No the answer is much simpler. Java hosting still s sucks. Apache 2.1 and maybe MVM will change that. And yes PHP sucks big time, the language is so ugly, i know it's getting better, but still; I can't stand programming in PHP.

PHP hosting is everywhere. While Java hosting is still damn expensive. The cheapest I could find is KGB Internet. The free ones are crap. And no matter what people say, Java is still not fast enough for 'normal' people (non-enterprise companies with huge and expensive toys). Weiqi, when I load your web site, there's still about 1-2 seconds loading time. I guarantee if you migrate your entries to WordPress, you don't even have the chance to blink and your page is already loaded. It happened to me when I migrated from Pebble to WordPress (had about 800 blog entries). PHP is easier to learn. Java community is a bunch of elitist prick, not everyone wants to be part of shit like that. Design-guy: right, I put my beautiful design template here Elite-java-coder: damn it man, you shouldn't put an ugly code like that Design-guy: wtf? it works it has beautiful look and feel Elite-java-coder: go away. don't polute my beautiful code. I don't need you poluting my elite blog software. Face it. Normal people can tweak WordPress theme easily. They can do so without being confused with where to put logic, where to put user interface code, where to put this that blablablabla. Look at the admin features, compare between WordPress and Java based blogging software. Compare the installation process of those software. WordPress wins, hands down. The Java community needs to stop focusing on the clean, extendible, full-o-designpattern, mvc, etc etc. Pay more attention on what the user wants, features and functionalities. Java community, you might end up with a blog software with the best architecture. But who wants to use it? How many people will actually want to extend the elegant architecture?

Lots of tools can do 90% of the Job and gain great popularity with a seemingly easy learning curve or through grass roots popularity (Ruby for example).

For a lot of people 90% is fantastic. When I first used Micro$oft Visual Studio's UI designer tool (in the late 90's) I almost fell out of my chair when the tool had absolutely no concept of a layout manager (!). You set the size of the dialog, pasted the UI components where you wanted them and were done. Then I thought about it.. I had met very few users who would think to resize a window. Until the current age of dynamic content almost no one (outside of programmer geeks like me) resized windows! This is a perfect example of what I am talking about.

Java is bloated beyond comprehension. PHP is simple. Spin back to 1990. VAX/VMS has everything meticulously documented and tested. Unix is made up of a small set of simple tools. Which one is still around 15 years later. Hmm...

I'm not losing any sleep over this whole PHP thing. 15 years from now I will be too busy trying to figure out how to store my 400Gb rt.jar file (Java 10 release 1.7_21 which, of course, includes a fully functional air traffic control, and accounts receivable API) on my new pen drive..

"Could it be because that Java, although good, is too hard?" No. PHP is harder. Java has better documentation and is more object oriented, and hence much easier. "Could it be because Java is not available out of the box?" Neither is PHP. Actually, I find Tomcat easier to get running. I just install mysql, java, and tomcat, then add the mysql connector jar to my java_home/lib/ext folder, and I am able to connect. With PHP, I install mysql, apache, and php. Then I have the hardest time getting it to connect to mysql. Turns out you have to install a mysql extention, so I start over and do that. Then it still doesn't work. After nearly wanting to commit suicide, I learn that I have to set c:\php\ext in my Path environment variable for the mysql extension to work, and that requires a restart. Then after finally getting mysql to work with PHP, I can't just go to http://localhost/blog because it gives a directory listing rather than going to my index.php so I have to go manually add Options -Indexes to my apache config file. What a hastle! Tomcat is just click installer, choose javahome directory, and go!

One last comment. "If I want to setup a blog and I'm not a Java programmer, there is not way that I can setup Pebble." HUH? I am a Java programmer, BUT, BUT I say, I came home from work today to my PC that did NOT have Tomcat on it (although it did already have Java on it) and I simply clicked on the Tomcat installer exe, pressed next a bunch of times, then copied the pebble.war into my webapps folder like the readme.txt from pebble said to do, restarted the server (right clicked the little thing in the taskbar on the right bottom of the screen) then poof, pebble was magically installed. Took no java knowledge whatsoever.

I love Java. Lots. It's the neatest programming language I've used over the past 30 years, bar none. However ... You'll notice this web site is based on drupal. If I love Java so much, why don't I use a Java equivalent? And, as noted on these two blog