PHP vs. JAVA, part 1

I thought I should give my perspective from someone who has built applications in both PHP AND JAVA.  (And I love both platforms).

In a nutshell:

PHP is easy to learn, is loosely typed, and you can build rapidly build a website with it using a variety of tools and platforms -- (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Zend, etc..).  However, PHP is limited only to building websites (although some of the these websites are very large, Facebook for example is powered by PHP).   PHP primarily is a scripting language that makes it easier to interact w/ a database (like mySQL or Oracle).   You can't use it to build an android app for example, or to build a fully functioning desktop application like you can in C# or Java.

Java, on the other hand is strongly typed, has many libraries, and is a general purpose language that can be used to build many things besides websites.  One of the most popular uses of Java today of course is in building Android applications. 

Stay tuned.

Meetups are a really great resource

Meetups are a great way to meet new people but also a great way to learn about what is happening in your industry, especially the tech industry.  The next event planned for the San Francisco Java Users Group is entitled "Tuning JVM for a VM".  Stay tuned.

Why I started this blog

Since I started another blog recently regarding PHP (andysphpstuff.blogspot.com), I thought I would do the same for Java. Although I have been programming longer in PHP (about 8 years), than in Java (a little over 2 years) , I have really grown to love the sheer variety of things you can do in Java.

Today, I was working on tweaking some mySQL database queries I use in an application I've been developing with some partners for the past two years -- webchalet.com