Since November 2007, I've been working on a web-based system that requires Java and JSP.  Before that, I worked almost exclusively with PHP.  In both cases, applications were (and still are) developed for the web.  So far it appears to me that web development with PHP is quicker and cleaner.  However, this is from the perspective of someone who is fairly new to Java so that is probably not a fair assessment.

One other thing I've noticed is that there is far more open source PHP web-based software and scripts available out on the web which can make web development quicker since someone out there may have already developed a solution for what I need.  However, some open source software is well supported, well maintained and of quality programming.  Others are so poorly written that the benefits are, by far, out weighed by the dangers of installing an insecure application that could easily compromise an entire system - or at the very least, it may simply just not work and the programming can be of painfully low quality that it is just too time consuming to repair the code.

One of the benefits of working with Java, however, is that it runs faster.  This is because the Java code is compiled before run-time as opposed to PHP, which is compiled at run-time.  Although, if you are using only JSP, then it works similar to PHP where it is compiled at run-time as well.  So, I can definetly see the benefits of using Java on larger enterprise systems.  But using Java for web development can also mean restarting the server constantly just to see the affects of small changes in the code.  However, as I get better at programming in Java, I've noticed that I have less and less of a need to do this so often.

I'm sure that as I get more experienced working with Java, I will start to see more and more benefits to using it.  Right?  After all, even though I've used it some before last November, I've really only been having to use it for the majority of my work for a few months.

Please keep in mind my experience is with the development of websites and web-based applications.  So I really can't say how Java performs with the development of standard applications.  PHP is pretty much exclusively for web development so it can't complete in that area.

Perhaps you have an opinion?  Maybe one of my arguments above is incomplete or incorrect?  Please let me know.  If you're trying to decide what to use for your next project, you'll find many other opinions out there on the web. If you're curious about the popularity of different programming languages you can find out more by looking at the TIOBE Programming Community Index.