DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PHP AND NODE.JS

 

PHP

PHP is the Hypertext Preprocessor scripting language for making scalable, dynamic web applications. It is released in 1995 and considered as a number one backend development language for over past 20 years.

Node.JS

Node.JS is a platform built on Chrome’s v8 Javascript for easily building fast, scalable, network applications rather than the traditional approach of threading. It is released in 2009 and considered as a popular platform that is defining the new web future.

Why PHP?

PHP is advisable for making high-level web applications because

1. It has a huge community. PHP has an experienced guidance because of the huge development era. That is why you can get any solution for your problem very easily.
2. It is a deep code based, means most of the Content Management Systems (like Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Drupal) are purely PHP based.
3. PHP is more common for hosting providers. This is because there is no compatibility issue to make application live on the server.
4. The simplicity of the PHP code, it can run as HTML by changing extension of it.
5. No jar, preprocessor, no compiler and deployment dependency exists.
6. You can add php anywhere in your code by just using tag , that makes PHP more flexible.

Why not PHP?

Now, the trend is going in a way that most of the Startups are not using PHP as their Tech Stack because,

1. It is relatively slower than the advanced server-side development competitors like Node.
2. Since it is open sourced, so anyone can access it. If there are bugs in the source code, it can be used by people to explore the weakness of PHP.
3. It is not suitable for making larger applications; it is ideally suited for e-commerce based applications.

Why Node?

Most of the Startups are prioritizing Node over other monolithic stacks like PHP, or Ruby on Rails, because

1. Extraordinary faster than PHP because of the event callback mechanism.
2. Primarily, it has single-threaded mechanism, but you can also scale Node app on multi-core system. For more information about scaling, see my other article.
3. It has separation of concerns, i.e, separate modules for any operation.
4. Node.JS is popular, new and fresh.
5. It uses callback structure to pass logic from one call to another.
6. Less or relatively no chances of occurrence of deadlock mechanism.
7. It can use the single as well as multi-threaded application
8. Anyone with another platform background can jump to Node. It has numerous frameworks which can be used as an alternate for other frameworks like Ruby on Rails. 

Why not Node?

Although, Node is providing the best possible solution, but there are always two sides of the mirror. Wisely think when making a Node application because

1. Node is not suitable for processor intensive tasks.
2. Any CPU-intensive code makes it really non-scalable.