PHP Or Python Or Ruby

Hi !
I'm trying to develop a web app.
In the site, user can signup and he can access my app. (Just assume, my app is a article spinner).

Assume, site have half million users.
Which platform will be suitable for these kind of website?
Can AWS handle this site ?


I have little experience in php. But i didn't have experience with Python or Ruby.

Help me select a language for this project

• PHP & Symfony
• Python & Django
• ROR
• or any other options ?

Sorry for Bad english

Any one will do just fine. Prepare for a steep learning curve.

Any of the above coding language is perfect as long as you can make the app to do the work without any flaw

I would go for PHP but not Symphony. Learning Symphony can take huge time especially if you are not familiar with MVC. Go for YII framework instead. It's much more easier and lighter. I don't code in python so can't say anything about it...

Php ..................

PHP, MySql (powerfull tool, also obvious choice) and jQuery + native JS.
Pretty solid combination.

Do NOT use Symfony for a big site unless you can afford to serve mostly cached pages. Symfony is extremely slow and relies on caching to provide decent speed. If performance is important use Yii.

Also Python is faster than PHP but I'm not sure how Django affects performance.

Most important is server optimization. If you have many users, expecially at the same time, make sure you optimize the database server and use Nginx instead of Apache wit mod_php. Or use Apache with fastCGI.

madoctopus said:

Do NOT use Symfony for a big site unless you can afford to serve mostly cached pages. Symfony is extremely slow and relies on caching to provide decent speed. If performance is important use Yii.

Also Python is faster than PHP but I'm not sure how Django affects performance.

Most important is server optimization. If you have many users, expecially at the same time, make sure you optimize the database server and use Nginx instead of Apache wit mod_php. Or use Apache with fastCGI.

Click to expand...

Absolutely correct about Symphony! There's a faster Symphony reloaded edition by the way but that's not recommended for production. Python is faster as I have also heard but is there enough references for learning?

I would recommend you to go for PHP
Its better for beginners and it easier than other language

g0g0l said:

Absolutely correct about Symphony! There's a faster Symphony reloaded edition by the way but that's not recommended for production. Python is faster as I have also heard but is there enough references for learning?

Click to expand...

Yeah there's enough material to learn from just like with any popular language.

madoctopus said:

Yeah there's enough material to learn from just like with any popular language.

Click to expand...

That's great! There's another language to learn (for me)!!

I think its better to hire someone to complete this project

madoctopus said:

Do NOT use Symfony for a big site unless you can afford to serve mostly cached pages. Symfony is extremely slow and relies on caching to provide decent speed. If performance is important use Yii.

Also Python is faster than PHP but I'm not sure how Django affects performance.

Most important is server optimization. If you have many users, expecially at the same time, make sure you optimize the database server and use Nginx instead of Apache wit mod_php. Or use Apache with fastCGI.

Click to expand...

Where i can host these kind of sites ?
How we can achieve faster site with low hosting charges ?

HarishSEO said:

I think its better to hire someone to complete this project

Where i can host these kind of sites ?
How we can achieve faster site with low hosting charges ?

Click to expand...

When I was starting out in webdev, I tried a lot of different hosting companies. From professionals, or private resellers, but to this day, for general, everyday webdev, nothing has come close to Hostgator for me. Their live chat support is incredible, and they solve almost all problems you can on the spot or within hours of sending in a ticket. I think their lowest plan was only like $5 a bunch, but google hostgator coupons and I'm sure u'll find some nice coupons to even have hosting free for a few months or so.

PHP or Python

I've faced a similar challenge recently, looking to write a new web app that has to be massively scalable from the outset and hosted somewhere like AWS.

I used to rely quite heavily on PHP but it was just becoming a nightmare to scale easily, frameworks like CakePHP and CodeIgnitor made it a little less painful to do the plumbing work for a web application - but came with some performance penalties. I jumped ship for a few years and played with Python, Ruby, Node.js, Java etc. they all have their merits for different purposes.

A couple of months ago I had a new web app to build and a little time to re-evaluate the options, PHP has had a few new versions out with some significant improvements to the language so I decided to revisit PHP frameworks. CakePHP and CodeIgnitor have changed very little and still carry quite a performance penalty, then I stumbled across the "Laravel" framework (laravel_com). It's clean, concise, has templating, caching, their database integration is lovely (supports schema upgrade/rollback), and its pretty damn fast.

I've just launched this web app, the front-ends are on Amazon EC2 micro instances and are really fast - they all share one small MySQL server also in EC2. Database load is minimal because of the caching in the frontend, its been a dream to write it and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone.

edit: These servers are running Nginx + PHP (fastcgi) because I found it was far more performant than Apache + mod_php

Neither php, nor phython nor ruby - go for NODEJS!!! Alright whats Nodejs? Nodejs is basically serverside javascript.

Featuring googles V8-engine nodejs offers one of the fastest javascript implementations on the market. So whats fast? Well translating javascript directly to machinecode catapults written code to speeds previously known only from languages such as C or C++. There are alot of benchmarks out there heres a rather interesting one i came across few months ago: nodejs and voltdb - running a voting app:
- platform - EC2 instance with 8 virtual cores (by the way distributing an app in nodejs on several cores or servers is rather easy: check their modules cluster and fugue)
- the given problem: TV Show like american idol wich want you to vote for your favorite at a crucial moment: vote now!
....
long story short - 695k Transactions per Second - crazy fast!!!

Why should you use nodejs?
- fast (sounds kinda lame...)
- non-blocking I/O (say goodbye to threading)
- lightweight
- modular
- scalable
- helpful and active community
- tons of ressources

Are there frameworks? Sure there are!
- Expressjs
- flatiron
- bricksjs
- .... (many more)

cheers

olystyle

@oldstyle:

While Node.js has its advantages, it 's not a language written for dynamic html generation in mind. You 'll get no real inherent speed gains for a simple crud site.

For simple things go for PHP, for the advance ones go for RoR.
Once you discover the power of RoR, you'll be amazed how quickly you can develop an working app, especially in combination with Heroku platform.

You are in a serious approach so you should go for your previous experience. php will be the best option for you.

@jazzc

I agree nodejs is probably not the wisest choice for each and every project (nodejs truly sucks at CPU intensive tasks)... BUT:
- while you might not improve the speed significantly - you can save yourself a lot of trouble when it comes to scaling the app later
- in terms of dynamic html: as mentioned above there are great frameworks out there - for example expressjs. nodejs along with expressjs combined with jade or mustache = pretty dynamic...

@HarishSEO

Could you tell a little more about your app? it might make suggestions for programming languages and frameworks more efficient...

cheers olystyle