I read this article because I have worked many times in Java and PHP and I wanted to see if my opinion on the matter coincided with the article.

In general, except for some comments about performance, where PHP has been rated as excellent, I still felt completely identified.

I must not forget that I have been “away” from Java for a few years and, for leisure, “close” to PHP. Also, I don't forget that the article is from an author who works at Zend (maintainer of PHP updates), so it's probably a little biased.

Article by Zend

It is short, direct and interesting.

A section of the article:

PHP vs. Java: Key Differences

There are several major differences when comparing PHP vs. Java. So significant are these that I wonder if there is a fair comparison – while both are very powerful tools, it is somewhat like comparing a power drill to a table saw. Still, they both offer excellent results for modern web apps, and developers often find themselves caught between the two languages.

Variables

Let's start our comparison of PHP vs. Java by addressing the elePHPant in the room: variables.

Java requires all variables to be strictly typed. While PHP is moving in this direction, it is still a very forgiving language in regard to dynamic data typing. Many Java developers, as a result, find it a challenge to navigate the dynamic typing of PHP. In addition, these developers love to poke fun at the “$” that is used to identify variables in PHP. Having developed in both languages, I find the dollar sign a very convenient feature when scanning through the code. As Guido Von Rossum surmised some time ago, “Code is read far more often than it is written.”

PHP vs. Java Performance

When comparing PHP vs. Java, performance must always be taken into account. Java is compiled while PHP is interpreted…sort of, as Java compiles into bytecode, which is then interpreted by the JVM. This abstraction gives Java its cross-platform ubiquity. PHP is essentially interpreted, but it is interpreted into bytecode as well. This bytecode can be cached to eliminate the need for repetitive interpretations on high-volume sites.

The features above will level comparisons of PHP vs. Java performance capabilities. However, Java’s sheer verbosity regarding its code style does seem to add heft to even the most minimal applications. Add in the desire for a web application server, and the memory footprint grows and grows.

Another aspect of comparing PHP vs. Java performance is threading. Many people talk about Java threading features, which it needs to address performance bottlenecks and concurrency. PHP also supports threading, but it may not be widely used as the language typically processes individual page requests in sub-second response times. This means it is rarely used in a batch environment. In my opinion, while Java really depends on threads for some of its performance processing, PHP only uses them for when the application requires that level of safety.

Developer Career Opportunities

The w3techs website indicates that PHP leads in usage, with 76% of websites using the language. Java, meanwhile, comes in fourth place with a mere 5% of websites. At the same time, a recent CodeNinja article indicated that there are about 17 million Java developers compared to 6.3 million PHP developers. I think you can draw a lot of inferences from these statistics, most notably that many Java developers are at work on internal applications compared to public-facing applications. Additionally, with most colleges and universities basing their curricula on Java, there is a built-in feeder system for new developers.

Time to Market

Time to market also factors in when deciding between PHP vs. Java. PHP applications can typically be scaffolded either by hand or by using a popular framework like Laravel, Symfony, or Laminas in mere minutes, while Java infrastructure tends to be much more laborious, depending on a framework like Spring and the desire to leverage Web Application Servers like Tomcat. With that said, once the DevOps pipeline is built, this should be a negligible statistic until someone needs to build a new environment or revise an existing one.