Java the hut - its COBOL for the 21st centuary
Java is pretty insane to write, requires code generation tools even when working with 'lightweight' frameworks like spring, hibernate etc. which i have had the 'pleasure' to work with in the past.
Java is a good language for low-level coding like, say, coding an emulator but not for web apps, its like trying to fit a square-shaped peg into a circular hole.
PHP is designed from the ground-up to build web apps, its not simply just a perl-like language with asp-style tags - theres a lot more under the hood if you look at the features of v5 it has a lot more oo features than java under the hood that don't require the longest line of code in history to use reflection, its just $object->$var
To open a file its file_get_contents($filename) - in Java you need 3 different types of streams incased in each other just to open the file never mind get its contents.
Java is bloatware, i'm sorry to say it but its the COBOL of the 21st centuary, c-programming is more pleasurable, even c++ is easier to do something simple like open files.
While the rest of the world has already moved to PHP, the dying underdogs of the forgotten world are still using the most awkward web-application language ever.