[Catalyst] Catalyst vs Rails vs Django Cook off

Carl Franks fireartist at gmail.com
Thu Nov 16 14:13:15 GMT 2006


On 16/11/06, Cory Watson <jheephat at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/16/06, Carl Franks <fireartist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 16/11/06, catalyst.20.chsg at spamgourmet.com
> > <catalyst.20.chsg at spamgourmet.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Essentially, according to his test, which doesn't take into account
> > > ORM performance, Rails & Django knock the socks of Catalyst.
>
> <snip>
>
> > The first thing I noticed was that the content length of the document
> > served by catalyst was longer than that served by rails.
> > He doesn't seem to have tried very hard to test "apples for apples" (his words)
> >
> > Also see the very good comment by "JayK" as to why it's not a very
> > good real-world test at all.
> > http://letsgetdugg.com/view/Catalyst_vs_Rails_vs_Django_Cook_off
> >
> > I'm not saying Catalyst's performance couldn't be improved, or that
> > it's not slower than Rails - just that a bad benchmark is worthless.
>
> I agree with all your points Carl. I have not been present in teh IRC
> for a few days to see any discussions related to this thread.  I'm

(me either)

> sure some optimizations were discussed and some things will be
> implemented because of it.  So with the precondition that I haven't
> kept up with the state of affairs I'd like to thank victori for
> spending his time and effort to create _something_.  It's more than
> his naysayers have to done to show us how fast Catalyst is.  I
> respectfully suggest that those who criticize his work should use
> their energies to /improve/ his test rather than merely dismissing it
> as worthless.  Using his code as a base, couldn't one create a test
> that was more fair?  Then someone would have a test that shows results
> that are more 'real' and give potential users more information with
> which to make a decision.

>From the off-list discussion I've already had, I know my use of the
word 'worthless' will haunt me ;)

If a benchmark reveals something in the framework core which could be
optimised, then that's great.
If it helps teach more effective idioms, or highlights something that
shouldn't be used, then that's great.
But other than that, I don't think any application benchmark will have
much worth other than for that specific application.

If I wanted to serve static pages (as the benchmark did), I wouldn't
use a framework and then pipe them through TT.
The reason I use a framework, is because I want to write a big
application with lots of pages, and have things like sessions, ORM,
templates.

I don't see /how/ the benchmark can be improved. Once you start
getting into something that complicated, all you're testing is the way
1 person writes the application in perl compared to how they write it
in ruby.
Someone else might use a different session storage-backend, which
would have different results, and your 'fastest' framework now isn't.

> Catalyst doesn't have to be the fastest in such a test.  That's
> probably never been the One True Goal of the core devs.  But providing
> people with information as to why Catalyst is good (or bad) should be
> high on the list.

Carl



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