I recommend these two books:<p>- Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites by Martin L. Abbott & Michael T. Fisher<p>- Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications [Paperback] by Cal Henderson<p>I think they are the best resources I have found about the topic. If you are using .Net, like me this is book has good tips as well:<p>- Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Build Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server by Richard Kiessig
I don't think it has much to do with languadge, it is true some languages run slower than others, but these days almost all the languages have a variant that run in one of the VM's which most would agree are scalable.<p>To me scalability is all about architecture, and the #1 item that you can do to architect a scalable system is statelessness.
I use PHP, 350KB total of PHP+HTML code, you can have a look, I dont know how to post urls <a href="http://www.whatsthesequency.com/cookie.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.whatsthesequency.com/cookie.php</a>
this website has some GREAT content: <a href="http://highscalability.com/" rel="nofollow">http://highscalability.com/</a><p>Many articles focus on bigger, high-profile companies with unique challenges but there are tons of great articles and tips on scaling normal web apps. Check the archives.