On of the frameworks available is CakePHP which seperates logic from the presentation. If you don’t have the discipline to implement good modular code without language restraints (for example myself), then use a framework or something. It can be a strict teacher. That’s good.

“get pragmatic- use tools that fit the task.”

Too right mate

Anyway, there’s no point getting religious about it when you really understand the saying: “Programming Is Programming”.

A programming language is to programming as a calculator is to maths. Good programming skills are learnt separately from the language. If you know what you’re doing, sure, you can write excellent and resusable OOP code in PHP.

The 3 languages I use most are: Java, PHP and C++.

The new stuff in JDK 1.5 is fascinating. Most of the Apache projects are equally splendid (if you want me to say, cool, find yourself an American).

But, here’s the rub. I think Tomcat is excellent and very robust, however, many, many software projects do not need enterprise scalability. I’ve done projects that had global reach, so I’m not talking through my hat here.

I like JSP a great deal, and there are many excellent Java/Web apps in Open Source (I should know, I use many of them).

Another ‘but’, I recently had to put together a prototype of a complex application. I dipped into two or three PHP projects I’ve been monitoring in in literally hours had something better than the Java-based code I’d done earlier.

The long and the short of it is, in my opinion, if you need a decent and effective tool that does not need all the enterprise grade bells, use PHP for your web-apps. You can integrate to Java processes, like Web Services-based apps easily. Hence separation of concerns.

Don’t drink the Big IT Kool-aid: Much of that hokum about the need for scalability exists for Sun to sell you another server or Microsoft another license. Using Microsoft technology on one project, we ran to 21 mid-range servers. 21! What was this? a debutante party? Before you unload against Microsoft, another Java-based application running on Sun would have required at least 64GB of RAM (It ran in Windows 2000 in 1GB. Go figure).

I’m now ready to throw my hat in the ring for PHP for most web based projects, talking to a Web Services back-end. I’ve seen to many good quality PHP apps to get Java-religion.

After all, using PHP is not like using Visual Basic, so that’s OK, isn’t it?

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I just had to get this off my chest. In summary, don’t get religion, get pragmatic- use tools that fit the task.

Anyway, comments like these are just examples that you haven’t investigated the full power of PHP. I know the counter argument to this is that if it’s not straightforward then nobody will use it, but obviously people do. Also, how easy is it for me to get an ASP.NET development environment set up? rpm -ivh httpd, rpm -ivh php-4.X, and VI and I’m good to go with PHP.

I have setup tomcat before, and that’s not a walk in the park either but at least it’s free.