Re: mod_perl vs. C for high performance Apache modules
All, I wasn't sure what volume of response to expect when I originally wrote. Thank you all for the comments that you all are making. They are helping. Given that the response is fairly high, I'm waiting for stuff to roll in rather than replying to each of you. Don't think it is falling on unappreciating ears. :-) To respond to a few recurring comments / questions: Me? I've spent most of the last four years working on mod_perl-based stuff and most of the last eight working with Perl. Actually I've worked with folks who were involved with some of the projects you've mentioned, having been at idealab!, a parent of eToys and CitySearch. One of the original (THE original?) developer at CitySearch was probably the most helpful mentor / teacher I've ever worked with. I programmed in C a lot early in my career, but at this point I couldn't write anything substantial without brushing up, and frankly wouldn't care to. It just isn't as fun to work with C. But then, the argument, "But if you used C, you wouldn't get to work with ME!" may not convince some of these people with their values all screwed up... ;-) The project? What I consider to be standard web junk. About 30% ecommerce combined with lots of database-driven, interactive content, some authentication foo and things like that. The thing is that it is in the adult industry and the investor in question turns on the hose... well... there will be lots of traffic. Mistakes and misunderstandings? Sure. And yes, as some of you have pointed out publicly or privately, not my fault. I was kept very insulated from the people who were familiar with the alternatives. My involvement at this point is to try to smooth things over and keep the project functional. These immediate problems aside, the people involved are great to work with and if everyone feels better about the situation and things move forward in the best possible way from here, there will be a lot of valuable work for me. So I'm trying to help. More than you cared to hear about and terribly off-topic for the list? Sure. But you did sorta ask, and somehow it seemed rude to not reply. Forgive me and thanks for providing all of your commentary. Cheers, Jeff -- Jeff Yoak 626-705-6996
Re: mod_perl vs. C for high performance Apache modules
At 09:15 PM 12/14/2001 +0100, Thomas Eibner wrote: >The key to mod_perl development is speed, there are numerous testimonials >from users implementing a lot of work in a very short time with mod_perl. >Ask the clients investor wheter he wants to pay for having everything you >did rewritten as an Apache module in C. That is very likely going to take >a lot of time. Thank you for your reply. I realized in reading it that my tone leads one to the common image of a buzzword driven doody-head who wants this because of what he read in Byte. That's certainly common enough, and I've never had a problem dealing with such types. (Well... not an unsolvable problem... :-) This is something different. The investor is in a related business, and has developed substantially similar software for years. And it is really good. What's worse is that my normal, biggest argument isn't compelling in this case, that by the time this would be done in C, I'd be doing contract work on Mars. The investor claims to have evaluated Perl vs. C years ago, to have witnessed that every single hit on the webserver under mod_perl causes a CPU usage spike that isn't seen with C, and that under heavy load mod_perl completely falls apart where C doesn't. (This code is, of course, LONG gone so I can't evaluate it for whether the C was good and the Perl was screwy.) At any rate, because of this, he's spent years having good stuff written in C. Unbeknownst to either me or my client, both this software and its developer were available to us, so in this case it would have been faster, cheaper and honestly even better, by which I mean more fully-featured. So he's upset. Everyone acknowledges that given our particular circumstances, it would have been better to build upon what we already had, but because of his previous experience he feels that mod_perl wasn't even a responsible choice even within the limits of our lack of knowledge of his software and its availability. So I'm trying to show that mod_perl doesn't suck, and that it is, in fact, a reasonable choice. Though within these limits it is still reasonable to point out the development cycle, emotionally it is the least compelling form of argument, because the investor has a hard time removing from consideration that given our particular situation, there was a very fast solution in using his C-based routines. >Take a look at Joshua Chamas benchmarks (Although they're only hello >world style apps) it shows that mod_perl is pretty fast. I will look for this particularly. Thanks. Cheers, Jeff > -- Jeff Yoak 626-705-6996
mod_perl vs. C for high performance Apache modules
Hi All, Recently I did a substantial project for a client in using mod_perl. That client is happy with the work, but an investor with their company is very angry because of what a horrible choice mod_perl is for high-load web applications compared with Apache modules and even CGI programs, written in C. If anyone on this list could forward any resources that do comparisons along these lines, or even analysis of mod_perl's handling of high-load web traffic, I would be very grateful. Cheers, Jeff -- Jeff Yoak 626-705-6996
