ASP vs. PHP

[milefile]

I've done a little ASP mostly because I was doing some HTML editing for a web host who offered an all ASP e-commerce package. But that was last year and I've forgotten most if not all I learned.

But I have yet to hear or read anyone talking about ASP. Everybody always talks about PHP so now I feel like I'd be better off focusing on that. And considering I'll be essentially starting from scratch I can go either way. Of course I'd rather go non-MS. And there's also the open-source issue.

So what's the concensus on this one?

 

[GilesGuthrie]

My site is entirely PHP based. I really like it as a language because it's similar to what I already knew. That plus there's a wealth of support for it on the internet, and there are some really good books on the subject. You should maybe take a look at this thread for some pointers.

I have heard some good things about the development tools that are available for ASP, and particularly APSX, which is supposed to rock. However, I'm personally not convinced. I like administering IIS (Internet Information Server, the Microsoft Web Server), because it's nice and easy, but I'm really only comfortable with it in an intranet environment - it's just got too much history of hacking and bugs for my tastes. Plus the simple reality is that Windows servers suffer more downtime than UNIX servers, unless you get into clustering, which is not offered by commercial providers, and is expensive (and quite tough) to set up in the home.

That said, if you're looking for a job in the area (and I think from having read some of your other threads, nothing could be further from your mind!!), then ASP is the more marketable skill, but I honestly think that this is more to do with the huge volume of diversified Visual Basic programmers out there. If you take a look around the internet, a lot of the really cool sites are built on PHP.

I would go with PHP, but then that is what I know.

 

[milefile]

Originally posted by GilesGuthrie


That said, if you're looking for a job in the area (and I think from having read some of your other threads, nothing could be further from your mind

Just out of curiosity... why do you say that?

*edit*

I'd like to hear what you have to say about MySQL vs. Access, too.

 

[epic]

PHP is faster on 56kers and easier to config custom scripts with. (for me it is anyway)

I use MySQL constantly, never tried Access though. But MySQL is easy to use especially if you have PhpMyAdmin.

I would go with PHP and MySQL rather than ASP and Access.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Originally posted by milefile
Just out of curiosity... why do you say that?

See this thread

Originally posted by milefile
I'd like to hear what you have to say about MySQL vs. Access, too.

That's in this post

Oh I'm just Mr Hyperlinks today!

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Originally posted by epic
PHP is faster on 56kers and easier to config custom scripts with. (for me it is anyway)

I use MySQL constantly, never tried Access though. But MySQL is easy to use especially if you have PhpMyAdmin.

I would go with PHP and MySQL rather than ASP and Access.

PHP shouldn't make any odds for 56K-connected browsers. Are you talking about 56K-connected developers?

 

[Acid X]

Haha, giles, so funny.

I'd go with PHP. I dislike anything Microsoft, and wouldnt trust it with my life.

 

[epic]

Originally posted by GilesGuthrie
PHP shouldn't make any odds for 56K-connected browsers. Are you talking about 56K-connected developers?

For me, (im on 56k) I can browse a php based site quicker than a MySQL based site. With of course both sites having the same content, just different extensions.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Originally posted by epic
For me, (im on 56k) I can browse a php based site quicker than a MySQL based site. With of course both sites having the same content, just different extensions.

The difference is all on the server-side, so the download times shouldn't make any difference, unless of course the page is being held up by the server.

My company has a subscription to some research agencies - I might try to find out if there are any metrics on PHP vs ASP.

Oh and Epic, you say "a php based site quicker than a MySQL based site". You're not comparing like-with-like.

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a programming language that allows you to write web pages that are processed on the server before being sent to the browser. The principle rivals are Microsoft's ASP (Active Server Pages) and Sun's JSP (Java Server Pages), both of which do pretty much the same thing.

MySQL is an open source (i.e. free) database system and is therefore comparable to Microsoft SQL, Oracle and (if you're being very basic and masochistic) Microsoft Access.

The principal use of languages like PHP is to create a template page, which goes and retrieves specific data from a database. GTP is a case in point. All the pages look the same but have different content in them. When you call viewthread.php, it looks in the database for all the posts in the thread specified by threadid, arranges them and flings them at the browser. This means that the thread you see is the thread how it is right now, not how it was the last time Jordan logged in and did work on the site.