[ale] J2EE vs PHP

[George Carless]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 09:38:27AM -0500, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> I'm working on a big web project and am not sure which language to use. 
> When would one choose PHP over J2EE?

Without wishing to be rude, I would say that since you don't know the 
answer to that question (implying that you don't know the relative 
strengths of each), you should go with that which you know best.  Even 
with PHP's (limited) OOP support, the thinking behind each is rather 
different (although, as with most things, most tasks can be handled by 
either).  But a question of which to use really comes down to a decision 
on the relative merits of each platform.  J2EE tends to be considered more 
scalable, and also generally shows better performance in many areas.  But 
then Java has overheads that PHP doesn't, and is also arguably easier to 
jump into than is J2EE.  But this again comes down to 'use what you know': 
I would say that for a 'big web project' either platform would be fine, if 
coded properly.  And coding something properly is easiest when you know 
the platform well.

--George