Performance Evaluation of Subroutines Call in PHP

TL;DR

This paper experimentally evaluates how subroutine calls impact PHP application performance, highlighting the trade-offs between code reusability and execution speed.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on the performance costs of subroutine calls in PHP, aiding developers in optimizing code structure.

Findings

Subroutine calls increase execution time in PHP applications.

The performance degradation varies with the number of calls and code complexity.

Using subroutines can significantly impact application responsiveness.

Abstract

One of the most popular and basic principles in programming is the DRY principle (don't repeat yourself). According to it, code duplication should be avoided within a single application. Instead of duplicating it, the code can be exported to/as a subroutine, which can be called as many times as needed and where needed. The same principle is fully adopted and integrated in the object-oriented design as well. It makes the code better structured and more flexible, and significantly facilitates future updates and development of the application. However, there is one problem - cascaded methods calls. Each subroutine call has a price - the code execution time increases and the application performance decreases. The aim of this paper is to conduct a series of experimental analyses to determine how much the performance of a PHP application decreases when the code is exported to subroutines and their subsequent call.