Comment Perl hits a sweet spot (Score 1) 432
A few years ago I took on a new project and resolved to write the fastest CGI app I could, using C to access the Solid DB API. Forget Perl and its fuzzy crutches, efficiency is what counts, right?
Yes, it was extremely fast, until the graphic designer plopped in his nested-table layout and slowed everything down to a crawl on the client's ancient Mac. That's when I learned that server efficiency is but one of the factors that go into a web app. If you are serving very fast clients on a very fast network, then you should consider optimizing the server apps. But even then mod_perl, PHP, or ASP still stand a fighting chance against a C/C++ CGI.
The fastest path I can imagine is using the web server's API directly, and that should be done only after careful planning and consideration (and throwing hardware at the problem).
Yes, it was extremely fast, until the graphic designer plopped in his nested-table layout and slowed everything down to a crawl on the client's ancient Mac. That's when I learned that server efficiency is but one of the factors that go into a web app. If you are serving very fast clients on a very fast network, then you should consider optimizing the server apps. But even then mod_perl, PHP, or ASP still stand a fighting chance against a C/C++ CGI.
The fastest path I can imagine is using the web server's API directly, and that should be done only after careful planning and consideration (and throwing hardware at the problem).
