{"id":50,"date":"2005-02-19T13:59:07","date_gmt":"2005-02-19T18:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2017-02-23T10:09:08","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T15:09:08","slug":"why-the-java-community-dismisses-php","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2005\/why-the-java-community-dismisses-php\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Java community dismisses PHP."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More and more there are grumblings in the Java community &#8211; the language is showing its age and Java nerds are starting to look elsewhere &#8230; slowly.<\/p>\n<p>In their search though, I have found that Java nerds tend to ignore or dismiss PHP &#8230;  instead they look to Python and marginal languages like Ruby as the potential alternative.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WHAT&#8217;S THE DEAL?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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? <\/p>\n<p>I think much of it comes down to Java elitism and false perceptions about PHP, it comes down to these points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>PHP is a scripting language that is easy to learn &#8211; Java elitism has a natural dislike for anything easy.<\/li>\n<li>PHP has a procedural history that makes Java users snicker &#8211; despite PHP5&#8217;s full blown OO feature set.<\/li>\n<li>PHP syntax can be a little inconsistent at times &#8211; this is true.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On the flip side, Java users seem to ignore some very important facts about PHP:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>PHP is ubiquitous. It&#8217;s hard to NOT find a host that supports PHP.<\/li>\n<li>PHP is fast and scalable &#8211; Yahoo proves that.<\/li>\n<li>PHP easy learn, easy to write and is fairly concise.<\/li>\n<li>PHP has a huge community where there are plenty of open source tools available.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One argument you hear from the Java camp is that PHP is a web application only language &#8230; 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. <\/p>\n<p>Ok, you have cell phone and other small device work, but the fact of that matter is that most Java projects are web applications. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Beyond Java<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bruce Tate wrote an excellent book (&#8216;Beyond Java&#8217;) criticising Java and speculating on what the next big language will be. Not surprisingly, he spent little time on PHP. <\/p>\n<p>Not to take anything away from the book, it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WHAT AM I DOING?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think for the time being, when it comes to small and medium sized web applications, PHP can&#8217;t be beat. I have hung up my Java-shoes and now look to PHP for any new projects.<\/p>\n<p>Stefan Mischook<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More and more there are grumblings in the Java community &#8211; the language is showing its age and Java nerds are starting to look elsewhere &#8230; slowly. In their search though, I have found that Java nerds tend to ignore or dismiss PHP &#8230; instead they look to Python and marginal languages like Ruby as &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4800,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/4800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}