Slashdot quoting a zdnet[1] article: http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?m=1333
"Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen recently announced his prediction that PHP will be more popular than Java for building web-based applications. ... PHP has caught on widely. About 22 million Web sites employ it, and useage is steadily increasing. ... Major companies that employ PHP include Yahoo, Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online." It also mentions Zend's press release[2] on the Zend PHP Framework, "which will standardize the way PHP applications are built...accelerate and improve the development and deployment of mission-critical PHP Web applications." [1] http://zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Andreessen_PHP_succeeding_where_Java_isn_t/0,2000061733,39218171,00.htm [2] http://www.zend.com/news/zendpr.php?id=109 One of the comments on this made the point that PHP performed better than Perl in this benchmark: http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2002-SANE-DynCont/html/dyncont.html#tth_sEc4.1 which actually shows the opposite: Table 1: Average generated traffic in kb/s Protocol Traffic FastCGI 2250 mod_perl 1631 PHP 1248 Servlets 801 ...FastCGI is the fastest protocol we tested. It managed to handle more concurrent clients than every other protocol...It also managed to produce more traffic than every other protocol. Mod_perl also provided satisfactory performance and in fact managed to scale very well when the think time raised, doubling the served clients for a 3 second increase. PHP's performance was characterized by non-linear increase of the served clients as think time increased, but the results are satisfactory if we consider the wealth of features it incorporates. Servlets on the other hand performed rather poorly, managing to serve 75% less clients that FastCGI did. [They pointed out elsewhere that the Servlet engine they used, Tomcat, is not among the fastest engines.] [...] Lessons Learned The results of PHP were not what we expected. Being exposed to the hype that rules on the Internet about PHP, we expected it to be at least at the second place. It did not scale well (see BENCH4) and exhausted system processing power when it run, leaving it unusable. Other chatter of interest: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13844154 Pardon me while I roll my eyes by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21, @10:18AM (#13844154) "Java is much more programmer-friendly than C or C++, or was for a few years there until they made just as complicated. It's become arguably even harder to learn than C++," Andreessen said. And the mantle of simplicity is being passed on: "PHP is such is an easier environment to develop in than Java." This is just silly. PHP is far from "simpler" than Java. PHP *is* better suited to basic page generation tasks. Its syntax is easy to learn, and it's quick to get a page running. However, any sort of complexity thrown at the system starts making PHP look difficult and Java look easy. For example, I often write web applications that require that user sessions communicate with each other. Now this is stupidly simple in Java thanks to the use of Singletons or named derivitives. One can easily build a chat room, for example, whereas PHP begins to get a bit more tricky. Now throw really complex needs like PDF generation, Dynamic Excel Spreadsheets, XML/SOAP/XML-RPC/EDI communication, mainframe interfaces, off-brand databases, performance caches, and other large scale features, and suddenly Java doesn't look so hard anymore. PHP, OTOH, begins screaming for mercy. One would think that Andreessen would understand how to use the right tool for the right job, but apparently not. He should be kept away from the press. He always manages to sound 50 IQ points dumber than he actually is. (A common problem when dealing with the press.) http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13845369 Re:Pardon me while I roll my eyes by hoggoth (414195) on Friday October 21, @12:35PM (#13845369) > One would think that Andreessen would understand how to use the > right tool for the right job, but apparently not Andreessen knows exactly how to use the right tool for the job, like a surgeon. His tool is the media, and his job, as a new member of the board at Zend, is to promote PHP. http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13844138 Help me out here by wren337 (182018) on Friday October 21, @10:15AM (#13844138) Doesn't PHP tend to be embedded in the page? I thought it was a more direct comparison to JSP than to Java. And like JSP I expected it violated the seperation of logic and presentation that I love so dearly. I've been avoiding PHP for the same reason I don't do JSP pages, I don't like code in the presentation layer. I am prepared to have my mind blown here, can someone enlighten me? http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13844179 Re:Help me out here by TheSpoom (715771) * on Friday October 21, @10:20AM (#13844179) You're pretty much correct. PHP is a lot closer to JSP or ASP than Java, and yes, it can violate separation of logic and presentation. However, you can use the Smarty templating library [php.net] to separate code and presentation (and I recommend this to anyone learning PHP, because embedding PHP in HTML makes for very sloppy and nigh unreadable code). Re:Help me out here by kingmundi (54911) on Friday October 21, @11:08AM (#13844571) I find it strange how people recommend Smarty for separation of code from content. Smarty implements its own while loops and if then statements. I have yet to come across a web application using Smarty that was easily readable. I would think if the goal was to separate code from content, one would use a templating engine more akin to QuickTemplates [sourceforge.net]. It does not make you relearn a whole new programming language syntax for while loops and if then statements like Smarty does. Re:Help me out here by bobdinkel (530885) on Friday October 21, @11:22AM (#13844680) People recommend Smarty because PHP feels pretty incomplete without it. And it's not about separating code from contentit's about separating business logic from display logic. And the syntax is really easy. http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13844151 Guessed wrong again! by MojoSF (658720) * on Friday October 21, @10:17AM (#13844151) 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! http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13844260 Java vs PHP development by totallygeek (263191) on Friday October 21, @10:30AM (#13844260) ...we typically use PHP for all web-based applications. The ease of coding, and the ability to affect change with zero downtime is a big plus. We can have several programmers affecting changes in one codebase in real time. And, for a program which took us six months to develop in PHP, it would have taken at least fifty percent longer with Java. http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13844499 As a Java developer with PHP experience... by pico303 (187769) on Friday October 21, @10:58AM (#13844499) ...I can honestly say I avoid PHP at all costs. PHP feels like it was built by committee: there's no consistency in the language. Even with 5 I still feel like I'm hacking together web pages. I feel like there's a lack of standardized libraries for PHP. I've used PearDB, but it's sure not ActiveRecord or Hibernate. Smarty's o.k., but I'm already developing in a template language for HTML pages, why do I need another one? It's like working with JSP tag libraries (which I find equally wasteful). Fundamentally, I think the tight coupling between view, controller, and model that PHP naturally engenders is bad. Practically, I've seen where Ruby on Rails has gone in just a single year, and it's further than PHP's gone in the last 5. Things you can do in Rails in a few days take weeks of coding in PHP, even with the help of third-party libraries. PHP has a strong foothold with small, inexpensive ISPs, which is the only reason I think that people still use it. Unfortunately, the "war" between 4 and 5 has really hurt the credibility of PHP moving forward. Does any ISP support PHP 5? If PHP wants to compete against Ruby on the low end and J2EE and .NET on the high end, it's going to need new development tools--both for writing the code and useful libraries, stronger leadership, and a clear plan for the future. I don't see any of this happening in its current state. I consider myself to be a PHP outsider these days, and looking in it doesn't look so fun in the pool. http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966&cid=13845152 What about the long run? by RAMMS+EIN (578166) on Friday October 21, @12:11PM (#13845152) I have to wonder about the long run here. When I work with Java, I find it a pain to work with, because of all the required boilerplate and the inflexibility. Things have probably gotten better with Java 5, but Java has been a pain in all the years before it. When I work with PHP, I find it a pain to work with, because of its apparent lack of design. It feels like a cobbled-together heap of features and hacks, and so does the code written in it. I tend to write cleaner code than what I've seen from other people, but that doesn't make the final product any less messy when various people have worked on it. Neither language is absolutely horrible; comparing them to others, Java is a language with a relatively clean design, and PHP is a good choice in its niche of writing web applications. However, my pain in working with these languages is a direct result of these languages being poorly designed. I'm into programming languages, and I know many that have better designs than Java and PHP. I wonder if these languages won't take over in the future. Some changes are happening already. Various organizations are moving away from Java for web applications, and I know others that would do well to do so as well. Much of the work that went into PHP 5 comes from a realization that earlier versions were flawed (the same can be said of Perl 6). Ruby appears to be on the rise. Paul Graham and others have had good results employing Common Lisp for web applications. The only thing I can see standing in the way of better languages taking over the web application sphere is the fact that the decision making process is based more on fame than on qualities. I maintain that Java has become so successful largely because of the enormous hype surrounding it. PHP, Linux and MySQL have also risen largely due to hype. Of course, it's true that you won't overly disadvantage yourself if you use whatever most others use, but it would still be better if decisions were made based on sound knowledge of technical benefits. -Tom -- Tom Metro Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA "Enterprise solutions through open source." Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/ _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
