More and more there are grumblings in the Java community – the language is showing its age and Java nerds are starting to look elsewhere … slowly.

In their search though, I have found that Java nerds tend to ignore or dismiss PHP … instead they look to Python and marginal languages like Ruby as the potential alternative.

WHAT’S THE DEAL?

I have to ask myself, why are Java nerds ignoring one of the most popular languages in the world? Why are they ignoring a technology endorsed by IBM, Oracle and used by Yahoo?

I think much of it comes down to Java elitism and false perceptions about PHP, it comes down to these points:

• PHP is a scripting language that is easy to learn – Java elitism has a natural dislike for anything easy.
• PHP has a procedural history that makes Java users snicker – despite PHP5’s full blown OO feature set.
• PHP syntax can be a little inconsistent at times – this is true.

On the flip side, Java users seem to ignore some very important facts about PHP:

• PHP is ubiquitous. It’s hard to NOT find a host that supports PHP.
• PHP is fast and scalable – Yahoo proves that.
• PHP easy learn, easy to write and is fairly concise.
• PHP has a huge community where there are plenty of open source tools available.
• PHP can be maintainable: there are database abstraction frameworks (PEAR DB), there are templating frameworks, MVC and other frameworks so that you can build maintainable scalable applications in PHP.

One argument you hear from the Java camp is that PHP is a web application only language … pratically speaking. This is indeed the case but what about Java? Most Java projects are web applications, Java on the desktop is but a small fraction of the Java work being done.

Ok, you have cell phone and other small device work, but the fact of that matter is that most Java projects are web applications.

Beyond Java

Bruce Tate wrote an excellent book (‘Beyond Java’) criticising Java and speculating on what the next big language will be. Not surprisingly, he spent little time on PHP.

Not to take anything away from the book, it’s really good. Nonetheless, from the perspective of someone who wants to make a living, it only makes sense to strongly consider a language that is so well established and easy to work with.

WHAT AM I DOING?

I think for the time being, when it comes to small and medium sized web applications, PHP can’t be beat. I have hung up my Java-shoes and now look to PHP for any new projects.

Stefan Mischook

For the last several years, when asked about what programming language that I thought people should jump into, I would automatically make Java my first choice – things are changing now.

There is growing appreciation for flexible dynamic scripting languages (like PHP, Python) over strongly-typed compiled languages like Java.

Why?

I see two big reasons why people are looking to the scripting languages as a viable alternative to Java:

1. Speed of development.
2. Ease of use.

There is no argument (among sane people,) that you can build applications in a scripting language in a fraction of the time that it takes to build the same application in Java.

The Java zealots would argue:

1. Scripting code will not be maintainable.
2. Scripting code will run too slow

About code maintainability:

The reality is that code maintainability has as much to-do with the programmer as it does with the language – you can write crappy Java that is not easy to maintain or extend … I’ve seen it more than once – maybe even 3 times!

The same thing can be said of scripting languages …

Another interesting point, is that you can usually write an application with far less code than you would in Java – many times we are talking 1/4 to 1/5 the code! A thousand lines of code is much easier to maintain than 5000!

About speed of code execution:

Again, many times that comes down to the programmers skill. Having said that, the evidence shows that for many applications, the scripting languages out there run more than fast enough.

Anecdote: PHP seems to be fast enough for Yahoo.

The old argument that Java people used when defending Java’s speed (relative to C++ ) can be applied to scripting languages: computers are really fast these days … as such the difference in execution speed (most of the time) is negligible.

Java’s ever increasing complexity- benefits the few at the expense of the many:

It seems to me that the Java community has made the platform more and more complex (in favor of huge projects,) at the expense of productivity of small to medium sized projects. The problem is, that the vast majority of the projects out there are small and medium sized.

Conclusion

I’ve written most of my software in Java over the last several years, I like Java. But these days I don’t look to Java anymore because it just takes too much time to get anything done. Even small Java applications have a lot of overhead in just setting up – xml descriptors, frameworks etc. I’m not even going to get into the verbosity of the code itself …

These days I look to PHP to write my web apps – it’s just too easy and fast to ignore. PHP has got some baggage from its’ roots of being a ‘web designers language’ but it is fast, has support from big players like IBM and most important , it’s everywhere!

What about Ruby?

Looks very cool, but it is a marginal language – nobody uses it these days. Last I checked, in comes in as the 28th most used language – below COBOL, Python, VB … you get the idea.