LAMP vs. Java

This year I joined a team which is building web apps to teach cheminformatics. We do use a little Java because one of our vendors implemented its toolset in Java. (And those tools include 3D chemical structure depictors.)

We got started in the springtime, shortly before the appearance of TurboGears. But we're using a similar set of tools: PostgreSQL, Python, CherryPy and CherryTemplate, jsolait, and a fair bit of custom JavaScript. And HTML. And CSS 2.1. And R, at least for prototyping. And we're managing it all, to the extent that we're managing anything :), with subversion and Trac.

As the Businessweek article suggests, this set of tools works well. I don't see any reason to use any more Java than we absolutely must.