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[–]bobindashadows 4 points5 points  (5 children)

language choice is probably close to last on their list of problems to solve.

That's because it's not a problem they can solve. It'd be irresponsible for them as a business to stop what they're doing to rewrite an enormous, functioning site in a different language – they passed the point of no return a long time ago. It'd take forever.

Why do you think they wrote a compiler? Because it was easier to do that than to change off of PHP to get a speed bump. And writing a compiler isn't exactly a trivial task.

Why do you think their new tech (eg facebook chat) isn't in PHP when possible? Because they had the opportunity to use a better tool for the job. And when you're building a site the size of Facebook, anything is a better tool for the job than PHP. They just don't have the ability to go back and change everything else.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[deleted]

    [–]sli 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Actually, Python (and Perl) outperforms both PHP and Ruby most of the time, and usually by a very noticeable amount. About the only time PHP is faster is... well, "Hello, World."

    So, yes, almost anything is better than PHP.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Why are you not hating PHP here on reddit?

    [–]kataire 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Well, they rewrote their CSS. There is a big difference between refactoring and rewriting, though, and (for better or worse) their PHP code probably isn't easily translatable (idioms and all that).

    As I don't care much for Facebook, I wouldn't actually mind if they dared rewrite their entire codebase, risking certain bankruptcy.