[jerf]

I'd add the caveat that Java should be the conservative choice only if you are expecting it to matter that you can serve 200,000 simpleish (but nontrivial) requests per second. In the vast majority of cases, development speed and things other than raw framework performance will dominate as concerns. However, that is a non-zero niche.

[josh-j]

I was considering other factors in that generalization, although they're implicit. E.g., a lot of the "cool" language frameworks I mentioned are comparable with the Java frameworks in speed, but Java has a considerably larger ecosystem and number of hirable developers (although I'm not sure if that translates well into web development). And I assume PHP is as verbose as Java from what I've heard from other people (I've never used PHP).

What language should be the conservative choice based on the many factors and ignoring the specific case for the general case?

[jtreminio]

PHP can be as verbose as you want it to be.

If you're using something like Symfony2, there'll be more abstractions and layers than using something like Silex - but they still don't come close to what Java looks like.

[camus]

" And I assume PHP is as verbose as Java from what I've heard from other people (I've never used PHP)".

So you dont even know what you are talking about?

[josh-j]

What do you think questions are for?