Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Java

Java is a more “proper” (and compiled) programming language, but it is newish.^[2] In the Apache world, server-side Java is now available through Tomcat. See Chapter 17. Whether you choose Java over Perl, Python, or PHP probably depends on what you think of Java. As President Lincoln once famously said: “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” But it is the strongly held, if possibly cranky, view of at least one of us (PL) that a lot of what is wrong with the Web is due to Java. Java makes it possible for web creators to invest their energies in an interestingly complicated medium that allows them to make pages that judder, vibrate, bounce, flash, dissolve, and swim about... By the time a programmer has mastered Java and all its distracting tricks, it is probably far too late to suggest that what the viewer really wants is static information in lucidly laid out words and pictures, for which Perl or PHP are perfectly adequate and much easier to use.

As we went to press with this edition, it became plain that this Luddite view might have other supporters. Velocity, seemingly yet another page-authoring language, but one written in Java so that you can mess with its innards, was announced:

Velocity is a Java-based template engine. It permits web page designers to use simple yet powerful template language to reference objects defined in Java code. Web designers can work in parallel with Java programmers to develop web sites according to the ...