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Ifeanyi Okeakwalam
Ifeanyi Okeakwalam

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For enterprise application with high traffic, can PHP 7 or NodeJS be chosen for the backend instead of Java

The big question here and now is if PHP from version 7 and above or Node.js can be chosen for the backend development instead of Java for enterprise websites or websites with high traffic? and then what are the advantages of any of this techs over the other?

Its important to note that all 3 (Java, PHP, NodeJS) are top technologies. Usually what decides a technology is a vectorial sum of (sometimes contrasting) factors. lets hover through some of these factors:

  • Large companies and established enterprises, banks, institutions will want proven, heavily planned solutions even at the cost of speed or flexibility of development. Java is going to be their first choice.

  • Startups want to gather investors ASAP, want to prove their technology solution and ideas works. Node.js and other “progressive” languages are a plausible candidate.

  • Finance and AI based startups and funds want innovative AI and math analysis solutions, Python “flashes” above the others in this regard.

  • The HUGE majority of small and medium companies, indie technology companies, individuals, consultants, small/medium e-commerce shops, general blogs and websites, smaller financial institutions/brokers ...etc. Want development agility, reliability, and comprehensive prices. PHP is the king here (Node.js too but less).

At this junction we should understand that technologies are selected for a project depending on the use case. Sometimes it's not about performance but about security, its not about speed but reliability. Fintech companies know the downside of Java but still choose to use it anyway, this is because Java is secured, durable and reliable and this fact is not even up for debate as it has been proven over the years.

PHP is the language of the world, it is taught in schools from Africa, to India to some countries in Europe (I know some professors who teach PHP at school). PHP is so massively cheapest that even the poorest countries can access web technology thanks to it.

When you use PHP or NodeJS, there is no doubt about the performance boost you will get, infact when a PHP or NodeJS application is setted up on a comprehensive server system you get better performance, even when there is a surge in traffic.

Tech giants as we know today make use of NodeJS extensively alongside PHP even ontop of their huge traffic. So the point is pretty clear from here, PHP, NodeJS and Java are all top technologies and when an application is properly and carefully built with any of these technologies and then professionally hosted, they will perform well even when the traffic is high.

Talking about which stack can replace the other between this three, i believe is strongly dependent on the use case, if you have to build a function into an API that deals with money in any way, that API is better built with Java (of course through a strong and reliable java framework).

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