Ask HN: PHP or JSP ? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: PHP or JSP ?

4 pointsvikas038014 comments

Which Should I Learn? I am from java background.

I think the answer to this involves a big dose of "it depends", but I'd lean towards jsp. The Java ecosystem is just so mature and so comprehensive, and - for all the warts of certain elements of the Java stack (JSF, anybody) - JSP's are actually pretty cool.

Java is especially good for apps that have lots of intgration "touch points" were you need to tie in with external, 3rd party apps. Java makes it pretty easy to use REST, SOAP based WebServices, RPCs of different flavors (RMI, etc), asynchronous messaging using JMS, or pretty much any other integration technology you need. If you will be building larger systems that need to be built in more of a "small pieces, loosely joined" style, a JVM based stack will serve you well.

And if you need to do "Big Data" stuff, already being in Java will make it straightforward to use, say, Hadoop. If you want to use Machine Learning, you have the convenience of Mahout, Weka, etc. Want to join the Semantic Web? You have Apache Jena. Need to do Natural Language Processing? OpenNLP is there. Want to add search to your app? Apache Lucene / Solr are your friends.

Now, to be fair, most well known platforms have plenty of libraries available. Java isn't unique in that regard. But I think it is somewhat unique in just how comprehensive and mature the overall ecosystem is.

Not to be irrelevant to the question, but something to consider. Why not just go with java as a rest API and use a frontend framework? JSP with taglibs and all that aren't as heavily used now a days.

Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who has done JSP and spring (still use spring) for years.

Especially in light of some of the newer JVM frameworks, you'd benefit from being framework agnostic on the front end but take advantage of your java experience otherwise.

Does it have to be PHP or JSP? What about Java and Play Framework instead of JSP? http://www.playframework.com/ — I like it a lot

Play Framework sounds good

I recommend you go with PHP, it's really easy to use and get started with. You can make some pretty amazing applications rapidly and deployment is a joy with PHP. The job market for PHP and Java is the same as a far as demand but Java pays much more.

Java pays much more means? can you please elaborate

Same reason, why policemen get lower salaries than Java developers. There are many people who want to be and become policemen.

Well Java is one of those languages that a lot of people don't like working with because of it's verbosity and is overkill for a lot of simple applications. People to tend to favor Python for simple things. Java is best suited for Banks and high-level web applications for big corporations which is why Java developers make more than 100k at least.

There are very few technologies that are as bad as working with JSP, even considering your Java experience.

Have you considered other options that run on top of Java?

Since you are from a Java background maybe you should stay with it.

Explaining why your options are just PHP or JSP might help.

cheap php servers and java knowledge, can u tell me the other options?

Python would be another option, and many cheap hosts out there support it (HostGator and WebFaction, e.g.).

What are you trying to build? If it's enterprisey I'd go with JSP and take a look at Spring MVC.

if you know java you should continue with JSP then

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