[erlang-questions] Erlang based Web Stack

[Garrett Smith]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 2:17 AM, Kannan <vasdeveloper@REDACTED> wrote:
> Thanks guys, that is a lot of input.
>
> How is the support of OTP for multimedia content manipulation, transcoding
> etc? Or you advice to do it at the C level and communicate it to Erlang?
>
> Also, if someone has already invented the wheel of how good Erlang is
> compared to PHP, please share it with us.

Stats are sirens - they lure you in with lies and deceit and are
almost always dangerous!

That said, I ran some basic ab tests against a host of web servers a
few years ago. With these simplistic, flawed results, I came to the
rock solid conclusion that the only web platform that matched PHP for
performance and stability was Erlang.

https://github.com/gar1t/landshark/blob/master/doc/benchmarks.txt

The Erlang HTTP server was Mochiweb. But I've seen similar performance
characteristics with other Erlang servers.

> We would like to have a mega site purely on Erlang and C.

I think you're in very good hands with Erlang.

I'd also disagree with the comment that comparing Erlang and PHP is
comparing apples and oranges. Maybe at a very high, abstract level --
but you can certainly compare the two for building HTTP based
applications.

If it matters enough to your business to get this absolutely right --
you might want to build a benchmark app for your cases and measure the
various stacks you're curious about.

But anecdotally, I think Erlang is an *outstanding* platform for "mega" sites :)

Garrett