Posted by Joshua Cranmer on 11/15/07 22:13

flarosa wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm wondering if I can get a reasonably civil (without starting any
> huge wars) opinion on how server-side PHP compares to server-side
> Java.

Civility in language comparison can be asking a lot sometimes.

I am going to start by saying that I have very limited experience in
this question: I've worked a total of 1 PHP projects and 0 Java EE projects.

> I've been strictly a Java developer for almost 10 years now, and I'm
> pretty happy with it. However, I can't help but notice that there are
> a significant amount of PHP-based development projects where I live,
> and I've also noticed when searching around the internet for ready-
> made web applications that a lot of them are in PHP.

My general impression is "stay with what you are comfortable with if
feasible."

> As an object-oriented programmer I've always assumed PHP was more of a
> scripting language for doing things on individual web pages or writing
> small applications and that Java/J2EE was better positioned for
> writing large applications, but maybe that's no longer true.

PHP's largest use case may well be scripts or simple applications, but
that by no means indicates that it has to be used as such. At times, it
seems to me that PHP is torn between catering to scripts or catering to
large applications.

Above all, my biggest problem with PHP is how it appears to interact
with OOP. To me--this may and probably does vary between people--PHP has
a weary relationship: it wants to use it but doesn't quite want to go
that extra step. Since I came on to my only PHP project after the brunt
of it had been developed, this may simply be a manifestation of the
other developers.

My $0.02... not that it's worth much these days...
--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth

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