Java vs PHP: Best language for Web applications development?

No other language has been causing controversial discussions for a long time as PHP. The often question is always which one better is better for web development Java or PHP. Before starting Java vs PHP discussion, you should know about these two languages. If you are not familiar with these two languages, then it is very difficult to tell which one is better.

Here is a brief introduction of both languages.

Introduction

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Java has strong support for web development. While Java on the desktop, with the notable exception of Eclipse RCP based application, was never a huge success, Java is frequently used at the server side.

Java web applications are typically not running directly on the server. Java web applications are running inside a web container on the server. The container provides a runtime environment for Java web applications. The container is for Java web applications what the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) is for local running Java applications. The container itself runs in the JVM.

Most of the modern Java web frameworks are based on servlets. Popular Java web frameworks are GWT, JavaServer Faces, Struts and the spring framework. These web frameworks usually require as a minimum container a web container.

PHP

PHP is a server-side scripting language, that is used to develop Static websites or Dynamic websites or Web applications. Rasmus Lerdorf originally created it in 1994, the PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

PHP scripts can only be interpreted on a server that has PHP installed. The client computers accessing the PHP scripts require a web browser only.A PHP file contains PHP tags and ends with the extension “.php”. Before the page is sent to a user that has requested it, the Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform the operations called for in the PHP script.

PHP is a server side script that is interpreted on the server while JavaScript is an example of a client-side script that is interpreted by the client browser. Both PHP and JavaScript can be embedded into HTML pages. PHP is free and offered under an open source license.

Java vs PHP

Java brought with Servlets and Struts first concepts for Web applications, but to create, configure and deploy them was very complicated. PHP, however, offered an elegant and simple way, if we wanted a date in a web page, we renamed “.html” to “.php” and inserted where wanted. On Apache Webserver, which already was prepared for PHP, the new file worked out of the box.

However, in recent years Java reduced the complexity, frameworks like Tapestry or GWT, permitted by templates created by designers.

PHP was designed specifically for the web, while Java is a general-purpose platform. Using Java, you can tack both desktop and web frontends onto the same-shared code with little effort, while PHP is not very suitable for writing desktop applications.

Every cheap-shared web hosting company has PHP in their standard package, but a Java server is going to cost you significantly more.

Performance

The main reason programmers choose PHP over Java is the speed. While Java was formerly often described as slow, today’s JVMs are highly optimized for speed, while the script languages, including PHP, still struggle with this. It is much faster to develop and PHP tends to have fewer issues when using shared hosting. When using Java, it is best to have a dedicated server for your hosting.

Other optimizations were moving very slowly into PHP Runtimes. This might be because PHP in contrast to Java restarts the VM after each request, which of course brings additional performance problems. This drawback makes scaling of PHP applications simple. As completely separate requests can be processed, additional hardware results in relatively linear improvements in the capacity of the server. JVM has garbage collection (Memory Management) but PHP will get its first garbage collector in PHP 5.3.

Choice

Java for web applications is overkill for small applications. Java does much better in much larger web applications ( banks and insurance companies) that communicate with a number of other systems (such as mainframe back-ends and databases and peer web-services background batch-processing systems, all in the same application).

Both in PHP, as well as in Java, there is a lot of modular software, partly with free, partly with non-free licenses. PHP modules expose significantly more problems than those written in Java. Due to better tool support (Ant / Maven, Javadoc, JUnit) Java Frameworks have easier to install, better-documented and test artifacts.

Security

As far as security is concerned, Java language is leading its way over other languages including PHP. Java Application servers enforce security model. Each application runs in its own container. Java security model is the key architectural feature that makes it a favorite choice when it comes to developing enterprise-level applications. Its security model is intended to protect and help users from hostile programs downloaded from some unreliable source within a network through the sandwich. Java/JVM has its own extensive security framework.

Java can be a better choice when there is something complicated as it relies on the teams of highly professional developers. PHP is less formal language and is a better option for those who are new to the field of web development.

Integration

Java itself is almost “Industry Standard”, on the other hand, there are many standards implementations in Java. If a PHP Web application should communicate with a specific protocol, the selection of libraries is rather limited. Even worse, implementations are only partially implemented. Integration of PHP applications with other services usually happens through the database layer.

Major Websites built using Java

1. Facebook

The most popular social media is also powered by Java. Facebook uses HBase (a Java-based No-SQL DB) as a messaging platform and also uses Java in other areas.

2. Amazon

Love online shopping!! Amazon also uses java in addition to other languages.

3. eBay

eBay Inc. is a multinational e-commerce corporation based in San Jose, California that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay architecture is based on java.

4. Google

Google uses Java extensively in Google Plus, GTalk (High Scalability – High Scalability – GoogleTalk Architecture) etc

5. Linkedin

LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Primarily it is written in Java.

Major web projects built using PHP

1. WordPress

The best of PHP and JavaScript experts have worked on the most used CMS facility of the world. WordPress makes the best use of most resourceful features offered by PHP to make its offerings richer from time to time.

2. Wikipedia

The most reliable source of information on the internet is made on PHP. Wikipedia is undoubtedly the richest source of content on the internet and this immense amount of content is backed-up by the power of PHP.

3. Facebook

The Social Media King, is built on PHP. Facebook is supplied by the best of technology elements by PHP and is made to serve the huge content consumption by its millions of users each day.

4. Digg

Digg is highly popular among the social network marketers and was used as a social bookmarking website until a couple of years ago. Digg is superbly built and powered by the PHP technology.

5. Mailchimp

The most popular and widely used Email Marketing solution in the world, MailChimp derives its powers from PHP. The platform has millions of users across the globe and is used to send over a billion emails every single day.

The final word!

Developers that are either specialized in PHP or Java and initiate a passionate debate about which programming language is superior over the other. Java is still the better choice for many projects. For smaller projects that can be isolated scripting languages might reach the target faster.

A structural difference that can be noted between the languages. Java has strict expectations on how you define the inputs and outputs. If the exact expectations are not met, the application will fail to function properly.

PHP, however, is the difference as it is a weakly-typed programming language which relies on “common sense programming”. PHP might sound the most attractive simply because it requires less formal knowledge and more of common sense which evolves in time as you put this into practice. There are quite some similarities between both languages and the demand for developers that know either of these languages remains.