On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 03:53, mgkimsal <[email protected]> wrote:
> The same choice exists in the PHP world - ZF, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Cake
> and others are just the tip of the iceberg a developer might have to wade
> through in the PHP world if they're looking for a framework.

Oh, I knew of Symfony but I assumed it is a similar obvious choice
like Grails for Groovy or Life for Scala (but maybe these cases aren't
either so obvious as I am thinking in my naivety ;-) ). I did not
notice that for PHP there is also such a wide field of frameworks.

I think, Web 3.0 could have the code name "Framework". ;-)


> One of the differences I see is that it's quite possible to build up 
> relatively
> complex *web* applications directly in PHP without needing to
> resort to one of the aforementioned frameworks.

I was using a few open source applications written in PHP and I know a
few people who develop in PHP, but I did not notice any framework they
are using. One just experimenting with Symfony since a short while.


>  I'm not sure I've run across anyone in the last 10 years who'd actually try 
> to
> write a moderate (or even small) web application using *just* Java (or Java/
> servlets, if you will).

My response is leading to the general framework discussion so I will
create a new thread for this (see follow-up thread).


>> Let's say, PHP is just the way of less obstacles for those who want to
>> get started as well as up and running quickly. That for sure does not
>> mean, it is really the best choice. And a lot of things start small
>> where the developers do not think of scalability right at the
>> beginning. They need to improve performance and efficiency later.
> You *really* have to define what 'best' is, and it's usually defined by
> the people writing checks (employers, investors, customers, etc).

Oh, that was not meant that I was thinking of a particular thing to be
the "best" choice. So for any definition of "best", the quickest (or
with less obstacles) solution is not necessarily the "best" one.


> From a business standpoint, getting *up and running* is usually all
> that matters.  Being 'first to market' is often the difference between
> capturing early adopters, funding, press, etc and being seen as
> playing 'catch up'.  Yes, performance and scalability matter,
> but usually not as much on day one.

I do not believe that in business - especially in economic downturns,
which for a lot of bigger companies is (still/again/just currently) an
issue - there are many early adopters. I find that a quite
short-term-thinking strategy. - OK, many just think that way... - I
remember elections, where everything that would have effect just after
legislation period finished would just seem to be a positive trend
thanks to the next government...


> Finally, straddling the fence between the worlds of Java and PHP,
> I can say there's definitely pros and cons to both.  A Java friend
> of mine who moved in to the PHP world last year was (overly)
> miffed about type checking, but was also markedly impressed with
> the speed of just 'getting things done' relative to his previous
>  Java experience (especially Java web apps).  Likewise, I'm a
> Grails guy when I can be, and have been able to knock out basic
> Grails apps in a couple of hours which would have taken 2-3 times as
> long in PHP.

My experience: No matter what language, at the beginning my
productivity is very poor in comparison with the productivity with
those I developed a long(er) time with. One major reason is: NO
language offers all the utility functions and components I need in my
daily work. It never has been that way. No matter, how complete the
core libraries are, my experience is always that for me, core features
are missing. I find that the language itself has far less effect than
your own and the community's (when it comes to third party libraries
and components) contributions.

I know a little PHP and it is far faster in fixing a problem, when the
problem is a simpler one. When debugging or tooling gets more
important, I get annoyed using PHP quite fast.

>From the language itself, I like Python very much for example (did
only tiny things, but however). We had a web app written in Python by
somebody else who left the company already and trying to fix a few
things were so time intensive that I gave up when I discovered that
further investigation was simply not economic - but YMMV. - I am quite
sure that at the end it is also to personal preference, like somebody
prefers blue over green.

Anyway, Java itself is easy to learn (at least for me it was), but
when you get out of the core into web application servers and
frameworks, I think it gets too complicated for being efficient for
simpler applications (as needed by the average smaller company
customer) - if: you are not already very familiar with the stuff you
are using or already have written your own "frameworks". Here it comes
again to obstacles. As you mentioned also, in PHP you get up and
running easier/faster also without a framework. At this point, Java
(besides many other languages too) lacks - IMHO.

-- 
Martin Wildam

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