Lukas Smith has put together a recent post to his blog with some thoughts on standardization of interfaces in PHP applications to help improve code quality and interoperability.

In my previous blog post I was brainstorming the possibility of collaboration between various frameworks to define a set of common interfaces. But I kind of failed to explain why this would be useful. Herman's "rebuttal" made this omission on my part quite clear. [...] That being said the open questions left in my previous blog might still prevent this idea to take off, even if I manage to convince the general community that the above mentioned negative effects are not such a significant concern.

He talks first about some of the things he sees PHP as having done right (citing its popularity) and contrasts it to Java based on the standards they impose. He goes on to mention how interfaces, introduced early enough in the process, can help with the "best tool for the job" idea (with an example involving Symfony2, Zend Framework and Doctrine).

New on DZone.com's Web Builder Zone, there's an article from Giorgio Sironi comparing Struts to the Zend Framework (Struts, of course, being a standard Java MVC framework that's quite popular in that community).

This article is intended to be useful for who experiences a transition between Java and PHP, but also to learn what could be imported in a framework from the other. Keep in mind that in the PHP world using a framework is probably still not considered the default option (going with or without frameworks is a choice which is out of the scope of what I want to discuss today instead.) Let's see what surprises you when jumping from Zend Framework to Struts, or the other way around.

He compares them against each other mentioning things like the single servelet vs front controller idea, action classes vs action controllers, persistence, JSP vs embedded PHP and tag libraries vs view helpers.

Indra Dutta has shared some of his thoughts about which language(s) are best suited for web development work in his latest post - that PHP is a better choice over things like Java and .NET for building most of the functionality out there.

I have worked on java web frameworks like JSF, Echo2, Vaadin, Grails and recently Play. Similarly I have worked on Silverlight, ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC. My conclusion is that, in overall, PHP frameworks beat both java and .NET frameworks in terms of ease of development, deployment and even maintenance- for creating web sites with moderate complexity. Of course, I do not expect you to take my words for granted.

He lists his "top five" reasons why PHP is the better choice over some of the other frameworks mentioned:

• PHP web hosting options are superior
• PHP provides rapid development and instant gratification to developers
• PHP web frameworks provide a complete stack sufficient to develop a great many web sites
• PHP frameworks provide a low barrier of entry for web developers
• No DLL or jar hell

Of course, no article like this is complete without a load of comments from both sides of the fence, so be sure to read up on those for different perspectives.

Giorgio Sironi has posted the other side of the PHP/Java envy perspective in this new article on DZone.com - five things that Java envies PHP for (The first article is here offering the opposite perspective).

The comparison is only on web applications and dynamic websites, as PHP does not compete on the desktop. I am a PHP programmer, but I work in Java on university-related projects. If you notice something is missing from the comparisons in this list, feel free to comment and complete my depiction of Java features, and of PHP too.

His list of five things includes that there's no compilation required in PHP applications (running is "compiling"), that there's a unified platform to work on and that there's a lot more included "out of the box" than with Java (like database connectivity).

On the Web Builder Zone today Giorgio Sironi has a new article with five things he thinks the PHP world is jealous about when they look at the features Java has to offer.

I've seen many programmers starting to think that Java is old and verbose, and trying to jump on the bandwagon of scripting languages such as PHP and Ruby. But it's not so simple, as these languages are late to the party in many areas. Here are the 5 things that as a PHP programmer I started envy Java for.

The five features on his list are:

• Hibernate
• Generics
• Keeping objects in memory between requests
• Java Collection Framework
• Asynchronous processing

Keep an eye out for his next article - he flips it around and talks about what Java developers have to envy about PHP's features.

On the Java DZone.com section today there's a "which is faster" post comparing PHP, Java and Python. No, it's not quite what you're expecting - I'd suggest reading on.

Sigh. What a difficult question. There are numerous incarnations on StackOverflow. All nearly unanswerable. The worst part is questions where they add the "in general" qualifier. Which is "faster in general" is essentially impossible to answer. And yet, the question persists. There are three rules for figuring out which is faster. And there are three significant problems that make these rules inescapable.

His three rules are:

• Languages don't have speeds. Implementations have speeds.
• Statistics Aren't a Panacea.
• Benchmarking Is Hard.

He seems to hit most of the issues with these sort of "faster" posts up front and notes that, while benchmarks can be run on a lot of different aspects about the languages, the results depend on how you slice it. His suggestion is, instead, to not try to compare the languages in a grand sense. Take each of them and compare them on specific tasks and let those results stand alone. Each of the three languages is going to be better at something than the other two.

On the Web Scripting Blog today, Satya Prakash has a reminder for developers and those hiring them alike - PHP is not Java.

I went for Interview and there interviewer asked me few questions. I disagreed on two questions and their answers. [...] After I disagreed [about parentheses being required on class creation] they said it is essential in new PHP version 5.2.x. Still I disagreed then he said, no no after PHP 5.2.x, PHP is like Java. [...] I like PHP and I do not want it to become Java. If just by implementing Object Oriented Programming PHP can become Java then I will say Java is C++ or Java copied C++.

He proves his stance with a bit of sample code showing that the object creation doesn't require the parentheses to create.

Kevin Schroeder has posted an article he'd written for the Zend news letter about non-PHP developers branching out into PHP for the first time and how easy the language makes it.

I have had the benefit of being able to program in many different languages for many different environments over the years. Throughout that experience there are 2 languages that have risen to the top of my favorites list. PHP is one, obviously. But Java is the other. [...] To access all of the functionality in Java, there is a tradeoff with simplicity. To access all of the functionality for the web in Java, there is a massive tradeoff with simplicity.

He notes the cost of using one over the other (hint, PHP's usually cheaper) and, an interesting point, a story about a Java developer that took around two days to get comfortable with PHP. He lists a few things PHP offers that help including the low installation/initial code barrier, loose typing and the definition of functions without a return type.

On Developer.com today there's a new tutorial about Quercus - the Java-based implementation of PHP - and how to get it up and running in your environment.

Imagine the possibilities when a PHP developer can continue using the language's templating capabilities while leveraging Hibernate's object-relational features. Thanks to an open source project named Quercus, PHP and Java developers alike can mix and match the respective capabilities of both languages. [...] This approach (part of the movement that software architect Neal Ford famously defined as "polyglot programming") opens up a whole new world of opportunities for developers seeking to squeeze every last ounce of performance and capability from their application platforms.

They help you get it installed and show you how to execute a PHP script from inside. There's also a bit about integrating Java libraries into your code and the integration of a type of tool PHP doesn't come native with, something like iTextPDF.

As is mentioned in this new post to the Zend Developer Zone today, Oracle has released a new article on their Technology Network about getting PHP and Java applications to work together via the Oracle WebLogic Server and Zend Server.

Whether you're experienced in Java, or PHP, or both, the ability to integrate these two development environments together is a "best of both worlds" scenario for enterprise Web application developers. [...] Zend Server, a high-performance, enterprise-ready PHP stack that runs on both Windows and Linux and that comes with a built-in "Java bridge" to connect PHP with JEE applications and services. This article will tell you more, demonstrating just how simple it is to use Zend Server to connect PHP applications with Java classes deployed on Oracle WebLogic middleware.

They talk about the Java bridge that comes with Zend Server - how to install it and make it active - as well as including some code showing how to access a sample Java class via a new Java object. They also show how to access custom Java classes and how to work with an enterprise JavaBeans server.