Re:PHP vs JSP (Score 1)

I'm surprised that Java and Servlet hosting isn't as popular as PHP.

For us (web design/hosting shop) the choice between php and java came down to the overhead required on shared servers.

Our choices at the time were to use a single JVM to support all shared hosts on a server or use a separate JVM for each shared host.

The second option was out of reach financially (just couldn't afford shiny new servers, we had the servers we had - and had to make them work, and they wouldn't handle running dozens of dedicated JVMs.)

But the first option wasn't all that apealing either. If one site crashed the JVM, lots of client sites came down with it. In addition, there were some security issues with cross-site VM pollution that didn't give us the warm and fuzzy about sharing a single VM.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-java. I had been developing with java for a couple of years prior, and wasn't really looking forward to "stepping down" to php. I liked java then, and still do, and wish it well. I may end up needing it again.

Now, this decision was made a couple years ago, and I'm sure much has changed since then, but I've been happy with the decision to use php. And now with PHP5, much has changed since then.