Write web apps in Python?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Tue, 2010-04-20 at 17:05 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> Adam Tauno Williams a écrit :
> > On Mon, 2010-04-19 at 15:15 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> >> Gilles Ganault a écrit :
> >>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:41:56 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers
> >>> <bruno.42.desthuilliers at websiteburo.invalid> wrote:
> >>>> The PHP execution model (mostly based on CGI FWIW) tends to be a bit 
> >>>> unpractical for non-trivial applications since you have to rebuild the 
> >>>> whole world for each and any incoming request, while with a long-running 
> >>>> process, you load all your libs, parse your config etc only once.
> > There are numerous ways to efficiently retains state between page views
> > [session id + memcache or even just shared memory].
> Never played with shared memory in PHP. Sessions will at best retains 
> "state" (data), and it's not a free lunch neither (you'll still have to 
> reload that state one way or another). 

I'd prefer the term "access" over "reload".

> And you'll still have to parse included .php files on each and every request.

False.  Production sites [all?] use interpreter caches that maintain
'compiled' pages in shared memory.  This works *very* well.

> >>> Apart from the ease of having the application run at all times, I'd be
> >>> curious to read about an application that was written in PHP and then
> >>> a long-running process and see if performance improved.
> >> I'm not sure there's a way to do such a thing in PHP,
> > There isn't.  [Speaking as an ~15 year administrator and developer].
> > Also PHP's memory management is *B*A*D*, so please don't try to create
> > long running processes in PHP.
> Wasn't designed for such a thing anyway !-)

Exactly;  that never stops people from trying.

> > But if you have intensive processing to do your web front end should
> > signal a backend to do the 'real' work;  keeping your front end thin and
> > svelt.  There are numerous ways to accomplish that.
> For which definition of "intensive processing" ? Building a web page 
> with Drupal when you have a dozen modules hooked here and there can 
> already imply some processing...

Again, the compilation of the modules is cached.  The amount of
processing required for 'import...' declines to near zero.