rather than a *nixy scripting one.

As for simple performance, the free PHP system isn't that well optimised. 
They want you to buy the commercial, accelerated engine.

-- 

Bruce

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