> if you've done Java commercially you've used sub-par tools. I spent 3 years doing Java on large-scale telco projects using IntellJ, I'm not an amateur Java d

> if you've done Java commercially you've used sub-par tools. I spent 3 years doing Java on large-scale telco projects using IntellJ, I'm not an amateur Java dev. I now code PHP full-time on a social network. > 1. any decent IDE will compile as you type Fine, but my original point was about building for a production environment. > 2. I'll give you this one Thanks! > 3. Java supports dynamic class reloading, it works out of the box with jetty. You using Jetty with dynamic class loading enabled in production? > 4. you just press "run" in the ide. Once again, your local dev environment has nothing to do with production servers (where you obviously won't have an IDE). > 5. same applies to java, just requires you take your (automatically built) .class file And what if that .class file is buried in a .jar somewhere, which is in turn buried in a .war somewhere else? Not quite as easy as opening a .php file with vi on the terminal, is it? > 6. I'm not sure how difficult you think JDBC is.. you just give it the connection string and the driver name. ...and the driver has to be on the class path, and the driver might have local binary dependencies (depending on the vendor), and you have to be careful to ensure that you are using the correct driver .jar version for your version of the database, and ensure that it is packaged up will all of your other project dependencies when you build your .war/.ear etc. > 7. just drop the war into your servlet directory, and you're done ...after you have built the .war using a build technology like Ant or Maven (I refer you back to my original point 1 about the Java build/deploy cycle being more complex).