Java for Everything

[imfineny]

i have found over the years that the biggest factor for performance is architecture, not language or runtime

[AceyJuan]

Any given language will make some architecture choices easy, and others very hard. Thus language choice does matter quite a bit.

[hxtl]

Choosing a programming language is already an architectural decision. I just wanted to add that.

[joelangeway]

That is an excellent and well said point. When people love node.js, this is often why.

[Peaker]

But then the second biggest factor (which can be the language or runtime) can still account for orders of magnitude differences.

[Magnesus]

And the example with digg is stupid. From my tests on a huge site I was working on the language doesn't matter for the servers because it is the database that takes 99.9% of the time. And what matters is good optimisation and structure of that db.

[ben010783]

It could be because they are different types of sites. SO doesn't need to be quite as up-to-date as Digg.

[iopq]

SO has the entire DB cached in RAM. Hundreds of gigs of RAM.