‘Cool kids’ ARE using PHP and Ruby!
Coach Wei was wondering why ‘Cool Kids’ choose Ruby or PHP over Java? In his post, the power of Java is a “perfect fit for the areas where websites may need more than markups or scripting, such as middleware logic”, whereas PHP or Ruby are not ideal for building such middleware.
For example, PHP (and Ruby) are good for simple and lightweight implementations, but sites like Facebook which started with PHP, should be ideal for Java because of it’s growing complexity.
I can’t really speak for Ruby, but I do know why I would keep using PHP. Java has always come across to me as ‘cumbersome’, ‘monolithic’ which probably is not true, but that’s the image I get. I think this is probably a by-product of my corporate experience in which Java (or J2EE) is almost always compared with Microsoft’s .NET.
If there was any discussion to be had about development technology, it would always be between ‘these enterprise grade’ tools. PHP and Linux would be sidelined simply because it’s meant for building simple lightweight applications, not complicated enterprise systems.
I think this perception should change, PHP can be considered as a viable enterprise tool. I do not believe that websites like Facebook which can handle such a high load of traffic is incapable of handling enterprise complexity.
In the same way, I’m sure Java would do well outside the enterprise world. But what Coach Wei may not realize what is stopping people using Java in such situations is because they started off small - using PHP (or Ruby). When the small becomes big, it’s difficult to turn back and switch to something else.
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