PHP Succeeding Where Java Has Failed

ficken writes "Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen recently announced his prediction that PHP will be more popular than Java for building web-based applications." From the article: "Wooing programmers is nothing new in the computing industry, where players constantly jockey to establish their products as an essential foundation. Indeed, many credit Microsoft's success to its highly regarded programming tools, which make it easier for developers to write software that run on Windows. PHP has caught on widely. About 22 million Web sites employ it, and useage is steadily increasing. About 450 programmers have privileges to approve changes to the software. Major companies that employ PHP include Yahoo, Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online." Meanwhilie, Piersky writes "Zend has announced its rival to .NET and J2EE, with the Zend PHP Framework. In a press release, they stated that it will be 'A Web application framework which will standardize the way PHP applications are built. The Zend PHP Framework will accelerate and improve the development and deployment of mission-critical PHP Web applications'. This will for part of Zend's PHP Collaboration Project"

I am completely unbiased...

[Fortyseven]

As a PHP coder and Java hater, I am completely in agreement with whatever the hell this article says. :D

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Coke succeeding where peanuts fail.

What? The two do different things.

Guessed wrong again!

[MojoSF]

I've resisted specialization for most of my career, giving me breadth but not depth. It's hurt me in job interviews where the hiring managers want specialized expertise instead of intelligence and problem solving skills.

So I decided that I'd focus on Java for my depth. Now I read that I guessed wrong again!

Maybe I should have gone C#/.ASP.

No, Python and Zope are where it's at!

No way, Ruby is the way to go. Arrrgh!

Cliche Elitist Reply

[sethadam1]

To save everyone the time and trouble, let's cover it here:

* PHP sucks.
* PHP is for n00bs.
* PHP is usually poorly written.
* PHP is a scripting language and you can't do anything but write web pages with it.
* PHP sucks because the function names are inconsistent.
* PHP is slow.
* PHP isn't capable of working in a real enterprise.
* Real coders use Perl.
* PHP doesn't scale.

Does that about cover it?

Re:PHP Desktop Apps?!

[Dukael_Mikakis]

It's a great project, but is definitely not meant for large-scale apps.

What are you talking about? I'm posting this right now on my php-coded web-bro&%($(*#&%#&@&NO CARRIER

Re:Pardon me while I roll my eyes

[Gilmoure]

Don't you know that non-partisanship on Slashdork won't be tolerated? If your comment can't be fodder for flamewar, you may be modded down (and cute bunnies won't like you anymore).

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless, of course, you put them together [marshbunny.com].

Whether this is some kind of analogy for the actual topic at hand is an exercise for the reader. :P

Parallel universe?

[lorcha]

I think Andreessen is operating in a parallel universe that is different from the one in which we live.

Fact: PHP was released on June 8, 1995 [wikipedia.org].
Fact: The Java Servlet spec (first server-side Java) was released over 4 years later on October 1, 1999 [sun.com].

After 5 years, Java as caught up with and far surpassed PHP in terms of usage, tools, maturity, etc. Java is showing no signs of slowing down. I don't know what iPlanet Marc is on, but on my planet, if you want to do any server-side web programming, you better know J2EE or .NET.

Also funny was this quote from TFA:

"I think Flash is one of the most exciting technologies out there that's almost on the verge of great success and never quite achieving it," Andreessen said.

Uh, yeah, Marc. That falls solidly in to the category of "thing we wish were true but aren't." I wish Flash wasn't so popular, but the fact is it's used very heavily.

Re:Since When Has Java Failed?

[drew]

There is a reason that eBay handles 1 billion transactions a day on Java.

Because they run it on a million servers?

Re:I am completely unbiased...

[Xugumad]

Note to self - write article claiming people who use the online name "Xugumad" at 100% more productive than regular employees :)

J2EE Sucks

[multipartmixed]

I don't write in either Java or PHP -- I'm a Grade-A C-slinger -- but here are my REAL-WORLD experiences with both platforms.

C Coders perspective:

PHP - I wrote some objects for PHP5 about eight months ago. The documentation blows, I had to use gdb and a notepad to figure out some of the idiotic details for accessing the symbol table and so forth. The Horrible, horrible dangling-if-macros are terrible. Took 3 days (from "I know nothing" to "I'm done and debugged").

Java - I wrote some JNI interfaces. Actually, they interfaced to the exact same code as the PHP5 modules! (Making a useful C library, encapsulated in C++ objects usable across Java and PHP platforms). Easy stuff! I used cxxwrap. Took 1 day.

Manager's Perspective (I wear that hat, too): PHP is pretty cool, as long as you treat it like a programming language and perform proper data abstraction, code layout, blah-de-blah. "Web guys" need to learn awful fast that "Web Programming" had better be treated the same was as system programming, or large applications become difficult to manage. PHP does little to enforce this (hey, just stick some code right in the middle of the style sheet!), but good discipline will solve all of PHP's major problems.

It's also nice when PHP the guys ask for help, I say "C library function XXXX will solve your problem" or "the underlying OS call behaves this way, that's probably why you're having issues..." and it transliterates directly into PHP. (And I can look at the PHP sources and actually understand them).

Java, on the other hand -- I can't take my years of experience with the UNIX OS and help anybody coding on Java, because it has absolutely nothing in common with the underlying OS, POSIX, etc. Now, that may not be all that bad, but it's damned frustrating when you plan on doing common, every day operations that work anywhere else BUT Java, and have the platform smacks you in the face.

For example, say you need to link two different web hierarchies together (say, images from your apache server and the same images in your tomcat container). You'd make a software link, right? OH, NOOOOO, you make a soft link and then you spend the next three hours figuring out why the fuck it doesn't work, because those asshats who designed the platform didn't like them, so you instead have to hunt through cryptic XML configuration files to find out how to turn on some asshat undocumented directive to allow a BASIC FUNCTION OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM.

For fuck's sake! Now, I suppose the above criticism is more a J2EE criticism than a Java critism, but, if we want to compare apples to apples, .php vs. .jsp seems right on target. So let me enunciate very clearly:

J2EE SUCKS HUGE DONKEY BALLS.

Essential redux: Each PHP guy gets more done in a day than two Java guys get done in a week.

Why? How can this be? Java solves everything except world hunger!

The Java guys spend three days a week debugging shit that's gone wrong with Tomcat on one server or another. It's always some incompatibility here, surprise-bite-you-in-the-ass-there. Two applications on the same server use the same JAR file, so the containers refuse to load. That sort of thing. Sheer idiocy.

Then they spend one day debugging shit that's gone wrong with Eclipse (or its mangling of the CVS repository, or some ant dependency problem, or)... then they spend half a day each writing code, and another half day synchronizing their changes. And meanwhile they whine that 256 megs of RAM isn't enough to edit a fucking text file (and do NOTHING else at the same time).

And Lord help you if you want to add another table to the database and want them to do something as silly as retrieve the data from it and put it on a web page. Apparently, this is incredibly difficult, because it involves creating new hibernate objects, which of course fucks everything else in the ass, well, because, something called hotspot didn't get it's monthly fucking hormone shot or som