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Socoder -> Web Development -> PHP vs ASP

Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 16:29
steve_ancell
It seems to me that leaning PHP would be easiest, but I have recently been told by many people that ASP is the way forward and they say that PHP is just for the hobby and weekend club. Some of them didn't even know what PHP is !

I use XP Home, so IIS seems a bit out of reach for me.

Which would you say is best ?
Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 16:36
steve_ancell
Ther is also a website that has the same attitude !
www.tizag.com/aspTutorial/aspVersusPHP.php

They have stated...

Compared to ASP, PHP is very easy to pick up and learn a little at a time. PHP is an ideal language for the weekend or hobbyist programmer. Seems like all green pastures in the land of PHP.

However, businesses do not readily embrace PHP for many reasons. A great deal of companies are running operating systems such as Windows Server 2003 or one of the Window NTs, which have been optimized to run Microsoft's proprietary language ASP.

Companies usually are reluctant to switch technologies when they already have a history with one type of technology. Such a transition requires retraining or even retraining much of their staff.

Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 16:43
Phoenix
I've never used ASP.NET extensively, but I liked it because I found it to be more structured than PHP. If you don't have any pressing desire to work with .NET for websites (which you don't appear to have) you should probably just stick to PHP.
Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 16:48
steve_ancell
Thanx for helping me decide Phoenix, I probably will stick with PHP for the time being, perhaps I'll try ASP when I upgrade to a different machine and Operating System and therefor probably have access to IIS
Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 16:58
CodersRule
I love PHP.
I've honestly never tried ASP, but it looks too much like Visual Basic to me. ^^

I hated Visual Basic.
Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 23:21
Stealth
Go for PHP. It's easy to learn, it's simple, and it's powerful. Why you would want to use a more complicated language is beyond me. Additionally, due to it's popularity, theres tons of help online. Another plus is that PHP is open source and free.

PHP is a very professional language to use. It's used by a lot of big websites including Facebook (and SoCoder ).

If you need any help learning PHP, feel free to contact me.

-=-=-
Quit posting and try Google.
Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 23:37
JL235
Indie web pages is probably where PHP is at it's strongest; small time websites typically don't use anything else. It's also true that ASP is used heavily in the business world as one of many alternatives. But the idea that only hobbyists use PHP is simply naive.

Wikipedia, Yahoo, Digg, Facebook, WordPress and many others are built using PHP. But remember none of all those sites are popular because they used PHP. They are popular because they are good sites.

Finally if a professional web developer has never heard of PHP, I'd take their advice with a grain of salt. Given how popular the language is, especially in their domain it's strange that they haven't heard of it. Especially when it's the third most popular language in the entire world (link).
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 02:13
steve_ancell
Thanx for the positive and constructive advice guys, it looks like it's going to be PHP all the way then
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 03:05
therevillsgames
Another thing is that ASP will only run on a Windows Server, whereas PHP will run on Linux, Windows, Mac etc
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 04:29
Phoenix
Just for the sake of clarification: ASP is not the same thing as ASP.NET. ASP is dated and unsupported. ASP.NET doesn't look like Visual Basic because it's not a language. It's a framework, and it can be used with Visual Basic in which case it will look like Visual Basic. Also, most decent web hosts will allow Windows hosting so the platform independence is not that significant, beyond an ideological point of view.
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 05:24
CodersRule
Another thing is that ASP will only run on a Windows Server, whereas PHP will run on Linux, Windows, Mac etc


This is why I haven't bothered to try ASP yet. I like Linux servers.
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 05:50
Jayenkai
I couldn't care less what the server is. If something doesn't work, tweak it until it does. Win/Linux, it doesn't matter..

Unless you ARE using ASP.

Google Trends says.. PHP wins, right up alongside HTML itself.. But ALL have decreased significantly over the past few years.
Like.. A LOT!! wtf?!

I'm not a fan of the "Anti PHP" movement. Feels a hell of a lot like the "Anti Basic" movement. Things work, don't break them just to show how 1337 your code skills are. Get the damn thing done, and be happy.

-=-=-
''Load, Next List!''
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 09:03
HoboBen
Seconding Stealth - if you have any PHP questions I'm sure we'd all be happy to help! I think most of us are more familiar with it compared to ASP.

-=-=-
blog | work | code | more code
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 16:07
therevillsgames
I'm not a fan of the "Anti PHP" movement


+1

I'm all for using the right tool for the right job
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 16:36
JL235
However out in the real world (i.e. businesses) people don't really write out pages from scratch. That's mainly what people always perceive people as doing when they use PHP, because usually it's true!

They use frameworks instead because in the long run it reduces their code and makes it easier for multiple team members to have an understanding about the project. They all need to understand an existing framework, not a new one each member is independently building on the fly.
Sat, 03 Apr 2010, 19:39
therevillsgames
At work, on one of our projects we are using JSPs and the framework Struts on a JEE app - when we get a new screen to build its nearly always a copy and paste from previous screens