Is object-oriented PHP slow?

Question

I used to use procedural-style PHP. Later, I used to create some classes. Later, I learned Zend Framework and started to program in OOP style. Now my programs are based on m

Answer 1

This bugs me. See...procedural code is not always spaghetti code, yet the OOP fanboys always presume that it is. I've written several procedural based web apps as well as an IRC services daemon in PHP. Amazingly, it seems to outperform most of the other ones that are out there and editing it is super easy. One of my friends who generally does OOP took a look at it and said "no code has the right to be this clean"

Conversely, I wrote my own PHP framework (out of boredom) and it was done in a purely OOP manner.

A good programmer can write great procedural code without the overhead classes bring. A bad programmer who uses OOP will always write crappy OOP code that slows things down.

There is no one right answer to which is better for PHP, but rather which is better for the exact scenario.

Answer 2

The most important thing to remember is, design first, optimize later. A better design, which is more maintainable, is better than spaghetti code. Otherwise, you might as well write your web app in assembler. After you're done, you can profile (instead of guess), and optimize what seems slowest.

Answer 3

Using large frameworks for web apps that actually do not require so large number of classes for everything is probably the worst problem that many are not aware of. Strip it down at least not to include every bit of code, keep just what you need and throw the rest.

Answer 4

Here's good article discussing the issue. I also have seen some anecdotal bench-marks that will put OOP PHP overhead at 10-15% Personally I think OOP is better choice since at the end it may perform better just because it probably was better designed and thought through. Procedural code tends to be messy and hard to maintain. So at the end - it has to be how critical is performance difference for your app vs. ability to maintain, extend and simply comprehend

Answer 5

You may reconsider to rethink your classes structure and how do you implement them. If you said that OOP is slower you may have to redesign your classes and how do you implement them. A class is just a template of an object, any bad designed method affects all the objects of that class.

Use inheritance and polimorfism the most you can, this will effectively reduce the amount of behaviors and independent methods your classes need, but first off all you need to create a good inheritance map, abstracting your first or mother classes as much as you can.

It is not a problem about how many classes do you have, the problem is how many methods, properties or fields they have and how well are those methods structured. Inheritance reduces the amount of methods to design drammatically and the amount of code to be compiled too.