Why PHP?

[Builder]

I hope this won't drive this thread too far off topic, but I really need to

respond to the whole x86 thing you were mentioning. (sorry it took this

long, I kinda forgot I still had to reply)

 

RISC vs. CISC is an argument that's been wildly debated in the past,

and probably will continue to drive a debate in the future. It is a subject

similar to AMD vs. Intel, AMD vs. nVidia, and other such comparisons

where there are evangelists of each group. In this post, I'll try to keep

my opinion on the matter as neutral as possible.

 

You argue that x86, and CISC architecture in general, is something

from the past and on it's way out. You base this argument on the

statement that Intel has used an ARM processor for something and

that they're supposed to be a CISC proponent. I would argue that

those two thing aren't mutually exclusive. Depending on what they

were demoing, I can see lots of valid reasons to demo it on an ARM

chip.

 

I've also read allegations of Intel making the x86 platform a slow-

moving one. I can assure you that the x86 platform in itself isn't

really slowed by Intel. Rather, R&D money has been shifted to

making their chips less energy consuming and increasing their yield.

 

Also, I don't see how it's bad to be using a processor that has it's

roots in a product from the 70's. The loom that's used to produce fabric

for the shiny clothes you are (or aren't?) wearing right now has it's

roots in the late 1700's. How old can it be? Yet, it's still getting used

today. Why? Because it works reliably and, by extension, is economi-

cally viable.

 

Intel is getting closer and closer to getting the x86 platform in a power

envelope that used be reserved for ARM processors, without sacrificing

performance. Now, if you can get a CISC architecture, that can execute

the instructions from it's RISC opponent in the same time or faster, all

the while using the same amount of or less power, I don't see why we

would need to replace x86, or CISC in general.

 

Right now, both have their merits. The gap, however, is closing fast. By

making statements like "x86 needs to be replaced because its roots are

in the 8080", I'm getting the feeling that you have no feeling for the

economic side of the world. Now, please be aware that I don't mean that

as an insult. I don't know your background, but I do think that you could

do good by thinking with an economic mindset a little more often. It

could help you understand some decisions that get made by companies

better.

 

PS: we're at a point in time right now where IC designers are having

trouble with designing more transistors into CPU's at a rate high enough

to keep up with Moore's law. Starting over completely just to get around

the old roots of x86 would thus be something that is not even slightly

economically viable.

Shall we create another thread to discuss it? I'd be fine with that.

 

With a world that moves so fast that components from two years ago are now verging on obsolete, it's frankly horrifying that Intel has been beating the same dead horse for a long time. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the roots of x86 besides the fact that its paradigm of operation has fallen out of favor in embedded applications. 

 

I'm not saying x86 isn't strong. They forced Apple on to Core 2 for its machines by playing the bigger Hz game against IBM even when theoretically their RISC PowerPC processors were just as fast if not faster. While AMD vs nVidia often leads to pointless brand wars and fanboyism, I do not see this phenomenon as much with technically literate people discussing RISC vs CISC. Ever heard of a RISC fanboy? Neither have I. 

 

I'm personally a subscriber my self to the RISC philosophy because as the trend in programming languages verges towards them being more operator friendly and abstracting more of the hardware away from the programmer and user alike, reduced instruction sets will be easier for human operators to deal with. Trying to remember the 20 different things your proc does when you call X in C will be harder than combining together mentally the simpler universal instructions used by RISC processors to form complex operations.

 

I would argue that Intel is actually nowhere close to ARM's power envelope. You do realize what a commercial disaster Atom was, right? The devices that use Intel's CISC Core chips still have massive batteries in them, and I would be very surprised if a CISC chip ever makes it into a smartphone, let alone become the industrial standard the way ARM is now.

 

Thank you for the economic perspective. As programmers, technologists, and at our core, scientists, we must remember that there are always multiple sides of a coin (it must be in a quantum state at the moment) and that the technology solution does not always agree with the economics solution. If it did, every component manufactured would have to comply with a rigorous set of standards regulated by a single, well-known entity to ensure that everything was designed to work well together. That's the way I would have it, at least.

 

I myself often have issues with perfect being the enemy of good enough. I don't think that the time has yet come for RISC to replace everything, but keep in mind that ARM has also began to invade laptops with Chromebooks and that, like it or not, (I'm sad too, ;( ) the desktop is a dying platform.

 

My comments about CISC and by association x86 were small scraps of a bigger internal dialogue I have with myself and my fellow programmers. They say x86 will never be fully replaced, I say that in 10 years or so there won't be much of it left to replace.

[SeriuzBuzinez]

Benefits of PHP

 

• Open Source
• Easy to learn (So easy to find good free learning materials)
• Decent performance
• Runs on Linux (And many other OS)
• Tons of frameworks and probably what you need is already made for you!!!

 

Disadvantages of PHP

 

• Performance can be better
• Always going to be slight security issues due to being Open Source
• Not the prettiest of languages at times

At the end of the day this is just my opinion, everyone will have their own opinions and favourite language which they are most comfortable with, and even though I have had to use ASP.NET a lot more than PHP I would choose PHP if I had a choice because .NET just drives me up the wall, at the end of the day choose whatever you think is right for your situation.