Software Alternatives & Startups

Erlang VS PHP

Compare Erlang VS PHP and see what are their differences

Erlang

A programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source
PHP

A popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, PHP seems to be a lot more popular than Erlang. While we know about 56 links to PHP, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Erlang.

social mentions
3 vs 56
Programming Language popularity
33% vs 67%
alternatives listed
84 vs 233

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Erlang
PHP
Website erlang.org php.net
Pricing
Open source
Open source
Listed in

About Erlang and PHP

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Erlang
PHP

We recommend LibHunt Erlang for discovery and comparisons of trending Erlang projects.

Read more about Erlang

We recommend LibHunt PHP for discovery and comparisons of trending PHP projects.

Read more about PHP

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Erlang 6 features
PHP 7 features
  • Concurrency
    Erlang is designed for massive concurrency and supports thousands of lightweight processes, making it ideal for applications requiring multiple parallel operations.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Erlang provides robust support for fault tolerance, with built-in mechanisms for process monitoring and error recovery, leading to high system availability.
  • Distributed Computing
    Erlang's architecture facilitates distributed computing with easy support for building scalable, distributed systems across multiple nodes.
  • Hot Code Swapping
    Erlang supports hot code swapping, enabling developers to update code on a live system without requiring a system restart, which is crucial for continuous operation.
  • Functional Programming
    Erlang’s functional programming paradigm leads to simpler code with fewer side effects, improving maintainability.
  • Strong Community
    Erlang has a strong community, with a wealth of resources, libraries, and frameworks that support developers in building efficient systems.

Possible disadvantages

  • Learning Curve
    Erlang has a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are not familiar with functional programming or its concurrency model.
  • Syntax
    The syntax of Erlang can be unfamiliar and challenging to new users, which may hinder the initial coding experience.
  • Limited Libraries
    Despite having a strong community, Erlang has fewer libraries and tools compared to more popular languages, which may limit development options for certain applications.
  • Performance Limitations
    While Erlang excels in concurrency, its performance for compute-intensive tasks might not match that of languages specifically optimized for such operations.
  • Niche Use Cases
    Erlang's strengths in certain niches like telecoms and real-time systems might not translate well to more general or varied software development tasks, limiting its adoption.
  • Cost-Effective
    PHP is an open-source language, meaning it is free to use. This helps reduce the overall cost of a project.
  • Large Community
    PHP has a large and active community. This means vast amounts of documentation, tutorials, and third-party resources are available.
  • Cross-Platform
    PHP is platform-independent and can run on various operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS.
  • Database Support
    PHP supports a wide range of databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and more.
  • Speed
    PHP is generally fast, especially when used with built-in tools and extensions. It integrates easily with web servers like Apache.
  • Built-in Functions
    PHP comes with a vast range of built-in functions and libraries, which makes developing common functionalities easier and faster.
  • Server-Side Scripting
    PHP is designed specifically for server-side scripting, making it well-suited for web development.

Possible disadvantages

  • Security
    If not properly managed, PHP applications can be vulnerable to security threats like SQL injection, XSS, and others.
  • Inconsistency
    PHP's function naming and parameter ordering can be inconsistent, which can make the language difficult to learn and use efficiently.
  • Performance
    While fast for many tasks, PHP can struggle with performance for high-resource applications compared to other languages like Node.js or Python.
  • Error Handling
    Error handling in PHP is less efficient and more cumbersome compared to modern languages like Python or JavaScript.
  • Concurrency
    PHP lacks native support for multi-threading, which can be a limitation for applications requiring high concurrency.
  • Old Codebases
    Many older PHP applications use outdated coding practices, making maintaining and updating them more difficult and costly.
  • Type System
    PHP historically had a weak typing system, though recent versions have introduced better type support, it's still a drawback for older codebases.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

Erlang
PHP

No analysis of Erlang yet.

Overall verdict

  • PHP is a solid choice for web development, especially if you are working with server-side tasks. While it may not be as modern as some newer languages or frameworks, it is still reliable, widely supported, and serves as the backbone for many popular content management systems like WordPress.

Why this product is good

  • Simplicity
    PHP is known for its simplicity and ease of learning, making it accessible for beginners.
  • Performance
    With the release of PHP 7 and later versions, significant performance improvements have been made.
  • Community support
    It has extensive community support and a vast array of libraries and frameworks.
  • Hosting compatibility
    PHP is compatible with most web hosting services, offering a seamless deployment experience.

Recommended for

  • Beginners looking to get into web development
  • Developers building or maintaining traditional server-side web applications
  • Projects requiring wide hosting service compatibility
  • Existing projects using CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

Erlang 2 videos + Add
PHP 2 videos + Add

Book Review - Erlang in Anger

More videos

  • - Erlang is getting pretty! - Michal Muskala | Code BEAM SF 20

Is PHP a SCAM? Watch this VIDEO Before You Join!

More videos

  • - For PHP Agents - Advice On Making The Most Of Your Insurance Sales Career

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Erlang
PHP
33% 33%
67% 67%
36% 36%
OOP
64% 64%
100% 100%
0% 0%

User comments

Share your experience with using Erlang and PHP. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Reviews and articles

External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.

Erlang no reviews yet
PHP no reviews yet

We have no reviews of Erlang yet. Be the first one to post

  • Top 10 Rust Alternatives
    blog.back4app.com · Apr 2022

    PHP is another general purpose-based computing language. This language is mostly found in HTML. It is usually used for the management of content that is based on dynamic information.

  • Top 20 Javascript Libraries
    hackr.io · Mar 2022

    As the name suggests, JsPHP is a Javascript library for PHP API to be available in the JS environment. It is open-source and provides a compelling interface for JS developers who work in PHP. JsPHP can work in tandem...

  • The 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn Today
    ict.gov.ge · Jan 2020

    What kind of development projects do you want to work on? If career flexibility is a priority, learning Python or C++ will allow you to work across different types of programming. If your passion is web development,...

Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Erlang 3 mentions
PHP 56 mentions
  • Standalone HTTP Server in Elixir with Bandit
    Writing Elixir code is not really exciting to me, but, to be honest, if someone today wants to create an application from scratch and is looking for a big pool developers and a battle tested distributed infrastructure (the BEAM VM),... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
    I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • What is Calypso?
    However, as Elixir is inherently tied to the BEAM and Erlang/OTP, it means that it has features like immutable variables (though you can rebind them and have state via process loops, e.g. Agents or GenServers). This also means that OTP... - Source: dev.to / over 5 years ago
  • PHP's Biggest Problem
    The PHP website is indeed one of the worst parts of the whole ecosystem. Just look at the landingpage (https://php.net) and compare it with those of other languages. There's not a single piece of PHP code on the page. No "what is PHP",... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Self Hostable Multi-Location Uptime Monitoring
    My initial idea was to leverage the main application’s queue worker by deploying a queue worker remotely and setting up a secure connection between them using something like Wireguard. Vigilant is written in PHP using the Laravel... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • The Lost Art of Reading Documentation
    I remember being 15 (18 years ago 🥲) and learning PHP. Stack Overflow wasn’t as big yet, and finding answers often meant digging through forums filled with half-baked solutions, each dependent on specific hosting configurations. There... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago

View more

Alternatives to Erlang and PHP

When comparing Erlang and PHP, you can also consider the following products.

  • Elixir

    Dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications

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  • Python

    Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

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  • Perl

    Highly capable, feature-rich programming language with over 26 years of development

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  • JavaScript

    Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

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  • C++

    Has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing the facilities for low level memory manipulation

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  • Java

    A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible

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