Friendster goes PHP

An item I saw yesterday but forgot to blog about: Friendster goes PHP. Pretty cool.

Finally on Friday we launched a platform rearchitecture based on loose-coupling, web standards, and a move from JSP (via Tomcat) to PHP. The website doesn’t look much different, but hopefully we can now stop being a byword for unacceptably poky site performance.

I haven’t had much of a chance yet to use Friendster to see if it truly is faster, so I can’t personally comment on that aspect. And predictably, this is going to bring all sorts of people out of the woodwork arguing over the relative merits of Java/JSP (which was old Friendster) versus PHP… just look at the comments on the link above to see it already happening. And while debate and disagreement can be healthy and productive, how about a quick reality check to everyone:

PHP is good. Java is good. Both have their merits and disadvantages. Loudly complaining that [Java|PHP] is the only true way and the other is crap is boring and uninformed.