[newbie] Equivalent to PHP?

[Alain Ketterlin]

Gilles <nospam at nospam.com> writes:

> I notice that Python-based solutions are usually built as long-running
> processes with their own web server (or can run in the back with eg.
> Nginx and be reached through eg. FastCGI/WSGI ) while PHP is simply a
> language to write scripts and requires a web server (short running
> processes).

It's an artefact of the server infrastructure, there is no rule here.
Any solution used with one language could be used with the other.

> Since web scripts are usually very short anyway (user sends query,
> server handles request, sends response, and closes the port) because
> the user is waiting and browsers usually give up after 30 seconds
> anyway... why did Python solutions go for long-running processes while
> PHP was built from the start as short-running processes?

You misunderstand the problem here. It's not about the duration of the
actions, it's about the latency it takes to read/parse/execute the
script. HTTP is stateless anyway, so if the same "interpreter" handles
several requests, what you save by keeping the interpreter alive is the
load/parse phase. If you relaunch an interpreter for every HTTP request,
you pay the same price again and again for something which is not even
related to your scripts' execution.

-- Alain.