Hype

I never quite understood all the hype about J2EE and JSP.. and since I am not a Java expert can someone enlighten me? And please dont get on a high-horse about "It's the best thing since sliced bread". I would like generous comparisons towards other available server based languages...

JSP is a part of J2EE. I don't know about the other functionality of J2EE though, so I'll keep my essay to JSP and Servlets.

The closest thing to JSP is definitly ASP.Net, so let's compare them.
Commons:
Pages get compiled to bytecode.
Large class framework for support (though Java's is better IMO, just look at the collections).

ASP.Net advantages:
Easier to set up. On IIS anyway.

JSP advantages:
Cross-platform. The Tomcat servlet container runs everywhere a JVM runs. ASP.Net is usable only on Windows with IIS or on Linux with the (not yet production quality) Mono framework.




Do you want comparisons to other languages too?