[thelist] PHP vs JSP

deke web at master.gen.in.us
Fri Sep 7 14:53:42 CDT 2001


On 7 Sep 2001, at 9:25, Beau Hartshorne posted a message which said:

> I want to work with JSP, because it'll be good for me. PHP seems like it's
> better for my clients.
 
> Can anyone help me justify a switch to JSP for small web projects?

Doesn't take much justification.

1. Users don't give a hoot what happens on the server, as long as 
they get the pages they are supposed to get.

2. A programmer generates more and better code in a language that
he knows inside-out and is comfortable with, than in a language that 
is theoretically "better" for doing a job, for any but the most trivial 
jobs.

There are things that *look* like exceptions. Trying to retrieve a file
from another server is a one-liner in perl - it's 
            $page = get("http://yahoo.com");
while it looks like a big hassle if you do it in c. That's a misconception,
however. You write the function once, and in c, it can become
             success = HTTP_get (buffer, "http://yahoo.com");

You'll probably take a short-term hit in productivity until you get good
in JSP, but over the course of the next year, you might see an overall
*improvement* in productivity.

The only reservation I'd have, if I were you, is in the long-term success
of JSP. Programmers see a lot of technologies come and go, and you
identify the pioneers by the arrows in their backs. It's a safer move if
you have your own server, and thus can guarantee that JSP will be
supported on *your* server for the indefinite future....  JSP looks like
a solid technology, but I can't decide if it is Microsoft or Sun that is 
doing more to assure the failure of Java.

deke











------------------------
 "The church is near but the road is icy; 
  the bar is far away but I will walk carefully." 
                            -- Russian Proverb




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