I actually spent the past 5 years doing some horrible Java tricks, including the whole webserver idea. I believe I know enough Java to judge it... I don't know PHP very well... I usually don't spend longer than 30 minutes looking at PHP code. I see some differences with perl and things that might be considered bad but I know too little about it to make an unbiased judgement. I hear some nice things about it, I hear some bad things about it. At the moment, with the very little I know about PHP, I'd still go for PHP in a PHP vs Java match. You can call me script addict any time soon now.

Oh, BTW.. I'm not judging Python since I don't know it... but I CAN give you an overview of Things that suck about(TM) COBOL

Yes, so I misspelled Python (thanks dws) but it was late :)

Greetz
Beatnik
... I'm belgian but I don't play one on TV.