Re: PHP vs. JSP

Ummm... If you know what you are doing........you wouldn't have null pointer exceptions in you jsp scripts :O) For big projects, java would be quicker to develop........for most web apps......PHP does just fine ;O) ""Keith Devens"" <php@keithdevens.com> wrote in message news:NEBBLNLBAMDEBJCJGNBIAEJECCAA.php@keithdevens.com... > Alright, I was afraid someone would ask <g> > > By the way, what's the best way to reply and send a message to the list? > Another mailing list I'm on just lets me reply to a message and it goes to > the list. What's the right way to do it for this list? "Reply to all"? > > Alright, with that out of the way, here is my list of "Bad Thing"s about > JSP. > > 1. First, I'll reiterate Zeev's point. > > "Simply put, Java isn't, and was never meant to be a rapid development > language. It's not a scripting language. That is, in my opinion, JSP's > biggest flaw." > > Variables don't autovivify, you don't have good string handling (yes, Sun > has a regular expressions library *somewhere* that you can use, although I > don't think it's even included with the product I was using for JSP. In > other words, it's likely to not be available, and it's certainly not built > in), and you don't have dollar sign variables to include in strings. Oh > yeah, and forget an easy e-mail function. You'd be amazed at what you need > to do to get the same functionality as PHP's mail() function in JSP. > > 2. Development is just a pain in the butt for many reasons. The number one > pain in the butt is null pointers. In JSP, if you get a null pointer, that's > it. There's no help whatsoever. It gives you a stack trace, and you have no > clue where you got the null pointer, how much of the HTML it got through > before you ran into the error, or anything useful. It's a huge pain. By > contrast, PHP will output everything up to where you got the error, give you > a useful error message, and keep going. In JSP, when you get a null pointer, > a lot of times you just have no clue where to start looking. This brings me > to the next problem... > > 3. JSP is compiled. The thing is that the JSP itself isn't compiled into > Java bytecode. It's precompiled into a servlet first, and then that servlet > is compiled. This has a bunch of ramifications. One, when you get an error > like the one I described above, if you're lucky enough to get any hint at a > line number where the problem might be, it's not the line number in the JSP > file, it's the line number in the servlet source!! Then you have to go to > the directory where the intermediate servlet of the JSP is stored, and find > the line number the error was on. > > 4. Also, the precompilation is one more error prone step for the whole > process to go through. Sometimes it just doesn't compile the JSP into the > servlet right. I've had at least one time when I've been sure that the > precompiler was breaking my code. > > 4a. I almost forgot this, and went back and added this at the end. Whenever > you do an include in JSP, it sucks the include into the servlet source and > then compiles the whole thing. The thing is that if you change your include, > the base file's modification date doesn't change, so the server doesn't know > to recompile your JSP the next time it runs. If you change an include, you > wind up having to reupload every single file that uses the include so that > the file modification date changes and it gets recompiled to use the new > include. Needless to say this is really annoying. > > 5. Implicit objects, or "You can't write functions!": JSP gives you a bunch > of "implicit objects", such as "out" which lets you print to the browser, > and "request" which lets you get get and post parameters. The thing is that > no function (method) you create has access to these. This makes it a pain in > the butt to write functions, in practice, and you wind up with huge > monolithic code. I can explain the stupid technical reasons why this > happens, and it involves, again, the precompilation into a servlet, but it's > not worth going into detail. > > 6. The documentation is fairly poor. Also, with PHP you pretty much just > learn PHP. With JSP you have to know Java first, then you can learn JSP. > > 7. Just some practical, ease of use considerations. When you want to do an > "if", the majority of the time you can just say if($variable == "string you > want"){...}. It doesn't matter whether the variable was ever set before. In > Java (I'm thankful you can even do this at all, thanks to Java having short > circuiting logical operators), you have to do things like if(variable != > null && variable.equalTo("blah")){...} ALL the time. Also, with string > parsing, I wound up using the StringTokenizer for most things, rather than > just doing an explode(), for instance. > > I'm not sure I did the best job of explaining the points, and it feels like > there were more bad things involving JSP that I can't remember now. In any > case, be happy you use PHP. Unfortunately, it seems like JSP is growing in > usage, when it doesn't deserve to given the obvious 1.x quality that it has. > To close, the one good thing JSP has going for it is JDBC, although even > that is arguably beaten by all of PHP's native db functions. > > Have a good day, all. > > Keith > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Ben Heuer [mailto:ben_heuer@artlover.com] > > Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 8:46 PM > > To: Keith Devens > > Subject: RE: [PHP] PHP vs. JSP > > > > > > HI Keith, > > > > Shoot...I share fully your dislike for JSP and Java for web development at > > the moment. But I'd really like to share your thoughts on WHY NOT JSP as I > > need to show it to the management types..? > > > > Thanks in advance! > > Ben > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Keith Devens [mailto:php@keithdevens.com] > > Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2000 12:17 AM > > To: php-general@lists.php.net > > Subject: RE: [PHP] PHP vs. JSP > > > > > > I sent this message yesterday. I'm new to the list and didn't realize that > > the list address isn't the REPLY-To address, so I would up sending it just > > to one person :) > > ----------------------------------------------------- > > > > JSP, in my opinion, is just NOT a viable language at this point. I've done > > kind of a lot of work with it, unfortunately, and it's really not > > ready for > > prime time. Also, Java just isn't a good HTML embedded scripting language. > > Who wants to worry about null pointers (sorry, references) in > > their HTML? In > > any case, I can't say enough bad things about JSP. I won't go into it now, > > but if anyone really wants to know, feel free and I can give a > > whole list of > > reasons why JSP is a "Bad Thing". > > > > Keith > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net >