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  5. Java vs PHP

Java vs PHP

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

PHP
PHP
Stacks147.4K
Followers82.9K
Votes4.6K
GitHub Stars39.6K
Forks8.0K
Java
Java
Stacks148.0K
Followers105.5K
Votes3.7K

Java vs PHP: What are the differences?

  1. Syntax: One key difference between Java and PHP is their syntax. Java uses curly braces {} to define code blocks, while PHP uses semicolons ; at the end of each statement and does not require the use of curly braces for code blocks. This difference in syntax can affect the readability and structure of the code written in these languages.
  2. Typing: Another important distinction between Java and PHP is their typing system. Java is a statically typed language, meaning variables are declared with a specific data type that cannot change during runtime. On the other hand, PHP is a dynamically typed language, allowing variables to change types during execution. This difference can impact the predictability and error-handling capabilities of the code.
  3. Platform Independence: Java is known for its platform independence as it can run on any platform with the help of Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In contrast, PHP is more platform-dependent, as it is usually executed on a web server with PHP installed. This platform difference can affect the deployment and scalability options for applications developed in these languages.
  4. Memory Management: Java uses automatic memory management through garbage collection, where the system automatically deallocates memory when objects are no longer needed. PHP, on the other hand, relies on manual memory management, requiring developers to explicitly allocate and deallocate memory. This distinction can impact the performance and resource utilization of applications written in Java and PHP.
  5. Object Orientation: Java is a pure object-oriented language, requiring all code to be written within class structures, even standalone functions. PHP, on the other hand, supports both procedural and object-oriented programming paradigms, allowing developers to choose the best approach for their projects. This difference in object orientation can affect the code organization and reusability in Java and PHP applications.
  6. Exception Handling: Java has a robust exception handling mechanism that enforces developers to catch or specify checked exceptions. In PHP, exceptions are not typically used for error handling, and it relies more on error reporting functions and return values. This difference in exception handling can impact the reliability and maintainability of code in Java and PHP.

In Summary, Java and PHP differ in syntax, typing, platform independence, memory management, object orientation, and exception handling.

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Advice on PHP, Java

Nick
Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k
Comments
Ido
Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k
Comments
Brent
Brent

CEO at DEFY Labs

Mar 7, 2020

Decided

Node.js has been growing in popularity, and the ability to access the global pool of Javascript developers is great. There is a decreased amount of effort for people to work across the frontend and backend, and the language itself is easy and works well for many common use cases.

Go was the other serious candidate, but it just hasn't been implemented in as many Production systems yet, and the best Go engineers I've known have been hackers, whereas we're building a robust analytics platform that requires more caution. Type safety is easily added with TypeScript, and NPM is awesomely handy.

369k views369k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

PHP
PHP
Java
Java

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Statistics
GitHub Stars
39.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
8.0K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
147.4K
Stacks
148.0K
Followers
82.9K
Followers
105.5K
Votes
4.6K
Votes
3.7K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 954
    Large community
  • 820
    Open source
  • 767
    Easy deployment
  • 488
    Great frameworks
  • 387
    The best glue on the web
Cons
  • 21
    So easy to learn, good practices are hard to find
  • 16
    Inconsistent API
  • 8
    Fragmented community
  • 6
    Not secure
  • 3
    Hard to debug
Pros
  • 608
    Great libraries
  • 446
    Widely used
  • 401
    Excellent tooling
  • 396
    Huge amount of documentation available
  • 334
    Large pool of developers available
Cons
  • 33
    Verbosity
  • 27
    NullpointerException
  • 17
    Nightmare to Write
  • 16
    Overcomplexity is praised in community culture
  • 12
    Boiler plate code
Integrations
Laravel
Laravel
JavaScript
JavaScript
Spring
Spring

What are some alternatives to PHP, Java?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Rust

Rust

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

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