On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:57 AM, Leam Hall<l...@reuel.net> wrote: > Gang, I'll confess that I'm happy to support Java as it provides lots of > reasons to upgrade hardware and buy newer/faster machines. However, from a > systems engineering standpoint, I'm baffled by the recurring inefficiency of > hundreds of corporate programmers... > > What does Java provide that PHP can't do faster and with lighter resource > usage?
The reasons are mostly non-technical. Java and PHP are both fine languages. But Java had a strong position in the late 90's with backing from what was once a highly respected company. At that same time PHP was still held together with duct tape and string. Today the Java and PHP are much more competitive which is why it has provoked such contentious debate. Java and virtually all third party libraries are almost completely platform independent. If you write something on Windows, it has a very good chance of running on Linux. But PHP applications are faster. This is in large part due to the fact that PHP is mostly a glue language for C and it's various libraries which are optimized for the platform on which they were compiled. But again, the reasons for choosing PHP vs. Java are usually not technical at all. My personal opinion is that if you're a Windows shop and you treat software development like a logistical problem and you need to hire and fire programmers like a commodity, then use Java. It's much more forgiving than PHP. To be effective with PHP you must really understand PHP well. If you're really good at PHP it can be much more powerful than Java. Of course most people fall into the Windows commodity programmer category and so I predict Java will be around for a while. But PHP will continue to dominate with power programmers. Mike -- Michael B Allen Java Active Directory Integration http://www.ioplex.com/ _______________________________________________ New York PHP User Group Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
