There are many different techniques to write applications. Some are specially targeted on developing web applications.

The most common one is of course PHP, but one has to ask “why?” !

For a performant website you should use the most up-to-date software in order to save resources. You should use software with speed built in it. This speed is by no means provided by PHP. The interpreter is run for every site-call on every “.php” file, which means, depending on the connection between the HTTP-Server and the interpreter, that one or more workers are doing this job.

This has pros and cons. On the one hand you save resources, while there are no connections, on the other hand, when there are some, PHP will use more resources than Node.js or other platforms.

Furthermore real modern features, like realtime connections, are not supported by PHP in any way. Of course we have AJAX, which can be abused to simulate a bidirectional connection to a server, but that is not what we should be doing in 2014.

We live in a time, where the web still uses a text-protocol. We should at least make the best out of it and PHP is by no means a solution.

Node would make things possible, that PHP lacks of, but also would not harm anyone else. It’s faster and more lightweight in any way and also provides more functionallity.

If shared hosters would allow Node.js for a cheap plan, that an average programming-newcomer comes up with, we would possibly see a lot better things on the web in just a matter of time.