That said, what they’ve written falls into two categories: making code easier to read, and Algorithm Design 101. Any company that performs routine code reviews will come up with many more “improvements” than are on Google’s list. Google did make one valid point that many still haven’t learned, and that is rather than guessing at where the “hot spots” are, use a profiling tool that will actually tell you.

Unfortunatly, I see more awareness of these two rules in the Google article than in the comments here, so my thanks go out to him for having the courage to start an important debate.

You bash an authors article, and you’re effectively bashing the author.

Um, no, this is the exact opposite of an ad-hominem. We are supposed to be good at logic. And, according to the author of this post, the individual points mentioned in the post are wrong (he might be wrong about that, sure). How should he call them? If the points the original post argues for are not true anymore under PHP 5, and the author doesn’t point that out, the post is wrong. Not ‘almost right’, wrong.

Sure, assigning a variable would speed up the if/else syntax, but it’s unnecessary when the switch/case syntax can achieve the same thing without populating the namespace you’re in

I think it just meant that your example is contrived. I think that the switch-case statement is more readable than a string of elseifs, and that the namespace pollution is the real issue, but your example isn’t fair. You could have also used a more concise syntax with the opening and closing brackets in the same line as the expressions or the elses:
$calc = calculate($var1); if ($calc == ‘horse’) { // Do this } else if ($calc == ‘donkey’) { // Do this }
A bit more similar to the switch, isn’t it? Now you could argue that the namespace is a little less polluted, and that the switch is more readable without the syntax or the function getting in the way of your point.

Ph.D’s are the most ignorant smart people you will find. Most have not had a real job. Most have the creativity of a turnip.

This may be the most absurd comment in the thread so far. If someone is working for google, they have a real job. Anyone working for a salary has a real job. This stupid snobbishness doesn’t help the debate at all.

It’s better to Google “PHP optimization” than to read an article on PHP optimization by someone who works at Google. If you want to take Google’s advice, stop using Microsoft products. That is PHP’s advice also and mine too.

Sure, assigning a variable would speed up the if/else syntax, but it’s unnecessary when the switch/case syntax can achieve the same thing without populating the namespace you’re in. Plus in such a scenario, the switch/case statement is much cleaner.

@Troels…

You bash an authors article, and you’re effectively bashing the author. I understand that as Google, you probably would expect a little more from them in terms of the quality of their tips (these tips are very short and to the point, they could have been elaborated), along with their explanations and examples, but I don’t agree with summarising the article as “border-line ridiculous” or “wrong”. All he’s suggesting are best practices, which as a bonus, get you a slight performance improvement. He even mentions toward the beginning of the article…

Premature optimization is the root of all evil

As I’ve said, I can’t fault any of the authors tips. If there’s one thing the authors done wrong, it’s not elaborating on each of his points a little more.

for ($a = 0 ; $a < count($var1) ; $a++) {
// do something;
}

The smarter comparison would be to assign calculate($var1) to a variable [i]once[/i], then throw that through your if/else statement:

$calc = calculate($var1);
if($calc == ‘horse’)
{
// Do this
}
else if($calc == ‘donkey’)
{
// Do this
}
….

Of course, in this hypothetical situation we don’t know what the function calculate() does.. but it doesn’t matter. Having the PHP engine do more work than necessary is just plain bad practice.