Node.js vs PHP

Overview

PHP

Stacks147.4K

Followers82.9K

Votes4.6K

GitHub Stars39.6K

Forks8.0K

Node.js

Stacks200.4K

Followers164.5K

Votes8.5K

GitHub Stars114.1K

Forks33.7K

Node.js vs PHP: What are the differences?

Introduction

Node.js and PHP are two popular programming languages used for creating server-side applications and websites. While they both have similar capabilities, there are several key differences between the two.

Execution Environment: Node.js is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment that runs JavaScript code on the server-side, while PHP is a server-side scripting language. Node.js allows developers to write server-side applications using JavaScript, which is traditionally used for client-side scripting in web browsers.
Concurrency Model: Node.js uses a single-threaded event-driven architecture, which makes it highly scalable and efficient for handling concurrent requests. It can handle a large number of concurrent connections without blocking, making it suitable for real-time applications. On the other hand, PHP follows a traditional thread-based model, where each request is processed sequentially.
Performance: Node.js is built on Google's V8 JavaScript engine, which compiles JavaScript into machine code, resulting in fast execution. It performs well for applications that require high levels of concurrency and responsiveness. PHP, on the other hand, is an interpreted language, which can sometimes result in slower performance compared to Node.js.
Community and Libraries: Node.js has a large and active community of developers and a rich ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. It has a wide range of modules and packages available through the Node Package Manager (npm), which makes it easy to find and integrate third-party libraries. PHP also has a large community, but the ecosystem is more fragmented, with multiple frameworks and libraries to choose from.
Syntax and Learning Curve: Node.js uses JavaScript, which is a widely-used programming language known for its simplicity and versatility. If you are already familiar with JavaScript, learning Node.js will be relatively easy. PHP has its own syntax and features, which may require some learning if you are new to the language.
Host Environment: While both Node.js and PHP can be run on various operating systems, PHP is often associated with the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, while Node.js can be used with different web servers or run as a standalone server.

In summary, Node.js is a JavaScript-based runtime environment that excels in scalability and performance for concurrent applications, while PHP is a server-side scripting language with a larger community and a more traditional approach to web development.

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Advice on PHP, Node.js

Ben

May 19, 2020

Decided

As a small team, we wanted to pick the framework which allowed us to move quickly. There's no option better than Rails. Not having to solve the fundamentals means we can more quickly build our feature set. No other framework can beat ActiveRecord in terms of integration & ease-of use. To top it all of, there's a lot of attention paid to security in the framework, making almost everything safe-by-default.

482k views482k

Comments

Octavian

Software Engineer

May 26, 2020

Decided

Both PHP and Python are free but when it comes to web development PHP wins for sure. There is no doubt that Python is a powerful language but it is not optimal for web. PHP has issues... of course; but so does any other language.

Another reason I chose PHP is for community - it has one of the most resourceful communities from the internet and for a good reason: it evolved with the language itself.

The fact that OOP evolved so much in PHP makes me keep it for good :)

377k views377k

Comments

Taylor

May 5, 2020

Review

Hey guys,

My backend set up is Prisma / GraphQL-Yoga at the moment, and I love it. It's so intuitive to learn and is really neat on the frontend too, however, there were a few gotchas when I was learning! Especially around understanding how it all pieces together (the stack). There isn't a great deal of information out there on exactly how to put into production my set up, which is a backend set up on a Digital Ocean droplet with Prisma/GraphQL Yoga in a Docker Container using Next & Apollo Client on the frontend somewhere else. It's such a niche subject, so I bet only a few hundred people have got a website with this stack in production. Anyway, I wrote a blog post to help those who might need help understanding it. Here it is, hope it helps!

758k views758k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

PHP	Node.js
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.	Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 39.6K	GitHub Stars 114.1K
GitHub Forks 8.0K	GitHub Forks 33.7K
Stacks 147.4K	Stacks 200.4K
Followers 82.9K	Followers 164.5K
Votes 4.6K	Votes 8.5K
Pros & Cons
Pros 954 Large community 820 Open source 767 Easy deployment 488 Great frameworks 387 The best glue on the web Cons 21 So easy to learn, good practices are hard to find 16 Inconsistent API 8 Fragmented community 6 Not secure 3 Hard to debug	Pros 1439 Npm 1279 Javascript 1129 Great libraries 1012 High-performance 805 Open source Cons 46 Bound to a single CPU 45 New framework every day 40 Lots of terrible examples on the internet 33 Asynchronous programming is the worst 24 Callback
Integrations
Laravel JavaScript	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to PHP, Node.js?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Related Comparisons

Node.js vs PHP: What are the differences?

Introduction

Execution Environment: Node.js is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment that runs JavaScript code on the server-side, while PHP is a server-side scripting language. Node.js allows developers to write server-side applications using JavaScript, which is traditionally used for client-side scripting in web browsers.
Concurrency Model: Node.js uses a single-threaded event-driven architecture, which makes it highly scalable and efficient for handling concurrent requests. It can handle a large number of concurrent connections without blocking, making it suitable for real-time applications. On the other hand, PHP follows a traditional thread-based model, where each request is processed sequentially.
Performance: Node.js is built on Google's V8 JavaScript engine, which compiles JavaScript into machine code, resulting in fast execution. It performs well for applications that require high levels of concurrency and responsiveness. PHP, on the other hand, is an interpreted language, which can sometimes result in slower performance compared to Node.js.
Community and Libraries: Node.js has a large and active community of developers and a rich ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. It has a wide range of modules and packages available through the Node Package Manager (npm), which makes it easy to find and integrate third-party libraries. PHP also has a large community, but the ecosystem is more fragmented, with multiple frameworks and libraries to choose from.
Syntax and Learning Curve: Node.js uses JavaScript, which is a widely-used programming language known for its simplicity and versatility. If you are already familiar with JavaScript, learning Node.js will be relatively easy. PHP has its own syntax and features, which may require some learning if you are new to the language.
Host Environment: While both Node.js and PHP can be run on various operating systems, PHP is often associated with the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, while Node.js can be used with different web servers or run as a standalone server.

Node.js vs PHP

Overview

Node.js vs PHP: What are the differences?