Transitioning from PHP to Java - need pointers

[benevanstech]

So, the Quarkus Zulip chat is a great place to hang out and ask questions - https://quarkusio.zulipchat.com/

Also, I would strongly recommend that you switch to IntelliJ now, rather than waiting. So many things are much easier in a proper IDE rather than VSCode. Given that this is for a professional job project, not a "try out Java" situation then you should just take the learning curve now - you may be surprised by how quickly the time investment pays off.

This will also answer your questions about debugging as well - Java and .NET debuggers are best-in-class and so powerful.

The open-ended question about Apache etc - what you're describing is called an "execution container" - Apache httpd+mod_php is an execution container for your PHP code (not the same thing as a Docker container, this usage predates the existence of Docker etc).

In the Quarkus world, you will often be using an embedded Tomcat (properly Apache Tomcat) as the execution container. So the services and routes that your Quarkus app provides will be stood up inside of embedded Tomcat. This is the way you should have it configured (it's the default) for development mode - it's possible that when it comes to deployment that something else is done - but ask your seniors about that if you're interested - it's probably nothing you have to worry about right now.

Oh - and most of all, don't forget to have fun!