{"id":237,"date":"2009-08-19T13:55:14","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T18:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/24.183.55.167:8101\/wordpress\/?p=237"},"modified":"2012-08-14T20:53:37","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T01:53:37","slug":"does-most-popular-imply-the-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/does-most-popular-imply-the-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the most popular imply the best?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I had a discussion with my co-worker on the best languages for web applications. While I argued that Perl, and Ruby performs better than PHP, my co-worker had an opposite opinion. He believed that PHP is the best language overall because it is widely used. It brings me to think of a question, does the most popular imply the best?<\/p>\n

Let’s answer this question by examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Category<\/strong><\/td>\nMost Popular<\/strong><\/td>\nThe Best<\/strong><\/td>\nWhy The Best?<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
OS (Desktop)<\/td>\nWindows<\/td>\nOS X<\/td>\nUser friendly, secure, stability, and performance.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
OS (Server)<\/td>\nLinux, Windows Server<\/td>\nFreeBSD<\/td>\nFast, stable, secure, simple design, and centralize management.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Browsers<\/td>\nInternet Explorer, Firefox<\/td>\nSafari<\/td>\nFast, secure, stable<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Programming languages (Desktop\/GUI)<\/td>\nC#, Java<\/td>\nC, C++<\/td>\nFast, secure<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Programming languages (Web\/Server)<\/td>\nPHP, ASP<\/td>\nRuby, Python, Perl<\/td>\nFast, fewer lines of code.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Database<\/td>\nMySQL, Oracle<\/td>\nBerkeley DB, Tokyo Cabinet<\/td>\nFast I\/O, simple design, smaller size of the database file.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Software company to work for<\/td>\nMicrosoft<\/td>\nStart-up<\/td>\nRewards, opportunity to grow<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I think there are several reasons why the most popular things are not the best.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Most popular thing is always backed by the best marketing strategies. Marketing strategies is simply a way to let people know about the product and convince them to use it. It has nothing to do with the quality of the product at all.<\/p>\n

Example: The ads of Internet Explorer 8 look very attractive. Is it the most secure browser ever?<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Most people are followers. They are not good in selecting good products from bad products(i.e., filtering the noise). They believe that the choice form most people (most popular) should be the best one. This is similar to election. The choice of most people is more likely to be better.<\/p>\n

Example: Is MySQL really the best database?<\/p>\n

3<\/strong>. Different people have different preferences. So a popular product must have the general taste. For example, an extremely hot and spicy food may be better to the body, but it is not as popular as a mild one, because the number of people that can take extremely hot and spicy food is smaller.<\/p>\n

Example: Linux is very easy to configure comparing to FreeBSD (GUI vs command line) from the end-user perspective, but it is less powerful and stable overall.<\/p>\n

Conclusions:<\/p>\n

Think twice before your move.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I had a discussion with my co-worker on the best languages for web applications. While I argued that Perl, and Ruby performs better than PHP, my co-worker had an Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[20,3,171,12,172],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-benchmark","tag-firefox","tag-freebsd","tag-os-x","tag-php"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1sqzr-3P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1927,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/phphow-to-get-the-number-of-cpu-cores-in-fedora-ubuntu-and-freebsd\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":0},"title":"[PHP]How to get the number of CPU cores in Fedora, Ubuntu, and FreeBSD","author":"Derrick","date":"December 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am working on a PHP application which needs to be deploy to multiple places. One of the variables is the number of CPU core. Since each server has different number of CPU cores, I need to specify the number of CPU core in my application for each server. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computer Problems"","block_context":{"text":"Computer Problems","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/technology\/computer-problems-computer-help-pc-support\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":87,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/performance-benchmark-freebsd-vs-ubuntu-vs-os-x-which-one-is-better\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":1},"title":"Performance Benchmark: FreeBSD vs Ubuntu vs OS X, which one is better?","author":"Derrick","date":"May 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"If you cannot decide whether you should go with FreeBSD or Ubuntu (or Linux), check out this article: FreeBSD or Linux in 6 Simple Questions Recently I am working on building a web farm which is formed by three ancient time computers (The sum of their ages is older than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FreeBSD"","block_context":{"text":"FreeBSD","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/sever-problem\/freebsd\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/installing-apache-php-mysql-and-memcached-on-freebsd\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":2},"title":"Installing Apache, PHP, MySQL and MemCached on FreeBSD","author":"Derrick","date":"May 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my note on how to to install Apache, PHP, MySQL and MemCached on a FreeBSD 7 Box. 1. MySQL Go to the mysql52-server port directory by typing the command: cd \/usr\/ports\/databases\/mysql51-server Build the port by typing: make BUILD_OPTIMIZED=yes BUILD_STATIC=yes Using these two options will speed up the execution\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FreeBSD"","block_context":{"text":"FreeBSD","link":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/category\/sever-problem\/freebsd\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3514,"url":"https:\/\/icesquare.com\/wordpress\/freebsdphp-does-not-work-after-upgrading-apache-to-2-2-27\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":3},"title":"[FreeBSD]PHP does not work after upgrading Apache to 2.2.27","author":"Derrick","date":"April 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I upgraded the Apache to 2.2.27 on my FreeBSD box via portmaster. The upgrade went very smooth. After the upgrade, I found that Apache no longer rendered the PHP page correctly. In the other words, it displayed the source code of the PHP files instead of executing the code. 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