> brought to my attention is that PHP is natively supported by Apache
> and JSP requires a separate interpreter (Jakarta or whatever).
There is more to life than Apache and there are much better Java solutions
than Jakarta! If you want to go the Java way, do yourself a favour and use
http://www.orionserver.com/ It's the fastest, most reliable and most
compliant of all the servlet engines out there.
By the sounds of it, you are a beginner in any technology. If you are
thinking of persuing this as a carreer, Java is a good choice as Java
developers have much more choice of jobs (also non-web related!) and tend
to fetch more (_much_ more, in this town anyway) money. That is if you are
going to be any good, of course! ;-)
But I don't like Java too much for web apps and wouldn't recomend it to
any beginner that wants quick and reliable results! My favourite
technology (and no doubt that of many on this list) is AOLserver
(http://aolserver.com) It's fast, reliable and uses the wonderful Tcl
programming language that I can recomend to any beginner; it is clean,
simple and without many pitfalls or a dozen different commands for doing
essentialy the same thing. (Unlike PHP...) It doesn't make you popular on
Slashdot though, if that is what you are after. :)
Good luck!
Bas.