How good is PHP performance?

Question

This is a follow up to a recent post I\'ve seen which suggests that PHP performance is poor:

\"PHP. IS. ALWAYS. THE. BOTTLENECK. My server farms, let me show you them! P

Answer 1

The answer to "How good is PHP performance?" is "Good enough".

By that I mean that most performance issues with Websites are related to other issues like poor database design, little to no caching, CSS/JavaScript/image caching and so on.

PHP is used by some of the largest sites on the Internet so it's passed that test. Jeff Atwood argues PHP Sucks, But It Doesn't Matter. There are things to rightly criticize PHP about (e.g., inconsistent parameter order, inconsistent function naming, magic quotes, etc) but I think he's overstating the negative.

So don't choose PHP (or not) based on supposed performance because it doesn't matter (compared to everything else).