Comments on: Andreessen: PHP succeeding where Java isn't

Netscape pioneer Marc Andreessen says the scripting language is better, simpler, and has a brighter future than Java.

[Lolo Gecko]

phooey

:)

PHP vs Java

Lets not talk about learning curves and which language is harder than others etc. Of course this is important for budgets etc.

I go to work and develop J2EE application for 8 hours and then come back home and freelance for another 3 hours where I am building a OO PHP application.

So from a perspective of a developer who programs both PHP and Java, I get more satisfaction working on PHP than Java. I feel more creative without worrying about application server's J2EE implementation, hibernate's caching issues etc etc.

I don't know about the future, but as a developer I would always prefer PHP over Java.

[microsoft slayer]

PHP is more FUN to program in

I do the same thing as you and I agree that PHP empowers a programmer to be more creative without too much restrictions. As for performance, PHP is built on top of pre-compiled C/C++ API's, so it is extremely fast! You want a web app. built on top an assembly language platform? Choose PHP.

Python is a better alternative to PHP

Python is a newer entrant that shares the benefits of PHP but has cleaner syntax and a lot more productive for developing large applications.
Google uses it and so does Industrial light and magic of star wars fame !

eh, no thanks

Python's a fine enough language, but I really dont like its 'cleaner' syntax.

[rbanffy]

Can we report the article as offensive?

Now, seriously, what could we expect from a person that was hired by Zend (http://www.zend.com/news/zendpr.php?id=107) to generate media attention to say?

Not to say that PHP is a bad language/platform. It is well suited for very simple things and very small teams. PHP has a very low entry-barrier, so, I can see the average competence of a PHP person is lower than a Java person (and both are lower than a Python or Ruby guy). PHP just appeals to the wrong audience.

I wouldn't risk a big and complex application to be written in PHP by average PHP programmers.

And, since all Netscape code had to be thrown out before Mozilla could walk (it was considered "garbage" if I remember correctly) Andreesen is not the person I would ask about quality.

[microsoft slayer]

PHP is faster than Java

You're just jealous that PHP is faster than Java. How so? It's wrapped around C/C++ functions which makes it alot faster and less resource intensive than a J2EE server which loads a large JDK into memory from the time you start it!

[Betty Roper]

Oh Marc...

Has he been right about anything, yet? This guy's career baffles me. He walks from one flop to the next and people still want to know what he thinks...

[pbreitenbach]

Mosaic, Netscape?

Betty, let us know when you invent something as successful as the web browser. Even Opsware is a $500 million company.

[pbreitenbach]

PHP is fine for large and complex services

Yahoo is using PHP extensively and SugarCRM is quite complex.

The whole notion that you need .net or Java for enterprise apps is bunk. LAMP works fine.

[taliesan]

Yes, But You Need Good Programmers and Good IDEs

Yes, you can program an enterprise application in PHP, but like you do with Java, you need discipline and good programming skills to do so.

The problem with PHP is the usual one of a site starting out small, getting some usage, being added to, growing and ending up a mess of spagetti code.

This problem occours with JSP as well, but GOOD refactoring IDEs (IntelliJ's IDEA for example) make it a simpler task to bring the beast under control.

I haven't seen any IDEs for PHP that have the range of features and stability that say IDEA has.

[taliesan]

Java Can Be Just As Cost Effective

As far as free software goes, Java can be just as cost effective as PHP.

Your LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) simply becomes Linux Apache/Tomcat MySQL Java/JSP.

No part of that costs any money except for the MySQL licence. MySQL has very robust JDBC drivers and Apache integrates just as well with Tomcat as it does with PHP.

[microsoft slayer]

Java isn't for high traffic websites

Java falls flat on it's face when it needs to serve millions of users (e.g. friendster). I rest my case.

A lot of hooey

While you're farting around on Friendster, eBay is raking in the cash
from its millions of users. eBay is built on Java. BTW, I myself get
tired of SourceForge's hiccups (PHP), and the many PHP sites that
give me the 'can't connect to database' error.

I'm not even a Java fan (I develop 'LAPP' - Linux, Apache,
PostgreSQL, Python), but I'm amazed at the ignorance displayed by
the fan boys on this board. Hope you PHP guys monitor BugTraq!

PHP at Yahoo!

not scaling ???
watch this: http://public.yahoo.com/~radwin/talks/php-at-yahoo-zend2005.pdf

[Bill Dautrive]

re

1. yahoo is hardly a model of a good site

2. php can scale but requires more discipline then the more rigid java

3. who cares?

Java is faster then most people give it credit for.

Java is an easy langauge to learn

Java can be used for any programming project you can think of. It is not the best choice for everything of course, but it is not limited.

Personally I like c and C++ a bit better, but always enjoy using java also. php doesn't feel like a professional language. Sure it is quite nice and can do powerful stuff with it, but I put it in the same category as VB, a fun toy.

What I would like to see is a langauge with the clean syntax and garbage collection of java with the what makes C++ so good. Basically a cleaned up C++, and it is a mess, with garbage collection and a logical, orderly library. Funny thing about C++ is that it is such a huge, sprawling language, but lacks basic features that java has, like a networking and GUI library. I always thought it odd that there are a million functions to take in input in C++, but sockets are not part of the standard language.

The Real Differences

Having worked on a variety of websites using a variety of technologies (PHP,Perl,Python,Java/tomcat)
I'm a real believer in right tool for the job, all programming languages suck, they each suck in their own way, and in any given situation you want to use the one that sucks the least for the task at hand.

PHP is great for relatively simple templating tasks, but sucks hard if you need to do something that maintains even small in-memory data structures across multiple requests. If you want to experience true pain try doing something that requires an event queue or an in memory search index in PHP, it's possible but not exactly fun.

Java is better at supporting large teams, all the bureaucratic boilerplate starts to make sense when you need to keep twenty people from stepping on each others toes. Generally speaking, for a smaller team that doesn't need the overhead of java, you're better off using Python or Ruby to do those things that need to be run as smaller daemons.

PHP5 is a new language that has some resemblance to classic PHP, but the sad truth is that most of the PHP currently in production use is PHP4 with all the security headaches that go with things like register_globals etc.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to web programming. Don't get stuck in the trap of thinking that the programming language you know is the right tool for every job; it isn't. You will need to learn a variety of tools before you can consider yourself to be even a journeyman programmer.

[microsoft slayer]

Java fills the last 10%

of a business web app. The other 90% you could do more effeciently and quicker in PHP.

[WebProgrammer]

Java is a joke for web apps.

As a Sun Certified Java 2 Programmer since 2000 I can say that Java has its place, but it is an absolute joke for web apps. Unless you actually *enjoy* taking 10+ times as long as necessary to get anything done, PHP would usually be a better choice. That said, PHP isn't really so hot either; it is an immature, sloppy, toy language suitable only for web apps. It's good for beginners though.

Java is slow for development not because of its complexity but because of its verbosity and the fact that it has to be recompiled constantly. Throw in several layers of J2EE stack and you can end up with enough bloat to make you want to lose your lunch.

I can think of several options superior in most ways to either Java/Struts/J2EE or PHP:

- ColdFusion (Java internally but with more out-of-the-box functionality than anything)
- ASP or ASP.NET with Perl (i.e. Apache::ASP or ActiveState's PerlASPX) Perl is better for web programming than any of the standard ASP / .NET languages.
- Ruby on Rails (Ruby is probably the most beautiful language in existence, although Rails is still beta and has performance issues)
- Catalyst (Perl MVC framework similar to Ruby on Rails but with pluggable MVC components and much better performance)

Java fast? You mean in software performance or in developing time???

got some proof that java-development can be faster than php-dev.? that'd be interesting ...

another example for a serious and sensemaking php-app? - e.g. siemens doing powerplant-steering, lufthansa (german airline) ticketing system ....... but seriously ... there IS a market for J2EE, but about 80% of complexity in webapp-devpmt. can be done faster by php. prerequisite: real good developers. sw-quality, scalability, robustness is a question of people- not of technology-quality. just my 2 cents ...

[Mendz]

Unfortunately for Java...

... it's never fast design time, development time or run time. I'll stick to .Net.

And then there is WebObjects

I develop in both languages Java and PHP and I can definitely say
that without WebObjects I would prefer PHP. However, WebObjects
tips the scales way in favor of Java. Yes it has a bit of a learning
curve but now I can develop, test and deploy much faster than the
competition and that is leading to success for our subscription
based application.

WebObjects Rocks!

[Mendz]

These dev tools and products...

ASP + COM+ vs. PHP vs. JSP + J2EE + Java vs. Cold Fusion vs. ASP.Net vs. JSP + JSF + J2EE + Java... etc. Of course they can deliver. Any developer who wants to use any of these would definitely want to deliver. But the question is how fast and how good? It depends on the knowledge and skills of the architects and developers. If you know what you are using, if you know what you are doing, then you know how to get things right... I've used all of these products... I've experienced them all... They all have something good to offer... Eventually, I prefer .Net because it delivers better productivity, better performance, better maintenance, better manageability and better tools. I don't know what you know... but these I know...

[microsoft slayer]

.Net sucks

You have to pay microsoft license fee's for everything including the inept o/s.

[George Cole]

definitely want to deliver

http://www.analogstereo.com/lexus_ls_owners_manual.htm

[LBL_Lowkee]

I happened across this page while trying to find some tutorials for learning JAVA as a PHP developer and I have to say.. seeing as, 4 years after this article hit, PHP is the language behind most of the top 10 web sites on the net today.. it seems the JAVA fanboys (amazing how many veteran programmers still act like fanboys) need to face reality.. PHP owns the web and is only getting stronger. Heck, back when this article was written, I ran a #1 site with 30K concurrent users in PHP during my 1st year of programming. Since then, many times over, I have looked back at old code wondering what I was thinking when I wrote it. I was new to PHP and still managed to single-handedly write a web app which a team of coders today still has difficulty with. It seems the JAVA purists need to lift their heads and look around in between late night coding sessions, trying to make up for the thousands of extra lines of code JAVA requires over PHP. What requires 15 lines of code in JAVA, I can do in 1 line of PHP. That is the power of PHP.. oh yeah, and PHP powers 70% of the net. Seems I'm not the only one who agrees.

Frankly, this most recent comment sums up the JAVA purist mindset:

1. Yahoo is hardly a model of a good site
Yeah, the #1 site ever runs on PHP.. it must prove how poorly PHP scales.. Add Facebook to that list, too.

2. php can scale but requires more discipline then the more rigid java
Okay, so the argument is.. "Us JAVA programmers must be locked into good coding because we're too lazy to make the correct choice ourselves". If you plan for scale, you can scale. The 'rigid' argument works as well as passing a law to require people to eat healthy. Long term planning is a part of life.

- Java is faster then most people give it credit for.
So was DOS 2.1

- Java is an easy language to learn
Easy to learn and easy to use are vastly different things. I challenge you to write a "Hello world" web app in less than 5 lines of JAVA code, because I can do it in one line of PHP. That makes me 5 times more effecient then a JAVA coder, meaning my web apps will have 5 times the features in the same timeframe.

- Java can be used for any programming project you can think of. It is not the best choice for everything of course, but it is not limited.
I only code in PHP and I have never uttered the words "I can't do that".. ever.

- PHP doesn't feel like a professional language. Sure it is quite nice and can do powerful stuff with it, but I put it in the same category as VB, a fun toy.
My favorite argument. This is what nearly every monumental invention was called upon creation.. remember Microsoft? Apple? You are browsing on the very creation of a garage hacker. You are moving a cursor with the very invention the execs at IBM scoffed at. Face it, you need to get your heads out of your suits and realize guys in t-shirts can be, and are, smarter and more forward thinking than you are.

PHP = Simple, Powerful, Efficient, Focused, A true creation
JAVA = Complex, Powerful, Inefficient, Bloated, A wannabe