Myth Busters

gray concrete statue under blue sky during daytime

Myth Busters

There's a lot of misinformation about web application performance. Learn what's worth worrying about and what isn't.

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Myth: Single quotes are faster than double quotes

A persistent myth holds that the choice of single quotes is more performant than double quotes. This is nonsense.

black and silver turntable on brown wooden table

Myth: Relational databases are too slow and don't scale

Relational databases are a good fit for most use cases, but there are some gotchas to be aware of when using them.

Myth: Using an ORM will slow your site down

You'll often hear misleading claims that using an ORM makes for slower database queries. This is actually due to naive usage.

Myth: Performance is a matter of choosing the right framework

Performance benchmarks may seem a useful guide when picking a framework to develop your application in, but they need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Myth: PHP is slower than language X

There are languages where the runtime is faster than PHP. However, that's often irrelevant since the language runtime isn't usually a significant bottleneck.

Myth: You need to use Octane to get acceptable performance from Laravel

Laravel Octane is a useful way of improving application performance. However, it can't help with everything and you shouldn't use it as a crutch.