Developers care about performance of their software. The problem is that they don’t usually have enough time for a proper optimisation. I would like to propose 3 relatively simple steps which won’t take much time and will improve a response time by at least 60%.
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Have you heard yet about the full stack PHP framework called Phalcon? It’s written in C, it’s super fast, well documented and it brings lots of freshness into the PHP world. It has been around for awhile now but for some reason it’s been under my radar until now. Why is it so special? If you allow me I will here attempt to prove that this framework has a potential to change the game.
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Do you know what is a capacity of your website? It’s a tricky question to ask because what does it really mean? Every website has multiple user journeys. Each of them come with a different cost. The cost might be different for a different dataset or a software version. A good answer to this question requires solid investigation and the right tools.
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Have you ever though how to extend the core of PHP? What does it take to create a new keyword or even design a whole new syntax? If you have some basic knowledge about C you shouldn’t have any problem with making small changes. Yes, I know it might be little bit pointless but it doesn’t matter because It’s fun.
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We all know the thrill of looking for a new job. Browsing exciting opportunities on job portals. Breath taking job descriptions and salaries. You apply for some of them and suddenly the whole world is interested in you. Your mobile phone goes red. All agencies in a 60 mile radius want to know your future plans and reason why you decided to make a move. Finally you start getting interviews. First one on the phone, second face to face and the final one with a senior member of staff. All the excitement and effort you put in the process makes you vulnerable to emotional and unwise decisions.
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There are many assumptions around performance of different PHP frameworks. I frequently hear strong opinions about superiority X over Y in this context. There are companies writing new PHP frameworks from scratch because available solutions are too slow for them. What does it really mean? Does the framework performance matters? Before answering this questions lets check how slow is your framework!
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Where do you keep backups? I guess that depends on what do you backup. You might have a very clever answer for a business critical data but what about less important content? The best example would be a private blog. It will hurt if you lose your data but the odds are you’re not willing to pay for any reliable storage. If you care enough to backup it’s going to be to another server (if you own one), your own laptop or external hard drive. S3 is gaining popularity but not everybody have and want to open account on Amazon. On the other hand there is one reliable storage, which is 100% free and almost everybody have access to it. Yes, I’m talking about Google Drive.
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How many steps are required to deploy your software? Some people say it shouldn’t be more than one. I’m little bit more relaxed about it so I would say two steps are still fine. If it takes more than two then most likely you need a build script.
Why do you need a build script? Because your time is precious. You don’t want to waste it on repetitive boring tasks. You don’t want to waste other people’s time either. If you forget to tell your collegues that they have to do something after code update (like release a database patch) they might get confused. It’s also not safe. More things to do during a deployment means higher chance something will go wrong. Human is the weakest link in any system.