7 ms·

Java will kill your startup. PHP will save it

27 points by PretzelFisch 8y ago

baud147258 8y ago
Writes "This post isn’t really about Java vs. PHP" then spent three quarters of the article doing just that.
- sli 8y ago
  The entire initial arguments of this article are just argumentum ad populum. Just a bunch of bullet points about popularity, finished up with the same round of "good programmers write good code in any language." So, does that include Java, then? No? Ok. PHP is "designed for the web?" What does that even mean in this context? They never really explain it beyond saying PHP is tightly coupled to your webserver (which is not objectively a pro, not even close). Knowing my early history of PHP, it was originally closer to "cobbled together to get something to work for the web." There seems to be a weird, baked in idea that Java software is always bloated and PHP software cannot be. In other words, it's predicated on a language-agnostic idea, but it's applied directly to two languages. After all that, I find this highlight particularly hypocritical, since the article never actually offers any real benefits to PHP beyond "it's popular" and "it's for the web": > Letting someone sell you on a language (like Java) without having a full evaluation and discussions about architecture and design is like letting a home builder sell you on buying a house you’ve never seen because his contractors use only the latest and greatest hammer (or sledge hammer in the case of Java EE).
- icc97 8y ago
  It is an annoying click-baity title, but his point is that you could replace Python or Ruby with PHP. You then lose the popularity argument that comes with PHP but the rest of the article I think is still relevant.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    But if you remove the click-bait part of comparison between the languages, there's not a lot of thing left.
jareds 8y ago
We are no longer living in the days of EJB 2 and Websphere 6. Springboot allows you to get started quickly with out spending a week configuring your app server and Java beans. The article should have been titled "Using enterprise Java technology from 15 years ago will kill your startup. PHP will save it."
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  Seconded. Even bare Java EE development hardly needs XML configuration anymore, since about EE 7 (maybe 6?).
  - jareds 8y ago
    At least with my work Java EE 6 and WebSphere 8 brought pretty decent annotation support. WebSphere Liberty looked pretty nice from the little I used it, but that was several years ago.
  - riku_iki 8y ago
    It has been started with Java 1.5/5, 14 years ago.
- ldh 8y ago
  I keep waiting to get cynical about Spring Boot for some reason (maybe once the next conceptual breakthrough which looks obvious in retrospect happens), but honestly it's the breath of fresh air and simplicity that the JVM ecosystem needed, and it has literally turned writing Java weba apps upside down (err..inside out?) in the best sense possible.
  - bloomthrowaway 8y ago
    if you like Spring Boot try DropWizard. Similar support for REST interfaces but none of the stuff you don't need
smt88 8y ago
I spent about 10 years in a niche: maintaining legacy PHP software. I have been down some very deep rabbitholes of PHP black magic. I have written 10+ medium-to-large applications from scratch in PHP, 4 of which are still running in production more than 8 years later. I feel qualified to say the following: - Java will not kill your startup. Bad coding MIGHT. But it also might not. - PHP will not save your startup. Good coding MIGHT. But it also might not. - You can write good/bad software in Java. I've seen both. - You can write bad software in PHP. I've never seen good software in PHP (including my own). At this point, it's becoming hard to believe it is possible to write good software in PHP. Mostly this is a problem with the awful design of the language. Adding better typing is helping, but at that point, why not just use something else? Also, most arguments in favor of PHP mention its popularity. I suspect that if you removed WordPress, Drupal, etc. from the calculation, you'd see PHP plummet to the bottom. I don't know any young people who learn it anymore, and I haven't met a startup building their product in PHP in many years.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  > I don't know any young people who learn it anymore, and I haven't met a startup building their product in PHP in many years. That's a poor metric for whether you should use it though, as both groups tend towards over-focusing on new "cool" tech stacks. I bet Vue would come up as the top framework amongst these groups but it is certainly not yet battle-tested.
  - smt88 8y ago
    It's not the only metric, but it matters. It has a huge effect on who you can hire and who wants to work for you. Smart people are often attracted to learning new stacks.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    It matters being on the other side for one of the reason the article cited -PHP programmers are more plentiful and cheaper than Java programmers. I worked for a company that had a legacy product that was written in PHP and started hiring like crazy over the next year to bring an adjacent product to market in .Net. But by year two, it was obvious that the new product was something that the market didn’t want but they were getting more opportunities on the legacy PHP side. Within 6 months after they abandoned the .Net product and started focusing on the PHP product, every single developer -14 in all left - starting with me. I called recruiters the same day that they announced they were focusing on PHP and left within a month. The only reason it took 6 months was that some were close to thier three year vesting period and one or two others were closing on a house. None of us were going to waste our time doing PHP. We knew there was no money in being a “PHP Developer”. Looking at LinkedIn, none of us mentioned that we ever touched PHP, we didn’t want recruiters wasting our time.
ram_rar 8y ago
I think, the author hasn't followed Java stack since Java 8. With things like variable handles, type inferencing and frameworks like Play, Spring boot. Its become fairly easy to kick off a new CRUD based web app.
kevwil 8y ago
God I hate clickbait. At least the author has the nerve to admit the inflamatory intent, so that's something I guess. That is all, carry on.
thewileyone 8y ago
A badly coded PHP solution is a headache to maintain and support. A badly code Java solution is a brain tumor.

27 points by PretzelFisch 8y ago

baud147258 8y ago

Writes "This post isn’t really about Java vs. PHP" then spent three quarters of the article doing just that.

sli 8y ago
The entire initial arguments of this article are just argumentum ad populum. Just a bunch of bullet points about popularity, finished up with the same round of "good programmers write good code in any language." So, does that include Java, then? No? Ok. PHP is "designed for the web?" What does that even mean in this context? They never really explain it beyond saying PHP is tightly coupled to your webserver (which is not objectively a pro, not even close). Knowing my early history of PHP, it was originally closer to "cobbled together to get something to work for the web." There seems to be a weird, baked in idea that Java software is always bloated and PHP software cannot be. In other words, it's predicated on a language-agnostic idea, but it's applied directly to two languages. After all that, I find this highlight particularly hypocritical, since the article never actually offers any real benefits to PHP beyond "it's popular" and "it's for the web": > Letting someone sell you on a language (like Java) without having a full evaluation and discussions about architecture and design is like letting a home builder sell you on buying a house you’ve never seen because his contractors use only the latest and greatest hammer (or sledge hammer in the case of Java EE).
icc97 8y ago
It is an annoying click-baity title, but his point is that you could replace Python or Ruby with PHP. You then lose the popularity argument that comes with PHP but the rest of the article I think is still relevant.
- baud147258 8y ago
  But if you remove the click-bait part of comparison between the languages, there's not a lot of thing left.

jareds 8y ago

We are no longer living in the days of EJB 2 and Websphere 6. Springboot allows you to get started quickly with out spending a week configuring your app server and Java beans. The article should have been titled "Using enterprise Java technology from 15 years ago will kill your startup. PHP will save it."

theandrewbailey 8y ago
Seconded. Even bare Java EE development hardly needs XML configuration anymore, since about EE 7 (maybe 6?).
- jareds 8y ago
  At least with my work Java EE 6 and WebSphere 8 brought pretty decent annotation support. WebSphere Liberty looked pretty nice from the little I used it, but that was several years ago.
- riku_iki 8y ago
  It has been started with Java 1.5/5, 14 years ago.
ldh 8y ago
I keep waiting to get cynical about Spring Boot for some reason (maybe once the next conceptual breakthrough which looks obvious in retrospect happens), but honestly it's the breath of fresh air and simplicity that the JVM ecosystem needed, and it has literally turned writing Java weba apps upside down (err..inside out?) in the best sense possible.
- bloomthrowaway 8y ago
  if you like Spring Boot try DropWizard. Similar support for REST interfaces but none of the stuff you don't need

smt88 8y ago

I spent about 10 years in a niche: maintaining legacy PHP software. I have been down some very deep rabbitholes of PHP black magic. I have written 10+ medium-to-large applications from scratch in PHP, 4 of which are still running in production more than 8 years later. I feel qualified to say the following: - Java will not kill your startup. Bad coding MIGHT. But it also might not. - PHP will not save your startup. Good coding MIGHT. But it also might not. - You can write good/bad software in Java. I've seen both. - You can write bad software in PHP. I've never seen good software in PHP (including my own). At this point, it's becoming hard to believe it is possible to write good software in PHP. Mostly this is a problem with the awful design of the language. Adding better typing is helping, but at that point, why not just use something else? Also, most arguments in favor of PHP mention its popularity. I suspect that if you removed WordPress, Drupal, etc. from the calculation, you'd see PHP plummet to the bottom. I don't know any young people who learn it anymore, and I haven't met a startup building their product in PHP in many years.

beaconstudios 8y ago
> I don't know any young people who learn it anymore, and I haven't met a startup building their product in PHP in many years. That's a poor metric for whether you should use it though, as both groups tend towards over-focusing on new "cool" tech stacks. I bet Vue would come up as the top framework amongst these groups but it is certainly not yet battle-tested.
- smt88 8y ago
  It's not the only metric, but it matters. It has a huge effect on who you can hire and who wants to work for you. Smart people are often attracted to learning new stacks.
- scarface74 8y ago
  It matters being on the other side for one of the reason the article cited -PHP programmers are more plentiful and cheaper than Java programmers. I worked for a company that had a legacy product that was written in PHP and started hiring like crazy over the next year to bring an adjacent product to market in .Net. But by year two, it was obvious that the new product was something that the market didn’t want but they were getting more opportunities on the legacy PHP side. Within 6 months after they abandoned the .Net product and started focusing on the PHP product, every single developer -14 in all left - starting with me. I called recruiters the same day that they announced they were focusing on PHP and left within a month. The only reason it took 6 months was that some were close to thier three year vesting period and one or two others were closing on a house. None of us were going to waste our time doing PHP. We knew there was no money in being a “PHP Developer”. Looking at LinkedIn, none of us mentioned that we ever touched PHP, we didn’t want recruiters wasting our time.

ram_rar 8y ago

I think, the author hasn't followed Java stack since Java 8. With things like variable handles, type inferencing and frameworks like Play, Spring boot. Its become fairly easy to kick off a new CRUD based web app.

kevwil 8y ago

God I hate clickbait. At least the author has the nerve to admit the inflamatory intent, so that's something I guess. That is all, carry on.

thewileyone 8y ago

A badly coded PHP solution is a headache to maintain and support. A badly code Java solution is a brain tumor.