I feel that there is no _intrinsic_ limitation or inefficiency if you use one over the other.
I am not really sure about this, considering that PHP and Perl work through Apache modules, while J2EE will require Tomcat or equivalent.
I agree on the issue of extra weight of Tomcat (or any other servlet engine). However, this is a double-edged sword. The servlet engine can avoid some amount of repeated computation by keeping some state in memory, thus bringing down some overheads. I don't know how to do this in mod_perl. For instance, if I create an object instance in a Java servlet, and attach it to a static member somewhere, that object instance just stays alive till the servlet engine comes down. Thus, one servlet can "set a global variable", which a second servlet can access later. I don't know how to do this in mod_perl. When we looked at mod_perl last, I couldn't figure out how to do this. I know you can do global initialisation when the mod_perl system starts up (and this is a huge performance help), but I don't know "how to set global state" in one mod_perl unit, and keep it there for the next invocation to access.
As a matter of personal taste, I would stay away from all things Java as far as possible ...
:)
I presume you've read http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html and http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html ... in fact, most of the articles on that site are superb. The comments in the Java article are quite thought-provoking.
Considering scalability, I am not sure designing for 9th and 10th and then using it for all the standards constitutes "scalibility" at all! And given that Slashdot runs on Slash, which is entirely made up of LAMP(erl) (http://slashcode.com/about.shtml), I don't think there is any question about whether LAMP can handle scale. Remember this is the code responsible for the slashdot effect that can bring down enterprise websites due to exceedingly large amounts of traffic!
Agreed. Seconded. :)
Shuvam
PS: Please communicate my warm regards to Phatak and Kavi Arya, since you appear to be in the same school as them. Haven't met them in a long time. :)