NYCPHP Meetup

[Michael B Allen]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:57 AM, Leam Hall<leam at 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/