[The information in this post has been greatly updated - basically, Drupal 6 will enjoy even more of a performance advantage over Drupal 5 than is indicated here]
The more one learns about Drupal 6 the more there is to like. A while ago, right before Drupal 5 was released, I heard someone reference it being a 'developer's release' (think maybe it was Dries). That seems like an apt way to describe Drupal 6 these days. If the anti-CMS, ya-gotta-roll-your-own-or-it-stinks critics have a last breath left, this might be what snuffs it out once and for all. The list of new features, optimizations, and/or technologies introduced in Drupal 6 seems destined to light up the antennae of developers everywhere.
Performance, performance, performance
If there is any doubt about whether there will be performance improvements for Drupal 6, wonder no longer. Benchmarks, made using these standards, shows that the current, pre-beta, version of Drupal 6 performs 19.5% faster than Drupal 5.2 does when NO page caching is on. A healthy improvement by any standard, but even more so when one considers the following:
