A reply to Stefans PHP business perspective
Stefan Mischook wrote a post called “Why PHP is the choice language - a business owners perspective” and to some extent I agree with him. However there are two things that stand out that doesn’t site well with me.
JSP a framework?
He says:
PHP itself is a language but ASP.net, classic ASP, JSP are not … but they do the same things as PHP. These competing technologies are frameworks (for creating database-driven websites,) built on top of programming languages.
For instance, JSP (the framework) uses Java as its’ programming language to do its’ thing and classic ASP typically uses VB Script.
I don’t know too many Java developers that would say JSP is a framework. It is merely a piece of the J2EE technology stack. Sure it uses Java as it’s primary “scripting” language (to use the term loosely here). Wicket, Struts, Stripes, Turbine, Sitemesh, and others are frameworks. You could go one step further by saying that JSP itself is just scripted Java for the web, being that JSP’s get compiled down to servlets. I don’t know the underlying infrastructure behind ASP.net, but I imagine it is pretty similar.
Semantics aside, there is one other issue that just speaks of FUD:
I will only recount one quick story that makes my (business) point. About 2-3 years ago I decided to build a new web application using my favorite language at the time: Java.
After months of stuttered development (and $10 000 - $12 000 not including my time,) I had a stuttering mess that kinda worked. This happens all too often in software development BTW.
Anyway, I decided that this had to be fixed, so I had it reproduced with PHP while (at the same time,) adding new features. My cost for the total rewrite came out to $700. I should have went with PHP from the start …
This isn’t really a failure of Java or JSP itself. While Stefan claims to have been a Java developer, I wonder just how he went about building his application? Perhaps he was trying to make it too complicated? Being a Java developer myself I’ve seen how many in our community tend to focus too much on using XYZ framework or tool when something far simpler would have worked out just as well and produced faster.
By its nature, building applications in PHP tend to be simpler. At least initially… A complicated app in PHP (in my experience) tends to be more complicated than a comparable app in Java, but that isn’t the point. Blatant statements that one language will cost a business owner 10x more than another is quite misleading.
Disclaimer: I have no problems with PHP at all, and I rather like it actually. Java is my bread and butter sure, but that doesn’t make it any better or worse than anything else. Well, except ASP 
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JSP by its nature is a framework by on top of Servlet model.
Your statement: It is merely a piece of the J2EE technology stack does not say anything about how JSP is designed, built and used. If you have opportunity to use Smarty, Blitz template engine in PHP you can easily find out they are JSP equivalent. Smarty and Blitz define a sub set of custom tags (JSTL equivalents) and then they will be compiled into PHP for the first access.