There are many articles on this topic, with qualitative characterization analyzes and performance predictions. However, I still wanted to find such an article where professional programmers share their opinions and try to suggest something, warn a beginner who is just learning PHP or NodeJS (server-side JavaScript). Many people do not like PHP and say that PHP was created to die (yes, there is a garbage collector that kills our variables after the script is executed, and not because Rasmus Lerdorf abandoned it), however, that now you do not learn PHP at all, while while 80% of sites on the Internet work on it. Therefore, if we want to be professionals and try to somehow broaden our horizons, we need to clearly separate PHP tasks and NodeJS tasks, and not lump everything together.
Introduction
Web programming is developing rapidly, and back-end developers are faced with the question of choosing between the established heavyweights of Java, C, Perl and modern web-oriented languages such as Ruby, Clojure, Go. Your choice makes a huge difference when it comes to making your application work.
But what choice should you make for web development?
- PHP — was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. He created a shell (interpreter) that is installed as a module for the Apache or Nginx web server. It was originally developed as a preprocessor for hypertext pages, so PHP can be easily integrated into HTML code, however, this approach is not a good practice now, but still this approach was obvious to beginners. This contributed to the popularity of the language, so 80% of sites on the Internet are written in PHP, and they, in particular, run under the control of WordPress CMS (20% of sites on the Internet);
- Node.js — was created in 2009 by Ryan Dahl. He created a software platform based on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine. Unusually, the platform has built-in libraries for handling requests and responses, thus you don’t need to use a third-party web server or any other dependencies. Node.js is gaining traction and is being used by companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and PayPal.
Node.js Advantages and PHP Compartment
PHP does not slouch and there are real projects and options that make PHP run faster. Even the most demanding PHP Web Development Company rarely cares about speed, but Node.js performance tends to be better. Of course, performance is largely a consequence of experience and team development, however, Node.js has several advantages:
- Less dependencies;
All requests to the PHP application must be directed to the web server, which runs the PHP interpreter, which processes the code and serves it up. Node.js doesn’t need as many dependencies, and while you’re almost certainly using a server-side framework like express, it’s quite lightweight and manages part of your application;
- Fast interpreter;
Node.js is smaller and more agile than PHP. This is due to the legacy of Google, which made a huge contribution to the performance of the JavaScript engine — V8;
- Apps run constantly;
PHP follows the usual client-server model. Each page request initiates the application, loading the database connection parameters, retrieving information, and displaying HTML code. In Node.js, the application runs continuously and only needs to be initialized once. For example, you can create a single database connection object that is reused on a new request. True, there are ways to implement this behavior in PHP using special systems such as memcached, but this is not a standard function of the language;
- Event-driven, non-blocking I/O stream;
PHP and most other server-side languages use an obvious blocking model. When you make a request to retrieve information from a database, the request will execute and complete the process before moving on to the next statement. It’s different in Node.js. In Node.js, you don’t have to wait. Instead, you can create a callback function that listens to the process and executes after the activity completes.
Although Node.js applications are noticeably faster than PHP, there are some pitfalls.
RexSoft Development
Professionalism is trending in 2021. That is why Node.js becomes the absolute winner in the round of responsive mobile development. Thanks to an enviable number of upgrades in recent years, the framework is performing at its best.
RexSoft is one of the leaders in the mobile development market — a staff of specialists with many years of experience in outsource Node.js development services will delight you. The best rates and the best experts in the field of start-up and business development will make your dream come true.
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