Why PHP Scales

By Harry Fuecks | July 2, 2004 | PHP

Guess everyone’s getting pretty tired of this discussion but good things have come out of it, thanks to George who’s written up Why PHP Scales (A Cranky, Snarky Answer), a must read (which Sterling thinks he should have written four years ago ;)).

There’s further summary from John and Jeff.

Another surpise turn up (via Jeff again), at least for me, was this interview with Derek Liu, admin and founder of Gaia Online Anime Community. Fascinating story.

Almost overnight seems what started as a hobby has put Derek in charge of one of the biggest sites on the net (4th largest forum on the net, by post count, according to Big Boards and page ranked 8,297 at Alexa). He comes across as having been largely unprepared but, taking things step by step, he’s getting a unique experience in running a very high traffic site.

Written By:

Harry Fuecks

Harry has been working in corporate IT since 1994, with everything from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Outside of office hours he runs phpPatterns: a site dedicated to software design with PHP that aims to raise standards of PHP development. He also maintains Dynamically Typed: SitePoint's PHP blog.

{ 6 comments }

artsrc March 13, 2006 at 4:05 pm: Language is important mainly because the person who uses the language is important.
If you ask for Visual Basic developers HR will give you different people than if you ask for PHP, C#, Python, Java, or C++.
Languages have communities that know and use them. When you pick a language you are selecting a community. All these communities have pathologies you need to be aware of, and to plan to deal with.
ArtSrc
HarryF July 6, 2004 at 3:59 am: I haven’t met a single programs that comments well, debugs well and keeps two different methods different.
Perhaps you’ve been looking in the wrong places? You might start by looking at coWiki which looks distinctly Java-like. And Simple Test, a unit test framework for PHP, is extremely well engineered. I could go on and on…
PHP=the new VB
I agree. Just like VB, you can write dreadful code with PHP. And while VB is the language in which the largest number of desktop GUIs has been written, PHP has opened web development to everyone.
PHP is as maintainable as a imported Skoda.
Skoda, now owned by VW, uses VW engines and chasis in most of their models. May be easier to get keep parts than you think.
Werks July 3, 2004 at 9:29 pm: PHP is as maintainable as a imported Skoda. I haven’t met a single programs that comments well, debugs well and keeps two different methods different. PHP=the new VB
arthurking2k July 3, 2004 at 2:57 pm: George is right. It isn’t really the LANGUAGE that makes the difference. It is more about the PERSON who uses the language and how well he or she DESIGNS and CODES the application that uses the language.
HarryF July 3, 2004 at 5:01 am: The link to Gaia Online Anime Community is not valid.
Oh errr – yeah was just trying to save sending yet more traffic that way ;) Thanks – fixed.
cagrET July 2, 2004 at 11:10 pm: The link to Gaia Online Anime Community is not valid.