Interpreted vs. Compiled Languages for Web Sites (PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, etc.)

Posted by Andrew Swift on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Andrew Swift
Published on 2009-10-07T17:25:30Z Indexed on 2010/04/02 21:23 UTC
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language

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webserver

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php

I build database-driven web sites. Previously I have used Perl or PHP with MySQL.

Now I am starting a big new project, and I want to do it in the way that will result in the most responsive possible site.

I have seen several pages here where questions about how to optimize PHP are criticized with various versions of "it's not worth going to great lengths to optimize PHP since it's an interpreted language and it won't make that much difference".

I have also heard various discussions (especiallon on the SO podcast) about the benefits of compiled vs. interpreted languages, and it seems as though it would be in my interests to use a compiled language to serve up the site instead of an interpreted language.

Is this even possible in a web context? If so, what would be a reasonable language choice?

In addition to speed one benefit I forsee is the possiblity of finding bugs at compile time instead of having to debug the web site. Is this reasonable to expect?

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