[sword-devel] Web interface?

David Burry sword-devel@crosswire.org
Wed, 28 Jun 2000 09:39:34 -0700


Okay, I've been a lurker here for ages, but this web interface has really 
piqued my interest finally!  ;-)  I work for Adobe Systems as a senior web 
software developer on their web site, and volunteer for a non-profit 
organization called TAGnet.  My main expertise at the moment is Perl and 
JavaScript, plus some PHP and others.

I would like to point out that Perl does not _execute_ slower than PHP, 
just that some people find it takes them longer to get used to the syntax 
of Perl.  Personally, once I got used to it I wanted to do everything in 
Perl *wink* but I can go for either.  If you compile mod_perl or mod_php 
into Apache, you get roughly similar speed on either I suspect.  I'd like 
to see some benchmarks.  Perl may actually execute faster than PHP if it 
precompiles and caches the Perl but not the PHP, I'm not sure how it works 
underneath, anyone know?

For embedding a few short commands in the middle of a web page, PHP really 
shines in my opinion.  For developing a large application in PHP from 
scratch I'm not so sure if PHP is such a great choice since Perl has better 
module/library stuff... but if we just had a good PHP hook into a well 
developed sword API underneath, there may not need to be a ton of PHP logic 
code, and then PHP may become a better choice in my opinion once again 
(especially since the learning curve isn't so steep for PHP as it is for Perl).

Dave

At 05:42 AM 6/28/00 -0700, Brook Humphrey wrote:
>One final note php can do pretty much anything that perl can. Its just
>faster than perl and easier to code.I'm working on a database driven
>site with member logins and a bbs. This project would not have been
>capable for me to do with with perl. I've tried to work with perl before
>but php is much better for ease of use. I find php to be much more
>versatle for website programing and MUCH faster then perl.
>
>However; I will say that for scripting jobs not being displayed as web
>pages, python and perl are the better choice. With these two you can
>code full blown programs. They have access to gtk and qt widget sets. so
>for aplication development they are great but php is faster for the web.