Well, it's simply not a matter of being "cool," it's a matter of being expedient vs principled. As a long time software developer, I use both Java and occasionally PHP, but prefer Java. But, if someone wants to quickly get a dynamic site up and running, and scalable performance isn't an issue, then PHP or Ruby or some other scripting language, including Perl, would be a reasonable choice. But as complexity grows, the scripting languages falter. One need only look at applications such as facebook today vs facebook last year to see some of the issues being played out.

The second point is learning the development environment, including the language. The scripting languages are pretty easy to learn, and lack the complexity of Java (generics being an exquisite example of that). To learn Java, it's not like just picking up a book and having all you need to begin developing. This is the polar opposite of scripting languages, where a short book or online tutorial will provide all you need to begin. After all, many people would rather die than learn something new. And Java takes some effort to master. Whereas with a scripting language, the basics are easy and then one simply needs to learn about other "packages" or plug-ins.

My suggestion to everyone is to use an IDE (eclipse, netbeans, etc.) that can easily handle both scripting languages and more complex languages, such as Java. Then the environment becomes a non-issue. Additionally, as testing tools come along they are often incorporated into these wonderful IDEs. And if you think an IDE is too complex for your programming needs, I would suggest that programming is too complex for your attitude. As a famous person once said, the question "How can I learn to program, even though I don't like mathematics," is akin to asking "How can I learn to play the piano, even though I don't like music."

I came to Java rather late in my career, only adding it to my web architecture a couple years back (2007). And so, I feel I can speak somewhat to the reasons as to why developers avoid Java and choose easier languages.

1) Entrance to the Java club seems almost insurmountable. There are SO many frameworks from which to choose. How do you choose a framework when you don't know Java? How do you learn Java if you don't choose a framework to begin the learning process?

2) Authors of Java books assume that every developer comes from a C/C++ background, making constant references to the latter when trying to explain Java. Sorry, but I came from a procedural language background (AS/400) and, therefore, Java books seemed very difficult to trudge through.

3) Authors of Java books on a particular framework often feel it's necessary to make contrasting comparisons to other Java frameworks, assuming the reader has experience with that other framework. Again, if you don't have the assumed background, you miss the point the author is trying to make. In particular, if you came to Java after EJB was widely discarded as a bad idea, but if the book constantly refers to how it was done under EJB, then again you're lost as to the point the author wishes to make.

4) It's not just a matter of learning the Java syntax, but becoming familiar with the ever-growing number of packages.

5) In my view, from a web developer's perspective, Java did not come into its own until the advent of frameworks like Spring, Apache CXF, JAXB, JAX-WS, and the addition of annotations and Java generics to the language. Prior to these additions, Java was simply to burdensome of a language to use.

6) Java has a big drawback for web developers, which is a lack of hosts that will support the Java language. This is especially true if need to tweak the JVM arguments or add a spring-agent jar to the tomcat\common\lib directory.

Granted, Java is much more scalable, allows for access to an abundance of freebies, such as iText for building PDF documents, or POI for creating Microsoft Office documents, etc, etc. The worldwide collaboration and contribution of valuable, time-saving source code can't be overestimated in its value to the developer. After all is said and done, I chose Java because of these two factors that Java offers: scalability and the number of freebies via open source packages developed by some very bright software engineers. However, I still just chose Java as the middleware solution, and opted for Flex on the client side. I don't feel Java can compete with Flex for the UI.

R. Grimes

I am a java developer who decided one day to give PHP a try. That same day I saw why no real enterprise system will ever be written in PHP. It is a just HTML with some way of adding dynamic content. You will never be able to do anything serious with that. java is a programming language. PHP is a scripting language. That is a serious difference that should never be disregarded

The frustrating thing about articles like this is that there was absolutely no exposition on the merits of any of the three radically different languages mentioned except to say Java is fast.

Well, so is Haskell. So is C++. So is ASM. Why do you use Java? Clearly the only reason is because that's where you are comfortable. The unfortunate side-effect of being comfortable is that you start to get lazy.

You might actually find you really enjoy learning again if you were to take the time and research a subject before you write about it.

As a managed cloud computing provider, I have the fortunate position of watching my customers bring their software products to life. I see many of the reasons you give for people not choosing Java, but one you didn't list was the personality of the architect/developer. I do believe that PHP and Ruby are easier to get started with than Java. Someone who thinks their project is "just a few thousand lines of code" and wants to use an extreme-programming "code and go" style of development where refactoring is a way of life, probably will be more likely to choose an "easy" language and start prototyping in it. Those customers of mine who have their architecture planned out in detail and realize the complexity of what they're trying to build seem more likely to choose Java because of the explicit support for complexity it provides. There are also performance considerations: the customers I have who use Java seem to have less niggling performance problems than those using PHP or Ruby. If performance isn't considered in advance, this could affect the choice of language.

does anyone else think this blogger is like a little stereotypical at all?

Let me sum up all these posts.

Java, like its creators at Sun, is anal retentive.

Thanskss..

Thansks..

Thanks..

Good Veryy

Good Veryy Veryy..

Good Veryy..

Good..

tahank you

thanksss

thankss

veryy good

thanks

You know it if you really think about it.

Because Java plays as iut is FLOSS and it is not. So we go LAMP and say F)/= off!

And yeah, I just had Java this semester and it is true: Java SUCKS!

Next semester guess what I am taking? Python!

Long live LAMP (as in PHP right now, and PHP/Python by next year)

Stop writing crappy articles and DO Y OUR JOB! Go program some app in Java and see if anyone uses it.. And I'll gte my Google Apps account and make a Hello World over there and send you a link!

Peace
That's why!

There were 7 pages of responses above, so, I confess to only reading a couple, so, forgive me if I repeat too many points that were hashed through already.....

The question posed is why do 'cool kids' (or anyone really) choose something like PHP or Ruby rather than Java. I saw a lot of answers above that are certainly correct -- it's really a bunch of reasons of course, but I think I have a handle on the main factors, which might be a little different than the "java is too complex" crowd:

1. The primary reason is that PHP & Ruby (and others) do a great job for most web efforts, and Java does as well. The question could have easily been posed by a Ruby guy about PHP, or a PHP guy about Perl, or a Perl guy about Java. The fact is, all of them are mature enough & powerful enough to handle most web tasks (and especially intranet tasks where Internet-level scalability & redundancy are not an issue). Cop-out answer, but still true....

2. That leads to why anyone ever even used Ruby or PHP,being fairly new, when Java was there already. One reason is because of Perl. I gave thanks to all the Gods when, back in the Mosaic days, I ditched hand-coded C cgi's for Perl. Everyone used Perl for web. It was far & away the most used web dev language. Perl is, however, syntactically pretty difficult, and it requires a good amount of discipline to code good web apps with 100-table databases and scores of pages. Enter PHP, which is extremely Perl like, but has the advantage of being a "templating" language as well --- easy transition for Perl folks. RoR adds it's ORM, MVC, etc., but the author credits Perl as his primary influence. All 3 are interpreted, etc. One other point on this - Perl is highly unixified as far as it's community, while you had a lot of Windows folks coming in, and PHP filled that void a bit better (I've been doing Perl for years & I'm still unclear if I want cygwin Perl, ActiveState, etc. on Windows...wtf?).

2++. As for the other reason why people didn't flock to Java, I saw some posts hitting on this a bit... Basically, Java came out with huge hype, but it was pointed at applets, it was full of bugs, I couldn't even get a couple of Gosling's examples in his book to compile. That tainted Java with a huge section of early webdev types. Sun tries again, this time pointed more at the server & then the enterprise, with (as people said), hundreds of acronyms, excessively confusing & changing naming strategies (it's Java 6 update 5, or it's 1.4.2, it's SDK or JDK or JRE or J2EE, etc.). They never marketed back towards the programmers working with the interpreted languages (which, fyi, are often easily as complex as any compiled language - some are far more, with heavy reflection & dynamic coding, etc., so "script kiddies" is not applicable to the entire non-java side of the house).

Obviously not ALL the reasons, but I think those 3 are the bulk of the reason. That said, I'll have to disagree with a lot of the folks that have been calling the java dev environments too complex, too bloated, etc. I think we're actually at the crossroads point where the two camps are meeting up, driven by ajax/comet & the push for rich clients. I've just spent the last 2 weeks evaluating various javascript toolkit libraries, server-side solutions, MVC frameworks, flash/dhtml hybrids like Haxe or Laszlo, etc. Aside from a couple of hundred no longer under development, there are some great choices from the "scripting side". I've also begun looking at the Java side (which of course usually converts to JS/DHTML, but I mean java as in coding it on the server). I have to say, I'm impressed. Netbeans and WaveMaker both have pretty nice drag-n-drop wysiwyg-type web dev environments in their IDEs. I've always coded by hand, but in less than a day I cranked out some decent examples...I think it's certainly on par with anything from the interpreted/scripting camp as far as rapid-dev goes (assuming a website with at least a few pages, DB, some UI glitter).

This is a long post... I wonder if it will accept it....3 .. 2 .. 1.. go

Dylan

> Because they've been dooped into thinking you have to
> compile Java servlets and beans to use Java or that you
> need Struts or Hibernate of JSF. You don't. You can just
> do everything in JSP if you want a quick and dirty PHP or
> Ruby like Java experience.

Who have folks been "duped" by? That seems pretty absurd to me.

I'd guess, though, if anybody's been doing any "duping" it's software developers who create Java frameworks and try to pass them off as necessary and also book publishers who want to sell you books on those frameworks.

I'm no fan of the "one language to rule them all" mentality that a lot of folks seems to embrace in favor of supporting their language of choice. I agree with Chad Fowler/ Dave Thomas' assertions about learning a new language "every year*" because that keeps one engaged in learning and developing what really SHOULD matter: one's brain.

* (I'm not smart or disciplined enough to learn a new language every year, so I've decided that "every 2-3 years" is good 'nuff for me.)

I started with PHP and Perl, later spent some time learning (some) Java, and now I'm all into Ruby (and Rails).

PHP was awesome, and opened up the world of web development for me. After a while, I thought "maybe I should learn Java" so I gave it a crack and read and re-read Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java." I tried to wade through the acronym soup that Java Web Application Development seemed to be, but in the end my experience with Java was that it flat-out hurt my brain.

When I encountered Ruby (and Rails) it "just made sense" to me, and it continues to make sense to me. I recently worked on some PHP code for a friend, and I found it tedious and a bit irritating to work with. I'd bet that if I spent time re-learning OO PHP and used some of the cool "new" stuff (like the Cake framework, etc.), though that I'd probably dig it too.

Java flat-out hurts my brain, i think largely because of its verbosity. I don't really like to look at code that makes me work hard to understand it. Yes, there are tons of things that would be better to do in it vs. an interpreted language, but Ruby allows me to do the voodoo I wanna do with syntax that makes more sense to me.

I don't see the point in being "religious" about what language one uses. One should pick a tool for them that works and enables them to Get Stuff Done. For most of the nails I need to pound, a red hammer works just as well as a green one.

I've worked with the spectrum of languages and environments, from mainframe Cobol, to client/server with Powerbuilder, to web with Java/JSP. The style has progressed from a monolithic 5000 line cobol program (easy to maintain) to 5000 several-line code snippets or settings in various places like taglibs and xml descriptors (a nightmare as the app grows). The mindset that goes along with Java and the way it is presented by Sun is "let's take a simple problem and give it the most complex solution possible". Case in point: JSTL. Why learn another (useless and cryptic) language when we can use java snippets and we ALL know Java already! We're already using Java, Javascript, HTML, SQL, and a framework like Struts in any given project, so why add another when its not necessary? That's the stupidity that turns people away from Java.

Same reason why JavaScript never went away despite major forces trying to ruin its USABILITY and UNIVERSAL appeal with annoying proprietary formats like VBScript, Jscript, .NET, applets, JSP/JSF/Faces, Flash, etc. The people decided that JS is still the most user friendly dynamic web standard on the browser client - and the browser is still what the web user sees first, not middleware logic - and turned out PHP/Ruby are the most efficient glue-code to put together dynamic JS for web app UI. Look at the popularity of REST, Ajax, and SOAP - the web trend is toward efficiency, not complexity. Now if the Java community can come up with a way to make 90% of the ISPs to host Java enabled sites for as cheap and simple as LAMP packages, and convince Google and others to release their APIs in Java only instead of JavaScript, maybe, just maybe, more people will learn Java.

Oooh oooh oooh can I answer this one (hand in the air like the annoying 5th grader who answers every question)! Where to start. Okay, first and foremost if you get hosting from a "normal" web host PHP comes bundled in. PHP is free, fast, and well documented, so why do I have to go looking for alternatives? Finally, by the time you figure out what a WAR file is you could have read War And Peace. Now if you don't mind, I'm going back to hang out with the cool kids.

Doing what everybody is doing is the best way for a failure.

Java lacks a dynamism. That's what Ruby has. To build website you don't need miriad of frameworks, you need something simple. Java doesn't provide that. Java is very constraining environment. And most of those milions of Java developers are very bad software developers. Their software simply sucks - just look around.

Trackback Added: Choosing Ruby or PHP over Java?; In a recent article on CRM Developers Journal, Coach Wei asks: Why Do ‘Cool Kids’ Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?
— Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do ‘cool kids...

@lifewithryan - Agree with your comment.
You're right about the OO part and its only partially true. I was referring to the part where Ruby/PHP code atleast to me just seems much easier to read and copy from the web (monkey see monkey do) when I'm building sites than doing the same with Java/J2EE.

@darayush:

I just want to addrress #4 -- I agree with your other points and think they're valid, however while Java suffers from some misconceptions, one of the common misconceptions with PHP is that its all scripts-based. Not true, I haven't release a script-based website in a long time. My sites are very truly OO. Ruby is ALL OO as everything in Ruby is an object so, point #4 is kinda misleading for the newbie. I think this common misconception is why the Java folks dismiss PHP so easily.

That being said, its clear that even the Java people know that Java is getting too heavy handed...why else would we have Groovy/Grails now? (I'm using that right now on a project and would probably use it more often if Java hosting wasn't so friggin' expensive. Having said that, even if Java hosting became as cheap as other plans, I'd still use PHP first, Grails second and Rails third. Java...nearly dead last ahead of .Net...

I think this article is like the dangling chad from Florida. It starts with a very potent question and in the end leaves the reader clueless, infact I was looking for the next/page2 link thinking we're still talking.
Anyways here's my 2c's being a weekend PHP/Ruby developer and having used Java earlier in my career.
There are 5 things that are working against Java today as not being the prime platform for website development.

#1 - The perception that Java is best used as a middle tier logic processing language.

#2 - The fact that as a novice you can these days Google and pull together a website much faster using Ruby or PHP than Googling the term Java.

#3 - Java and its outgrowths have become too complex for their own good that often carries a heavy baggage and now needs some undoing to make it lightweight.

#4 - Writing and more importantly reading code these days for monkey see monkey do kind of developers - scripting is much easier than writing in a full blown strong typed, OO language.

#5 - Java now has the same legacy brand association issues as the languages like C and C++ that it replaced.

Now you might say these are mostly non-technical and perception issues and Java is much stronger technology-wise etc etc. According to me its much more difficult to change perceptions than prove technology so Java has its job cut out for it.

People have to realize not to abuse uncluttered feedbacks from people with advertisement and that too at the cost of sys-con.com. Please don't even visit www.indiajobplace.com or www.indiajobster.com. Need to teach a lesson to these b*s.

Well guys, gone are the days when is was safe to make the statement "Java is the answer, what was the question?"
In "olden" days, people coded web application in C and JAVA(JSP) for a very simple reason, and the reason was lack of alternatives !

Today in my opinion building / coding a web application in JAVA is like killing a housefly with a bazooka. I am not saying that you can not do that. Of source you can, but then you are working hard, not smart :)

PHP and ROR have come a long long way and now ready to handle any enterprise level application. Open your eyes guys.. Facebook and Flick are running on PHP and not JAVA.

Why ? well... its the rule #1 of coding..
KISS !!

Keep
It
Simple
Stupid

Talking about frameworks, IDE and platforms.. PHP and ROR have all now.. for dog sake... even SUN is adding support for PHP in Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 !!!
Do I need to say more ?

Script Kiddies use PHP / Rails because they don't know what RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability) means. CF too, has this problem even though it's based on Java Technology.

I guess once they grown up and figure out that systems have to be reliable. 99% of these script kiddies don't even understand what transaction demarcation.

Three Letters: GWT

"I find Java too cumbersome for the front-end," because you've been duped. You can use JSP just like PHP. You don't have to make everything as complicated as you think you do.

"Silly comparison. I like Java but when it comes to web apps I can run circles around Java with PHP. As someone mentioned its a dynamic language what will let you get away with things you can't possibly do in Java or any other strongly typed language." FALACY! Just declare all your variables as Object type and you can use Java as a dynamically typed language. Sure you might have to use "instance of" but you can do it.

public Object doSomething(Object variable)
{
if(variable instance of Double) { return o*2; }
else if (variable instance of String { return variable.replace("www.","http://www."); }
else if(variable instance of MyClass)
{
return variable.myMethod();
}
return null;
}

Because they've been dooped into thinking you have to compile Java servlets and beans to use Java or that you need Struts or Hibernate of JSF. You don't. You can just do everything in JSP if you want a quick and dirty PHP or Ruby like Java experience.

Silly comparison. I like Java but when it comes to web apps I can run circles around Java with PHP. As someone mentioned its a dynamic language what will let you get away with things you can't possibly do in Java or any other strongly typed language. I was able to write and ActiveRecord style base class that allows me to make DAO's without having to add a single property or method to get the basic CRUD functionality. This doesn't require any cumbersome framework either.

The drawback of PHP and Rails is that they are web specific and can't compete in general programming with Java. I would say that the better question is why doesn't Java take a page from these two and harness their true power. But I am smart enough to know what when you grow beyond the complexity of web apps that strong typed languages gain an advantage.

Coach Wei's has written so nice blog....why RAVI (from India possibly)...comments on such irrelevant matters( advertising)...BTW this is technical site and of course a logical milestone...god bless you RAVI!!!

I have about twenty years development experience, from assembly to FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, and most recently Ruby and Rails.

I can have a web site up and running before a Java guy would have finished editing his first XML configuration file.

Ruby is a full featured dynamic language that also plays well with C libraries (unlike Java), so I can write the bits in C that need better performance and call them from Ruby.

I can scale my sites using a service-based architecture by simply adding commodity hardware.

Ruby is fun to program in and its dynamic nature allows you to do things you can't do in Java (look up 'method_missing' in the Ruby docs).

Statically typed languages are like training wheels. They may keep you from falling over, but if you know how to ride a bike they just get in the way.

Why even mention Ruby or PHP in this article, why not just call it 'I like Java and so should everyone else'. I am a Java developer, though like most others I have written code in many languages. For work that needs to get done quickly, I do like to use Rails. Especially for small sites and internal thin web-apps, it really is hard to beat Rails or PHP for speed of development compared to Java.

When it comes to using Java Collections, i agree there is a lot embedded into the java.util...But i have always felt, if only SUN could make it more simpler and have lesser classes which could be used on a need basis.

Check out http://www.indiaJobPlace.com (IndiaJobPlace.com)

IndiaJobplace.com searches jobs posted on major India Job Portals and newspapers ( currently more than

3,50,000 jobs are posted on IndiaJobPlace.com (http://www.indiaJobPlace.com) and thousands of jobs are added everday.)

You dont have to go to multiple job sites to search for jobs posted. IndiaJobPlace.com does that for you and shows you jobs from all the job portals in one place!

You can do a search on IndiaJobPlace (http://www.IndiaJobPlace.com) by location and keyword easliy with one click can even email the job results to yourself or anyone that you know!

They also provide a way to filter the job results by the job board.

Try IndiaJobPlace.com It’s cool! and its free… no advertisements or annonying pop ups!

Hi...That's right...I guess the readily available tools for java is the problem for kids to cope with the java things. You know for example downloading eclipse plugin...installing it...configuring it with installed web server...On the other hand for example for PHP a bundle tools tools is available that contains server..interpreter...database (WOW! for kids)and of course many have good market on hosting small platform websites...I guess on the total pages we have in WWW ...Many of them are small business scale sites...That's the reason!!!

The answer is Seam. It reduces the complexity of JSF development and leverages off EJB3. Ajax enabled as well. I am currently working on a J2EE project at the moment and it is hard work. Other side projects I use Seam and can rapidly get ideas to prototype stage knowing full well that they are backed by solid technology and design patterns.

Check out http://www.indiaJobster.com (IndiaJobster.com)

IndiaJobster.com launched last week and indexes all the jobs from India ( currently more than

3,25,000 jobs and thousands are added everday and are listed from all the major Indian job

engines/job boards and news papers all with one click)

You dont have to go to multiple job sites to search for jobs posted. IndiaJobster.com does

that for you and shows you jobs from all the sites in one place!

You can do a search on IndiaJobster (http://www.IndiaJobster.com) by location and keyword

easliy with one click and get all the jobs in one place. You can even email the job search

results to yourself!

They also provide a way to filter the job results by the job board.

Try IndiaJobster.com It’s cool! and its free… no advertisements or annonying pop ups!

So, did I miss something? The question of why not Java for building websites was posed, with no real answer: just some unsatisfactory options. Leaves the reader dangling. Seems to me if you're going to write an article like this, you put forth an answer, otherwise you just submit it in a Java Forun entry.

By the way, Alfresco and Liferay are very powerful Java technologies for doing web development.

I too use ColdFusion over JAVA or .NET because I can get web apps out the door so quickly. Using JAVA is like swatting a fly with a 2*4.

Because eclipse and netbeans are both a turn off.