Phalanger: Stuffing PHP With Mono, .NET

[cl333r]

Are you really complaining about bad performance of managed languages right after a benchmark showing performance gains? VM crashing your app? It's exactly for the opposite purpose! You sound way too ignorant to be taken seriously Managed code was invented to ease development. It requires memory? No shit! Buy some, it's MUCH cheaper than paying a programmer for twice the time. You could write apps in ASM, coz that's the most efficient, but no, you just don't have time for that. Welcome the the 21st century, mate.

What? You mean you don't know the VM is another source for an app crash? And after that you're call _me_ ignorant?
Benchmarks? You mean after you ignore the fact that apps relying on VMs have a slower startup, use more memory and require CPU cycles to check for errors and to JIT compile it? And that you only look at the already JIT compiled code (since not all code is being JIT compiled, some is interpreted) and out of those you only nit-pick those few cases which are faster than the C++ code (which could be optimized further) to claim that JIT based solutions are faster? Seriously? I'm programming in Java for over 10 years, so don't bullshit a bullshitter!

Should I also nit pick a case and tell you that Google newly found that C++ can create the fastest code of all langs including Java and C?
So who's the hypocrite here?

[kraftman]

Mono is gaining traction, that's nice! Not only does it perform better, it's also very easy to integrate with existing codebases. Win win!



Who cares, the project's more active than ever before and the results speak for themselves.

I hardly find mono gaining traction. Who uses it on Linux? Ubuntu got rid of it.

[kraftman]

You guys are still fear-mongering bigoted morons. Miguel likes and believes in the technology. It's GOOD technology.

Can you name a few mono/.Net big applications where performance and memory footprint matters? Some games, graphic or sound editors etc. Banshee proved to be a disaster, but it's doesn't even qualify to applications I'm asking. Miguel is just a jerk who supports Microsoft. If it's good technology why it's not used in any serious projects (maybe except stock exchange for some time, but replaced by Linux later...)?

[curaga]

One question to our C# dolls, given the existence of a _native_ compiled (hiphop), what incentive is there at all to use this?

[ciplogic]

One question to our C# dolls, given the existence of a _native_ compiled (hiphop), what incentive is there at all to use this?

Because of PHP being dynamic language (a.k.a. eval). It is easy to be done with a JIT, when HipHop is a subset. The Phalanger is faster than the stock PHP, when the HipHop VM is slower than the default PHP. PhpCompiler would be great to exist, but is sadly a dead project now.
Edit: Php Compiler is different as site (as being .org not .net), as was the other option to speedup PHP.

[kraftman]

Can you name a few mono/.Net big applications where performance and memory footprint matters? Some games, graphic or sound editors etc.

Anyone? Then why some evangelists lobby for this utter crap? It must be nothing more than a toy if it's not used in serious work. You suck MS and mono stinks. Elanthis fanboy, do you have something more than your bully words? :>

[ciplogic]

Anyone? Then why some evangelists lobby for this utter crap? It must be nothing more than a toy if it's not used in serious work. You suck MS and mono stinks. Elanthis fanboy, do you have something more than your bully words? :>

Why spamming here?
Mono/.Net applications that performance matter and is good enough:
- MonoDevelop/SharpDevelop
- Paint.Net/Pinta
- Xsp/Asp.Net ones
- SecondLife scripts, Sims 3 scripts
- Mono for Android (faster than the default platform) / MonoTouch: is good enough for an iPhone/iPad
- Phalanger: fastest PHP implementation to date
- Gnome-Do, is one of the fastest way to start an application
Excluding Gnome-Do, all of those projects are not toy projects, doesn't seem to you so?

[devius]

I wouldn't be surprised if the IIS used in the test deliberately slows down PHP code in favor of .NET :P

[anarki2]

What? You mean you don't know the VM is another source for an app crash? And after that you're call _me_ ignorant?
Benchmarks? You mean after you ignore the fact that apps relying on VMs have a slower startup, use more memory and require CPU cycles to check for errors and to JIT compile it? And that you only look at the already JIT compiled code (since not all code is being JIT compiled, some is interpreted) and out of those you only nit-pick those few cases which are faster than the C++ code (which could be optimized further) to claim that JIT based solutions are faster? Seriously? I'm programming in Java for over 10 years, so don't bullshit a bullshitter!

Should I also nit pick a case and tell you that Google newly found that C++ can create the fastest code of all langs including Java and C?
So who's the hypocrite here?

Lemme ask a few simple questions:

- Will a faulty program that crashes in the VM work normally if it's native? - no, if it's written badly (i.e. coding error), it will just crash the same way. But in a VM you can at least reduce the impact of the crash and it will also help with debugging.
- Who the hell cares about startup time in a SERVER? It's not like you start and stop it all the time (and even in that case, you'd lose something like 1 minute/day aggregated lol), so WTF is your point?
- How much does 16GB ECC memory cost? - let's say 1 000$
- How much does a Xeon CPU cost? - let's say another 1 000$
- How much salary does ONE programmer get for a year? - at least 40 000$

So you can bitch about it like "ohnoes, it eats more memory!!!!!111ONEONE", but who the f*ck cares if avoiding it by using some lower level stuff takes thrice the time to code? (please don't tell me that programming is faster in C++ or C, just dont) It's much more expensive!

If you can't understand this, then yes, you're just an ignorant moron. And btw, I don't give a damn how long have you been a programmer coz apparently that won't give you common sense.

The only thing I agree about is that you're a bullshiter.

[XorEaxEax]

Enough with this bullshit that writing native code is so hard, it's not. Your entire OS is written in unmanaged code, the VAST majority of software you use on your computer is written in unmanaged code. Compilers, encoders/decoders, archivers, browsers, text editors!, window managers, drivers, 3d programs, version controls systems, emulators, p2p programs, image editors, etc ad infinitum, heck I just came across this yesterday where a note application (admittedly with lots of features) went from managed code to native because they couldn't get good enough performance from managed code in even such an app!. http://blog.evernote.com/2010/10/26/...ndows-is-here/

What we see here is the lazy enterprise developer mentality with the classical crap like 'oh, memory is cheap', 'so what if it's slower just throw better hardware at it' comments. Looking past this crappy attitude there are indeed advantages in development speed with garbage collected code running in a VM, however it comes with a price of more memory usage (due to managing it's own heap) and a loss of performance. I remember being shocked at the difference in performance between Shotwell (vala) and F-Spot (Mono) when managing images, that may not entirely be due to managed vs unmanaged code since there could be different algorithms at play aswell but it certainly isn't a good advertisment for managed code.

So no, I'm not surprised that managed code languages like Java/C# is finding it difficult to penetrate the home desktop. Even on windows where the .NET runtime has come preinstalled in the last two OS incarnations. End users will prefer the faster and less memory demanding versions of applications, and native application developers (despite what managed code advocates try to claim) are not crippled by manual memory management. And in the areas where performance have little to no impact we often see scripting languages like Python, Lua, heck even bash scripts being used instead.

Personally I'm happy that Java/C# has failed to make an impact on the user desktop, it means my current RAM and CPU power allows me to do more with my computer when I'm running several browser instances, inkscape, blender, text editors while also compiling code and encoding some test render animation in x264 to show a buddy. I love the performance and memory efficiency I get with these native code applications and I can only assume that so does their authors.

HOWEVER, I am also happy that the option of managed code and a framework such as Mono exists, I have no interest of using it myself but to me it's another part of the choice in open source which is it's foundation and there are obviously those out there who like it and wants to use it, so why shouldn't they? If you are afraid of Microsoft patents (and no, I don't blame you) then just steer clear of Mono, and given that it no longer has any real presence on the desktop (are there any distros shipping mono by default these days?) that shouldn't be too hard.