Facebook and PHP
There is a common mistake about "If everybody use it, so I also have to use it - millions of people can't be wrong". Apparently, they can, and huge codebase, support and knowledge mean nothing, otherwise we would still use Fortran, Cobol, Basic and other almost died monsters. Also there is an another common mistake about "If big corporation use it, I also have to use it". It's very doubtful, almost always decision are made in hurry and/or by wrong people and/or without serious consideration. And after some period of time, it's difficult to nullify previous decision because it would require huge efforts. Good example - Facebook. Let me quote the presentation HipHop for PHP Tech Tasting : PHP is problematic for Facebook: High CPU usage High memory usage Reuse of PHP logic in other systems Extensions are hard to write for most PHP developers But huge codebase, strange affection towards PHP (in what universe "loose typing and universal ar...