Looking at job boards these days, you'd think that every website on the face of the earth is built with J2EE.

But in all the discussions I've had with people who run sites, nobody uses it.

So why are all these other companies using it? What's the benefit? I know what one of the drawbacks is: it's a convoluted system built on proprietary technology.

I'm not saying J2EE is bad, I'm just wondering why it's so popular if I've never talked to someone who uses it.

i have wondered the same exact thing.

i think alot of that is going to die off. its been over 5 years since J2EE hit, and all the PHBs were trying to impress the higher ups, so they selected J2EE. never understood the reason.

About 2 years ago I started my own personal evaluation of where to go forward.

I was using Kylix (Delphi for

Linux

  and had almost 200K lines of code supporting about 30K in transactions per week - from front end websites to marketing to operations and fulfillment. My motivation to leave was not that Kylix couldn't handle it, but moreso that Kylix/Delphi was essentially a dead language walking. I knew that the writing was on the wall and I needed to go forward.

I put together a short list of what I'd consider possibilities and quickly whittled the possibilities down to

PHP

 /JS/

AJAX

  and an J2EE framework, most probably on JBoss at the server and using java extensions out at the client. I purchased "

Teach

  Yourself

PHP

  in 24 hours",

PHP

  Cookbook by O'Reilly,

PHP

  5, Object Oriented

PHP

  and DOM Scripting ( I still have them sitting in my bookshelf behind me). I also purchased "Head First Java" "Instant Struts" "Head First EJB" and "JBoss." I purchased a bunch of other books in support of my efforts but these were the primary focuses.

And I'm here to tell you: the EJB/J2EE/JBoss model is enormously powerful and robust. It's also huge, complicated and would take a LONG time to get your arms around it all. It is excellent for large teams doing collaborative work and is also an extraordinarily effective job security choice. I am certain that, since I only gave it about 6 months of research and testing I am no expert and could be proven wrong any number of ways by Java experts... but I have a pretty good feel for things after all these years... and the whole EJB thang left a somewhat sour taste.

PHP

 /JS on the other hand, coded "my way" looked light and object oriented. Building my systems a particular way I could get the benefits of JBoss' "Hot Code Swapping,"

PHP

 5 brought about 90% of what I wanted from a class/OOP paradigm and it was marvelously easy to integrate directly into HTML. The language and syntax was (as NOP points out) very reminiscent of C and even Object Pascal in a way, and if I stayed with my hard-

learn

 ed discipline about how my code should look it would be as maintainable as my Pascal or C code of old.

Were I to program large complicated systems that required lots and lots of programmers, lots and lots of programmer management and lots and lots of code reuse I'd probably have a different opinion than I do today. But for what I do, the turn around time from thought to live application is so small it's almost funny. I can code drunk, which is a huge plus - that's how un-complicated my stuff is. Since I have made a personal commitment that I will never code an application that has its own GUI ie., the browser will be my only GUI framework/window, the capabilities of the J2EE frameworks were drowned out by the extra complexities.

So - all that being said, if you're looking for job security, becoming an expert in the J2EE might not be a bad idea. You may hate yourself in the morning, but there is certainly room to move. Personal Caveat: The kind of people that I know who have buried themselves in the J2EE thang are not folks that I like working for me. They are PROGRAMMERS and I like to hire Solution Authors. Big difference. I don't know a single Java person that is deeply passionate about either the user or marketing. This is a bad thing. Not to say that

PHP

  people are wild eyed capitalists, but given the leaning of BHs towards

PHP

  and not towards J2EE I think this sells my case rather well.

Are you sorry you asked? 

/p

like perkiset said. and java developers push for it so they can put it on their cv. it kinda gives them a reason for being in and of itself. j2ee developers/fanatics are a lot like beurocrats whose main function is to expand and create new justifications for their existence while accomplishing with ten people what one could do.
j2ee is also quite broad and their are a lot of really cool technologies wrapped up in it. jsf or struts is way cleaner and easier to maintain than jsp/

php

  + html soup. servlet filters are amazing for security or even cloaking. you don't have to use ejbs and all that other hyped up junk.