JSP not popular?

I have used perl quite a bit and am heavy in PHP now but what about JSP? My employer wants to strictly use JSP but the reference sites are poor as is the help for JSP.

The user community is worse than perl for help (I find PHP to have the best user community as far as offering help goes).

Do not many people use it?

Hi,

As for JSP - man needs a it more knowledge and skills than in PHP, Perl, ASP, etc. It means U need'a be good in OOA/D, have experience at least in Servlet, JBEans programming and bla,bla,bla ....

At anotehr side - to run a JSP - U needa application server - normally they're more complex to install, maintain, so also U have to know to do it or employ admin for that.

So, my point of view, Java technologies, at least at the moment, for companies with cool profies and cool projects.

Ciao

I'm not getting into a debate about what is better but so far PHP and Perl have been just fine for me and my projects I've required.

JSP seems so far to be like PHP but much more difficult to get a grasp on which isn't helped with little reference sites on the web.

hi hyrum,

The good thing abt jsp is that it is more eneterprise oriented and I firmly believe one needs to have firm grasp of java and servlets b4 starting anything in jsp ( i do agree the learning curve is steep) for it.

try URL URL

especially for a good jsp source try out any java centered discussion forms.

Best of Luck

I am going to add my 2 cents into this by adding something else to think about. I have just started to use Python and have found it to be a very powerful solution. I would personally say it isn't that hard to learn and the documentation is fairly good. There definately aren't as many sites dedicated to it as PHP but it is not bad.

I have also noticed there is a great series of articles on DevShed dealing with Python that you might want to take a look at.

E.

Hehe trust me, if I could use PHP I would but corporate IT in my company wants to use Java across the sites

With PHP, I could have whipped this whole thing together already.

I have been programming Java for some time now and also started with JSP recently. I found JSP and Servlets very hard getting started with even though I have much experience in Java.

Now when I am learning PHP I already find it much simpler to use. It is far less error prone than JSP (but that could have something to do with the environment I use JSP in, see below). Also, when I get errors in PHP they are much easier to track down even if I am new to the language. Database access is simpler in PHP, the documentation is better, there are more features.

Bet, it should be noted that the JSP plattform I was using was Caucho Resin JSP Server (or what it is called) with IIS and MS SQL Server on Windows 2000. This was a terrible plattform to develop for. If I forget to close the database connection a few times it won't work until I've restarted the JSP server (and sometimes the SQL server too). Every time a JSP-page gets an exception I had to be very careful to make it close it's database connection, otherwise there was trouble.

My PHP environment consists of PHP, Apache and MySQL on Windows 2000. This has never given me any trouble.

I have been programming in C/C++ for about ten years, and tried JSP two times. Both of them I had to give up, it was quite hard and I didn't have much time to spend. As I tried PHP I found it was just was I was looking for: OOP (ok, not the best but it works), familiar syntax, easy DB access, etc...

I think Java is good because of its portability, but JSP has just nothing to do, PHP portability is great (I work at home in Windows and upload my scripts without changing a line to an Irix server).

I was interested in your comments Koas... I'm going the other way... After about 2 years of PHP, I'm starting to learn C++ and I'm finding it quite easy so far thanks to PHP's C-like syntax. I really like PHP and I think I'll stick to it but I have started looking into Python and I may give JSP a go for work purposes...

My one problem - never enough hours in a day!

I have been programming for about 4 years and just recently decided to do an application using JavaServer Pages. I completed the application in two weeks and found JSP very easy to work with. The users love it. There was enough support on the web to give me the information I needed and everything else was in the Java API.

Hi, I'm happy to hear from someone happy with jsp.
What is the environment you are developing for?
Thanx

I am developing an administrative application for a larger, servlet based app. It is an Oracle backend using iPlanet as the app server.

The same setup we have here. Oracle backend with iPlanet

Just my two cents, I have been developing with JSP and Servlets for the past 2 years and find it the most robust and portable way to develop large scale web applications. I first started developing web applications using PHP and agree that it is very easy to whip out a somewhat complex web app, but PHP currently does not have the ease of adding new functionality without recompiling either the php dll or .so (unix). In Java and JSP all you have to do is import java package or use a new taglib and BAM! you just added the ability to talk to a new DB or a LEGACY system, or any 3rd party application, etc. And contrary to the PHP followers beliefs there is quite a bit of support in the JSP and java community. JSP is a pure OO language and forces you to be a good programmer, unlike PHP and ASP. There is come OO functionality in PHP, but is not a pure OO language. JSP also has some nice advantages for example, the first time someone accesses a jsp page, it is compiled and kept resident in the JVM until the app server is restarted. This allows the JSP to execute fast. Another great feature of JSP and servlets is threading, PHP doesnt have the ability to control the threads as requests come in, however PHP is considerably faster over cgi. If you have what it takes to be a good programmer and have a need for developing large, robust, scalable, OO applications, I challenge you to take the Java route. For more info start at...


http://java.sun.com
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/
http://www.servlets.com
http://www.jsptags.com
http://jakarta.apache.org
http://jakarta.apache.org/struts