php – Slaviša Petković

PHP or Java — which language is right for your software project?

slavisap — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 12:32:56 +0000

The difference between Java and PHP is not only its approach to a type system, there are major discrepancies in approaches to concurrency, reliability and more. Saying that one language is better than the other is never a good idea, it’s all about what kind of problems they solve. Both Java and PHP have their place in IT and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon.

PHP is one of the most mature, ubiquitous server-side scripts on the web. Java is a general-purpose, compiled programming language designed with one mantra in mind—”write once, run anywhere.” Both power dynamic web applications and sites, with their own strengths and nuances.

Once you choose a language for your software project, it can be pretty difficult to change gears unless you perform a major overhaul down the line. That’s why choosing the right language up front is imperative to building a scalable, successful site that accomplishes your business goals.

You’ve probably done a little research into the right language, but it can be difficult for someone without software development expertise to determine which one is right. Here’s a look at two of the most popular programming languages, Java and PHP. A software developer can help you best decide between the two based on your project, but here are some basics to help you make the right decision.

What is Java?

Java was designed as a general purpose programming language for building standalone applications. When Java was released by Sun in 1991, it was initially being used to program consumer electronics like VCRs. Java is a compiled language, so when you compile code it’s turned to intermediate binary for the specific operating system running your software. Its applications are compiled into bytecode that can run on implementations of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The JVM helps bridge the gap between source code and the 1s and 0s that the computer understands. Any machine that has the JVM installed can run Java. In development, Java is primarily a server-side language for the web, and the programming language of choice for mobile development on the Android platform. It also still has a decent presence on the front-end as a Java applet, although this is falling out of favor due to security concerns.

What is PHP?

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a general purpose scripting language that quickly became the de facto server-side language of choice for web developers after its initial release in 1995. It’s got an advantage in that it was designed and created for the web, versus languages that were adapted to the web (like Ruby or Python). Today, a majority of websites run on PHP, and PHP programmers are still in high demand thanks to its role as the foundation for content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla and a number of modern frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and CakePHP that have accelerated development with this mature language.

PHP and Java Differences

Compiled vs. Interpreted

Java is considered a compiled programming language. This allows it to run on any operating system regardless of where it was written. The difference is in the implementation: Java is compiled into bytecode and run on a virtual machine. PHP is what you call an interpreted language, or “script”—the code can be run as-is in their respective runtime environments (i.e., the server). While there’s a lot of nuance to the compiled vs. interpreted debate, it is generally true that scripts are much easier to use and favor programmer productivity.

Memory safe

Java is a memory-safe language, which means if you attempt to assign values outside of the given array parameters, the programmer receives an error.

Static vs. Dynamic Type Checking

Java uses static type checking, where the type of a variable is checked at compile-time. The programmer must specify the type (integer, double, string, etc.) of any variable they create. There are many pros and cons for these two paradigms, but the primary advantage of static type checking is that type errors are caught early in development, and because the compiler knows exactly what data types are being used, code typically executes faster or uses less memory. The primary advantage of dynamic type checking is programmer productivity—you are free to assign types at your leisure.

Concurrency

This is the language’s ability to handle the execution of several instruction sequences at the same time. Java makes use of multiple threads to perform tasks in parallel. PHP, like most server-side languages, uses multi-threaded, blocking I/O to carry out multiple tasks in parallel. For most use-cases, both methods work just fine, but Java is generally faster because thread to thread memory sharing much faster than interprocess communication (IPC). PHP has been around the block for a while though, and has found its own way to achieve asynchronous processing—most notably through the HHVM project released by Facebook.

Class-Based vs. Prototype Based

Java follows class based inheritance—a top down, hierarchical, class-based relationship whereby properties are defined in a class and inherited by an instance of that class (one of its members).

PHP vs. Java: Major Similarities

Back-End Development

Both languages are used on the server-side. Java has long been used to power back-end technologies like Apache, JBoss, and WebSphere.

Syntax

Looping structures, classes, defining variables, and conditional operators are very similar in both languages. This makes it easy for developers to work cross-platform should you have several projects that use both languages.

Entry points

When your program starts, the compiler or interpreter looks for where it needs to begin execution.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

Neither language is “fully” object-oriented, but both languages have access to techniques like inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. The benefit? Object-oriented languages make your program much more modular so you can reuse code for other programs.

SHOULD I USE PHP OR JAVA FOR MY NEXT PROJECT?

As with all languages, the choice really boils down to what you’re trying to build and what resources you have at your disposal.

You should consider Java if your project involves…

Android Apps
Enterprise Software
Scientific Computing
Big Data Analytics
General Purpose Programming of Hardware
Server-Side Technologies like Apache, JBoss, Geronimo, GlassFish, etc.

You should consider PHP if your project involves…

Software stacks like the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
CMS’s like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla etc.
Servers like MySQL, SQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Sybase, and Postgresql etc.

Both Java and PHP are excellent foundations for a wide variety of software. Which language you choose to use will be determined by what you want developed.

You can manipulate hardware with Java, but it’s not a common language for low-level programming since it’s a “safer” language. Because Java won’t allow you to perform certain functions to protect the PC, it’s preferred for higher level applications.

The best way to make a firm decision is to post your project and ask developers for their opinions. They can tell you which language is right for your project to help guide you to the right solution.

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HTML, CSS. What next?

slavisap — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 21:55:43 +0000

Javascript is a useful place to start to start if you’ve just finished covering HTML and CSS. When designing websites HTML is used to mark up content, CSS for the styling and then Javascript is used to add interactivity and functionality to a webpage.

Worth having a think about what type of projects you are interested in and then doing some research into what technologies they use. If you’re keen on developing web based applications, worth checking the courses on PHP and Ruby.

JavaScript is essentially a ‘front end’ or ‘client side’ language. Your browser executes the JavaScript in your webpages on your computer. It can be used to modify HTML and styles on the fly, and also uses a method called AJAX to send and receive data from the server. It makes web pages more engaging, easier to use, and overall can vastly increase the end user experience. Due to fairly recent developments, JavaScript can now also be used as a back end or server side language.

Python, Ruby & PHP are all languages that run on the server. The server processes the code and sends the web pages to your browser, compare this to JavaScript, where the code is sent to your browser, and that code produces or modifies the HTML within your browser itself.

There are ‘code snobs’ who will tell you not to touch PHP, and they have their reasons. It is a relatively easy language to learn, but enables you (encourages you) to write some really horrendous code and use bad practices. For someone who doesn’t know any programming though, writing something very badly that works (because it’s easier to do it badly) will give you a far better start and easier leaning curve than languages that don’t allow that and force a much steeper learning curve or barrier to entry.

Having not used Python or Ruby, I can’t recommend which of the three you mention would be best for a beginner, I’d simply say don’t rule out PHP based upon what some other people may tell you.

So JavaScript, or one of the other three? You don’t need to install any software or have access to a webserver to start writing JavaScript that works, this is a big plus. You can’t do this with any of the other languages. However, JavaScript is focussed on an object oriented paradigm. You won’t know what this means at the moment, but it is essential to understand if you want to write effective software in JavaScript. The other three languages also support object oriented programming, but do not enforce it. Why is this important? In computer software, object oriented programming is a relatively new concept. Before this, we all used a paradigm called procedural programming. You don’t need to know what this means at the moment, but I would say that it is far easier to learn how to write software by using procedural programming techniques, and then later progressing to object oriented techniques (or some combination of both). This will be easier to achieve with the latter three languages than JavaScript.

So my recommendation would be PHP, even with the headache of having to install some local software, or having access to a web server. To build great webpages you will need to know JavaScript at some point, I just wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point. I consider it quite a difficult language to learn compared to PHP.

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What is Laravel framework?

slavisap — Sun, 02 Apr 2017 10:49:11 +0000

Laravel Framework is for me the best framework to build any kind of web app with PHP. It has a great community, a really cool and the best videotutorials out there laracasts.com by Jeffrey Way (he is a superhero). Comes with a lot of resources out of the box, it has a cool router, eloquent for model repositories, swiftmailer for the mailing, blade engine for your templates, a system to create your migrations (think about it as a way of creating your database tables inside your PHP code, which is nice), a cache component to cache everything you want, a monolog logger, etc…

Some of the features are:

modular packaging system with a dedicated dependency manager
different ways for accessing relational databases though Routing
utilities that aid in application deployment and maintenance
orientation toward syntactic sugar
easy authentication by providing a simple & easy to use interface and many more.

Server Requirements

This framework has a few system requirements. It’s highly recommended that you use Homestead as your local Laravel development environment. However, if you are not using Homestead, you will need to make sure your server meets the following requirements:

PHP >= 5.5.9
OpenSSL PHP Extension
PDO PHP Extension
Mbstring PHP Extension
Tokenizer PHP Extension

Installing Laravel

Laravel utilizes Composer to manage its dependencies. So make sure you have Composer installed on your machine. The best thing about Laravel is that it is a high quality framework, so learning how to use it you become a better programmer in PHP in general. I recommend you to give it a try and you will never regret it.

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PHP?

slavisap — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 10:26:13 +0000

The PHP programming language is a server-side HTML embedded scripting language. Let‘s depict the sentence. The PHP language runs on the server-side. This means that the execution (read starting) of the scripts are done on the server where the web-site is hosted. HTML embedded means that you can use programming statements (read a piece of PHP code) from within an HTML code. PHP files are returned to the browser as plain HTML. The last piece of the sentence – scripting language – is a little harder to explain, but we will give it a go. A scripting language is a form of programming language that is usually interpreted rather than compiled. In programming languages such C or C++ you compile the program (permanently) into an executable file, before you can execute the program. A program that is written in a scripting language, is interpreted one command at a time by a command interpreter (Command interpreter is in most cases an executable written in another language (for instance C/C++) than the scripting language.) Some other examples of scripting languages are Perl, Phyton, Java and Ruby.

A last note: scripting languages are also often used by applications as control or configure language. An example: Firefox is written in C/C++ and can be controlled with JavaScript.

Things You Should Know

Because this is an HTML embedded language you should have a basic understanding of HTML/XHTML and (a little) JavaScript.

What is PHP?

Hypertext Preprocessor.
As we said before it is a server-side scripting language.
free and is an open source software product.
Scripts are executed on the server.
Supports many databases (MySQL, Sybase, Oracle and many others.)
Runs on different platforms (Unix, Linux, Windows.)
Compatible with almost all web-servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
Contain plain text, HTML tags and scripts
Files can have one of the following extensions: php, php3 or phtml.

What do you need?

Before you can follow the coming PHP tutorials you need to have the following:

Access to a web server (like Apache)
PHP and MySQL should be installed on the web server.

The easiest way is to find a cheap web hosting plan that support PHP and MySQL (most of the web-hosting providers do.) For a couple of bucks a month you can get a virtual host. The advantage is that everything is already installed and that you can share your program (that you are going to write) with the rest of the world. If you don’t want to spend money, you can also install everything on your local machine. The easiest way is to install WAMP if you have a Windows machine and LAMP if you have a Linux machine. (WAMP = Windows Apache MySQL PHP and LAMP = Linux Apache MySQL PHP.) These packages install everything you need. Read the install manual of these packages for instructions. After installation you should have access to http://localhost in your browser.

Literature

PHP.NET: A good place to start is by skimming through the ever-growing list of frequently asked questions (with answers, of course). Then have a look at the rest of the online manual and other resources in the documentation section.

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