I have been doing web development for about a year now. I am doing it for a large corporation that uses Cold Fusion. I have not used ASP or PHP for development yet. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these and other web development languages?

Thank you for your responses.

There are not so many advantages and disadvantages as appose to use to's and liking's.

I started coding PHP and found the community and manuals to be very large and usefull but when I tryed to learn ASP I was caught up finding not many help sites or community's, I also found alot more web hosting companys were willing to host PHP than ASP.

As for me, PHP is very easy language, easier than ASP. There are advantages and disadvantages.
+ coding is easy for small project, good integration with popular DB's
+ a lot of scripts, docs, examples, communities
- when your project is growing, it is harder and harder to control your code. MVC using can help, but will not solve the problem.
- your code is open for 3rd eyes.
As about ASP - ....better i keep silent :)

Prove: ASP = Evil

ASP = time*money
time = money
ASP = money^2
money = rt(evil)
ASP = rt(evil)^2
ASP = evil

But, when you look at PHP like this:

PHP = time
time=money
money = rt(evil)
PHP = rt(evil)

*devil*

:D

So, as you can see, while ASP is evil, PHP is the root of all evil... That is why PHP is endorsed by the Evil Programmers of Canada guild... :D








P.S. A variation on this:
http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/topic/show/9683

I would agree with arkin. You will find that a lot of programmers do not like Gates / Windows. I prefer ASP. Sure - some will try to tell you PHP is better because there is a lot more support & that is only because it is open source. When I have questions re: ASP - I never have a problem getting a response.

If you like UNIX - go with PHP. If you usually host on Windows, go with ASP.

Another option is the JSP / Servlet route, potentially followed by a full J2EE server.

Forgive me if I'm telling you something your already know, but a JSP is conceptually similar to a PHP file or an ASP. There are concepts that transfer between all three. Syntactically, of course, there are non-trivial differences.

By default a JSP is compiled into a servlet - a Java class that lives inside of the web server. ASPs work in a very similar way. PHP out of the box requires a reparse on every call but there are add-ons to take care of that. An advantage of the JSP/ASP model is that once the JSP is compiled it does not have to be reparsed on every call, assuming that the code doesn't change. Different servers handle a changed JSP differently and can be configured to ignore changes unless somehow refreshed. This helps to improve performance.

Additionally, in a normal JSP, the servlet that represents the JSP is multithreaded. If 100 people ask for the same JSP 100 threads are created but the code is only loaded once. Needless to say may need to code to handle simultaneous access to the JSP, depending on what the JSP does. But the multithreaded nature greatly helps with scalability.

One other possible difference is vendor and, to an extent, platform neutrality. If you're just starting out with JSP's you may only need Tomcat. There are other ones available for free but that is considered the reference. If you decide you need to use more of the J2EE standard you can keep Tomcat and add something like JBoss for EJB's and a bunch more. Alternatively you can go to somebody like IBM or BEA and spend massive amounts of money on their servers. These servers allow hundreds of thousands of users in a clustered environment with enterprise class scalability. In any case you aren't stuck with a single provider for really anything.

Java's platform independence is sorta there but it is far from perfect. If you're on a new Linux, Windows, Solaris (SPARC anc x86), AIX, HP/UX, you can get the most recent Java implmentations. But FreeBSD, for example, only has a one generation old implementation and that is only usable on their previous generation O/S. PHP has better platform coverage.

I use JSP's/Servlets for multiple projects. I've moved from different versions of Linux, have a Windows implementation and develop with Solaris x86 and SPARC. Not one line of code has changed to allow me to do this. And while that is great for me, it could be totally useless for you. Your problem set is what really needs to be evaluated. It is likely that JSP, PHP, and ASP could all handle pretty much whatever you throw at them. I'd personally argue that JSP's, when coupled with Servlets in an MVC type of configuration, allow for better programming practices. But that is more of a disipline thing. I know from personal experience that you can write both maintainable and unmaintainable code in just about any language. The language itself does not save you from yourself.

quote from arkin:
>>I started coding PHP and found the community and manuals to be very large and usefull but when I tryed to learn ASP I was caught up finding not many help sites or community's, I also found alot more web hosting companys were willing to host PHP than ASP.

arkin:

When I needed ASP help all I did was type 'ASP' into differrent search engines and I was swamped with huge listings of sites that offer tutorials, training, and forums for help. You can do the same for just about any language. Any question I ever had I was able to track down the answer through the internet. Don't forget that Microsoft has tutorials for any language or system they offer. .

For just about any question you have, Microsoft or otherwise, the answers are offered for free on the internet.

For hosting, just do a search for 'ASP hosting', 'Windows Hosting', 'IIS hosting' and many other various ways to get to the same thing. You'll fint huge listings for what you need.

Ok ok my bad but I seemed to have problems,

the PHP community is much much bigger you must admit that and I am aware cheap ASP hosting is avaliable, I also like the PHP help system on every function like www.php.net/<func>.

for me php is the best, since a lot of new functions are added all the time. the problem with asp is, that you have to install activeX controls on the sevrer for a lot of things, which makes it a little usless if you are on one of these shared servers.

Originally posted by akany
for me php is the best, since a lot of new functions are added all the time. the problem with asp is, that you have to install activeX controls on the sevrer for a lot of things, which makes it a little usless if you are on one of these shared servers.


so, if you're doing anything usefull with php, chances are you'll need to install extra things. and half the time config's on shared servers don't allow anything like gd, ssl, etc.

I like asp.net. :)

i hate programming period.. it killed my inner child

you have these config problems with asp too. but there also a lot of other things that i hate on asp:

- you either have a access (mmmm) or mssql ($$$) db
- such simple things as socket connections, ftp stuff ... require server side controls
- you have to pay more, in relation to a linux hosting plan for the same performance
- beside some bug fixes and .Net, there no new features implemented since ~ 1999?

I did a lot of projects with asp. and I really do not see a single advantage over php


ah and by the way, I'm none of these microsoft haters....
i just wrote this post to get the 5 post together, to check my pm's :rolleyes:

mg: PHP you don't have to install new features everytime. That is ASP. PHP normally has everything built in. Most hosting servers have gd, ssl, and other stuff.

Originally posted by akany
you have these config problems with asp too. but there also a lot of other things that i hate on asp:

- you either have a access (mmmm) or mssql ($$$) db

...and...You can use any database that has an ODBC driver. I'm using mySQL with one of my sites.

- such simple things as socket connections, ftp stuff ... require server side controls

True. ASP wasn't initially developed to write tcp/ip clients. :rolleyes: There are free components that will allow you to do this though.

- you have to pay more, in relation to a linux hosting plan for the same performance

Your observation may your experience, but I find that to not always be the case.

- beside some bug fixes and .Net, there no new features implemented since ~ 1999?

2000. Why add on to the language when you're developing a whole new architecture? They poured their developer resources into .NET. .NET is a whole new architecture so I wouldn't lump it in with ASP. It's backwards compatible but it's a whole new animal.

I did a lot of projects with asp. and I really do not see a single advantage over php

Speed. easier learning curve with vbscript. Larger library of components (consider all the COM components available.)

I've been using ASP since it came out with IIS3. I've been using PHP since 2002. Running PHP as an ISAPI service improves speed dramatically. ASP runs natively as an ISAPI service. They are both fast in this configuration. But like I've been preaching before. If you're going to learn a new language/technology. Make it the .net platform. You wont regret it.

But like I've been preaching before. If you're going to learn a new language/technology. Make it the .net platform. You wont regret it.

Sorry, not to start a religious war but remember that if you do this you now have a choice of a grand total of one vendor. You have a choice of a grand total of one operating system vendor. Yes, it is from the largest convicted monopoly in the history of the United States, but you do limit your choices by choosing proprietary systems.

With the advent of the Ximian Mono project (Open Source .NET) it's not just one vendor. In the coming years, we'll all be doing .net something. ;)