If Facebook were to start over what should it use PHP or JAVA (J2EE)? Why?
Special considerations:
- Scaling
- Development speed
- Maintainability
- Development tools
- Development costs
- 3rd party applications
- Security
- Deployment speed
views:
156answers:
1
A:
PHP obviously.
The skillset is 100x more common, it scales more simply, and you can iterate more quickly. Finally, the skills & practices required to scale it out are well-understood and established. Throw in the fact that they can hire core PHP developers - I know they have 3+ on staff now - and it makes even more sense.
CaseySoftware
2010-09-28 03:24:16
Are you trying to say there are more php programmers than java programmers?
micmcg
2010-09-28 06:01:28
-100 And this is backed by what evidence? In fact, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary - Java scaling much better than PHP; Java has many more programmers (I mean programmers as a profession, not a hobby). And being a more mature language, it is much better understood and established than PHP.
NullUserException
2010-09-29 15:30:23
I didn't say "scaling better", I said "scales more simply". If you qualify your definition of "programmers" to include "professional" then yes, you are correct. But that's not what *I* said. Building front end PHP/html templates requires a very low level of skill that the newest WordPress/Drupal/etc hacker can perform. The number of *truly skilled* PHP developers required is very small by comparison. As evidenced by Facebook's current team structures.
CaseySoftware
2010-09-30 14:36:07