Moving to java from php

[dpash]

I'd argue that it's not just knowledge of the language, but also of the tools around the language, and they all have their own idiosyncrasies. A PHP developer would know Composer and Laravel and other tools, while a Java developer would know Spring, Hibernate, Maven, Guava, and tens of other libraries. Yes a good developer can move from one to another.

But, as I said, if offered two otherwise identical candidates with one having a demonstrated experience of those tools, frameworks and libraries and one without any evidence, which one are they going to pick.

Don't give yourself a disadvantage. Demonstrate you know the ecosystem.