How Node.js & PHP Work? Read Before You Start
Technical Details & My Experiences
Introduction & My Experience
Especially on the web, the question of Node.js or PHP has been asked since the day Node.js released, which is 2009.
The main reason and purpose I write this article is looking at both technologies from a technical perspective. I won’t be focusing on which is more preferred by developers or searched.
I’ve been in the web development market since the middle of 2014. I’ve created many WordPress themes from scratch and used both PHP & MySQL together. I’ve made a few web applications using Node.js too. So, I’ll mostly tell you about my own experiences.
Aren’t they both are just back-end web technologies?
Although they are both used for the same purpose, which is interacting with the database, they have entirely different architecture.
PHP’s Structure
PHP is a multithreaded, general-purpose scripting language that is mainly used in web development.
Where PHP used?
There is a massive market built around Content Management Systems (CMSs) like WordPress, Shopify, Joomla & Drupal. The central part of the web has websites built around these CMSs. Except for these, countless sites use custom PHP scripts.
Node.js’s Structure
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Google’s open-source V8 JavaScript Engine.
Node.js also has a single-threaded, based on event-driven, non-blocking I/O model structure, which means you should be extremely careful while building your web apps. Unlike PHP, It has only one thread, and once you block that thread, every single person that sends the request to your application has to wait.
Where Node.js used?
Compared to PHP, Node.js doesn’t have extremely popular CMSs. Node.js mostly used while creating custom web applications. Companies like Netflix, Uber, eBay, PayPal has already started to use Node.js in production.
Development: Node.js or PHP?
My thoughts on ease of learning
In my experience, PHP is much easier to learn, but learning Javascript & Node.js is much more fun.
Which one should you use in the development stage?
That definitely depends on the project (I’ll specifically talk about that) you are building, but it makes much more sense to use one language both in front-end & back-end.
Hosting: Node.js or PHP?
PHP language is supported by countless hosting providers, unlike Node.js. Although that’s an advantage for PHP, I don’t think that’ll make you prefer PHP over Node.js immediately.
Performance: Node.js or PHP?
In terms of performance, Node.js is significantly faster compared to PHP due to the way it’s built. There are specific processes that shouldn’t be done with Node.js expect these cases; it’s practical to use it.
When Should You Prefer PHP over Node.js?
PHP is much practical to use for the applications with heavy server-side processing (CPU-intensive) like image processing, video conversion, file compression, or anything similar.
