I wonder if you could comment on something I've recently been told.

I am a semi-professional web designer (with a strong emphasis on the word 'semi'). Recently I have met a guy who is a lead web developer (mostly javascript) in a company. We were chatting about stuff and he kept saying something about Java every now and then (not javascript). I asked him about clarification - he said it's one of the most widespread server-side languages out there. I said I had never heard about java being used that way - as far as I'm concerned it's PHP that is everywhere on the server-side. He said something along the lines: Yeah, PHP is very popular for smaller and open-source projects. The really big ones don't use it as PHP would not handle the load.

Could you comment on it?

Yes, Java is one of the possibilities. So is C#. (And others. I've seen sites written in Oracle Pl/Sql, for example.)

I think this guy hasn't been keeping up.

Java was indeed the dominant language for enterprise-scale server-side web development for many years. That's what Java EE was for, and Struts was one framework that was often used. It's not considered trendy for that anymore (and neither is PHP), but there's a huge amount of existing Java EE code still being used and which still needs to be maintained. Amazon and HSBC are primarily Java-backed, and they actively hire Java developers.

As for PHP not handling the load; that's nonsense. The load is borne by the databases, not by the Java/PHP application layer that interacts with it. Facebook and Hootsuite are still mostly PHP at their backend, and they are not "small or open source".

Nowadays there are a lot of server-side languages being used: Go and Javascript (with node.js) are optimized for push notifications; Erlang and Scala for concurrency; Python, Ruby, PHP, Groovy and C# are more conventional and really interchangeable in a "use the one you like" way. Java? I think most people would choose it only if the company that would be running the finished application already had a a lot of Java code in use.

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Thank you. You learn something new everyday. For a long time I have been saying to myself that I need to start learning node.js

And, the moment you step away from the world of "server processes" on a "server," you can encounter even more languages, even "old" ones: COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL. All of these still in use and still being actively developed. Java (which is not Javascript nor related to it in any way) is actually the new kid on the block.

As is dot-Net, which, as you know, only runs on very small computers ... you know, Windows boxes ...

This is the world of "legacy systems." These applications might be twenty or more years old, are still in active development, and they run the businesses that own them. They represent billions of dollars' worth of investment in some cases.

If you think of "computer programming" as cranking out hand-crafted AJAX apps using your favorite HTML toolkit de jour, then you have barely glimpsed no more than "the foam on top of the waves." There's an ocean under there . . .

If there's a single "crucial life-skill" that I would suggest, it would be: "never stop studying, learning, and learning about, computer-programming languages." Also, understand that most programming work does not begin with a "new" application.

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