I am an aspiring programmer working on JSP. One thing I have noticed that PHP is getting more popularity than JSP. Can you please tell me why webmasters are liking PHP more than JSP.

Brandy

To be honest ive never really used JSP. I use PHP because of its ease and great functionality. Learning PHP after knowing other programming languages is very undifficult. Its fairly secure too. Also i believe java server pages are slightly slower, but more so insignificantly. To each their own is what it comes down to. I work with a company that uses File Maker Pro as their database solution and i absolutely despise it, but hey it works for them. Hope that makes sense.

Marcus

PHP is supported by almost all linux web hosting platforms. JSP is not. If JSP were supported by more web hosting services I think it would be just as popular if not more so.

I love JSP. In my opinion it is faster and more secure.

Q...

jonesb ,

One of the reasons if not the biggest reason for PHP's take off is more or less that it is opensource. So any of the linux and opensource people are going to use it just for that reason. The opensource people dislike the cooperate ran programming languages (such as JSP and ASP.Net). And once a language starts to take off alot of people tend to "jump on the wagon" because it is taking off and is being called the "new thing". But I would recommend staying with JSP. This is because JSP has alot of powerful languages under their belt, also Sun is putting thousands if not millions of dollar behind their language saying that it will work, while PHP well, I don't think they really have any money backbone (I am not sure, but I haven't heard of anything either), but if they do I believe it wouldn't be close to the amount that Sun has dumped into it.

-Shadow9997

May I supply a few notes from a geek's (hate this word) point of view?

Refering to previous post: Java can be also considered as an open-source platform, so it is not an excuse for being 'not so popular' as PHP.

Question 'PHP vs JSP vs ASP' is more about the users' market, each of listed languages/platforms addresses the needs of its own market.

PHP: From my point of view and experience, popularity of PHP is enforced by the fact that it can be used by people without any formal training in software development. Technically and formally speaking, most of PHP-based websites are simplistic single-tier systems. As result of this, PHP has got massive spread, but only in non-corporate environment.

JSP : is recommended when your business has to upgrade its online functionality from eCommerce level to eBusiness, especially when integration is required with various backoffice systems. In eBusiness architecture, JSP represents 'user interface' tier and it significantly simplifies communication with other Java-based tiers. For this type of environment, use of PHP would be considered a shame.

ASP : no comments.

If you are getting started, PHP is probably going to be much simpler, though less scalable and robust. Since you are learning, it will be better to go with something where you can get results right away.

The common practice with PHP is to put all of your scripts in the page level.

The common practice with JSP is to have a Controller or Servlet do most of the work, and use the JSP to simply render the data. Though you can write scriptlets in JSP, it is generally frowned upon and people will make fun of you if you do it. The other thing about JSP, very few people use it exclusively. JSPs are generally used as part of a larger framework (Struts/Spring/JSF/etc).

Because of these different styles, you can get up-to-speed much quicker with PHP. Though, when it comes time to build large, maintainable, secure, scalable applications, moving to J2EE will be a better choice.

Originally Posted by vicatmyoffice

PHP: From my point of view and experience, popularity of PHP is enforced by the fact that it can be used by people without any formal training in software development.

This really isn't a good thing. People who have no idea how to write software shouldn't be writing software that other people are going to rely on.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

This really isn't a good thing. People who have no idea how to write software shouldn't be writing software that other people are going to rely on.

I have to agree with this. In spite of PHP being one of my preferred languages I don't think I would be nearly as good a programmer as I am now if I had started out with it. Java for example has much stricter rules when it comes to type checking and its object model is more up to date in my opinion. People tend to mistake the loose rules of PHP as an advantage to those who are learning, but they can also lead to bad habbits.

PHP comes from C++ with the only little thing that it doesn't really compile the code and lets it loose while also has a few things that sometimes help sometimes bother you like having variables not declared but they are autodeclared on initialize ... this I don't find any bad thing and if you do really know how to write a program and code your things as they should be coded then really it should bother you nothing actually if you're a good programmer the language shouldn't bother you at all ...
JSP : big costs slow language with great possibilty to load up with more data while PHP doesn't support really big data ( in php.ini you set up about 128M max 1024M of memory you can allocate to your programs if I am not up to date then correct me) while in JSP you have unlimmited ... that should be about the only thing that could ever help you or bother you as the programming language concerns
Just my humble oppinnion of ex C++ programmer and actual PHP programmer that took a look into JSP (if you got moree detailed arguments not just theorycrafting about the differences then I'ld be glad to hear them meanwhie I stand on my position about JSP : just a snobism against what the other language can offer you)...
PS if you're really bothered much about it you can simply take the time and rewrite some of the PHP opensource project that limmits the memory and manages it... then yea you're the guy!

Actually, JSP's are only slow on the first hit. This is because they are compiled the first time they are called (unless you pre-compile them but, that is another story). After the first hit, the compiled byte code is what is being executed.
If you are putting large amounts of data in a JSP (or PHP for that matter), you should be reconsidering your design.

Amazon and many other LARGE multi-national fortune 500 companies do use PHP for mission critical and large scale applications.

I recently contracted at a Very Large Overnight Shipping company working on multiple large scale applications with 1000's of concurrent users working against the PHP applications...

You simply cannot scale JSP or ASP to that level without extremely expensive front-end load balancing....

Corporate America does know PHP and they use it... A lot more than is publicly touted.

Originally Posted by Old Coder

You simply cannot scale JSP or ASP to that level without extremely expensive front-end load balancing....

Actually, you can if you have a development team that knows what they are doing (also required for PHP).

BTW, load balancing isn't expensive. It's just an apache module away.

The only reason you would need load balancing for a few thousand concurrent sessions in an ASP.NET application would be bad code. Or trying to run it on a 386.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

The only reason you would need load balancing for a few thousand concurrent sessions in an ASP.NET application would be bad code. Or trying to run it on a 386.

or CPU intensive applications

Well, sure, but web sites really aren't very CPU intensive. Query a database, wrap some html tags around the answer, output it to the client. Take a bit of input, clean it, send it to a database procedure. Cache a little bit of data in memory, and you're good to go. It's a lot like plucking a text file off a disc and displaying it - very few web sites actually render 3D CAD scenes per request.

If being CPU bound was causing a lot of problems for a lot of web sites, using pre compiled code would be essential, and PHP would have to evolve or go extinct.

That actually depends upon the web site.
If you have one that is heavily personalized, it can have a lot of operations going on. Also, marketing teams can give complex requirements, so implementing rules can burn a lot of CPU too

Java Server Pages (JSP) are normal HTML with Java code pieces embedded in them. A JSP compiler is used to generate a Servlet from the JSP page. php server-side HTML scripting languaage used to create dynamic Web pages. PHP is embedded within tags,