PHP vs ASP

wilzy

I've been wondering (as i am quite new to PHP) what are the great advantages / disadvantages of PHP over ASP and vice versa. Why would an organisation choose to develop in one of these over the other.
Your thoughts on the topic are appreciated in advance.

Regards

-Michael

superwormy

Ooops... sorry wrong post.

superwormy

But to answer your question anyway, most of it I would say is up to user preference.

But for a few things, PHP is free and open source. Doesn't cost anything to setup or run. PHP is also more similar to C or C++ than is VB.

PHP has support for more platforms that ASP.

PHP has excellent MySQL support, so we have easy integration with an open source ( actually many ) databases.

PHP tends to be a bit easier to learn for newbies, but is still amazingly powerful.

PHP is faster.

wilzy

Ta for the thoughts!

Anyone know what ASP has over PHP?
I realise its a preference thing and assorted other technical reasons... im just trying to wrap my brain around the idea of companies choosing ASP over PHP to develop their applications.
Why would they choose ASP?

superwormy

Its Microsoft :-)

Everyone uses Microsoft.

It uses VB Script or Javascript, older and more established languages than PHP.

I'm sure someone else can provide more insight.

greg252

PHP is free and is available for most nix installs. ASP (from what I understand) requires a translator (i.e. Chillisoft ASP) to run on nix. This costs extra money (I want to say the license is about $1,000).

Plus, it's not micro$oft.

I've noticed that by only installing basic windose and building my development enviornment with apach/mySQL/PHP/Perl/Python and using basic editors like notepad, my computer crashes very infrequently.
Anyone else?

altaergo

I just moved an app written for a client that's on an ASP host. I didn't write the original ASP, but I did maintain it for about a year. The app was heavily dependant on some com object (mail and file upload) to run. Now we HAD to move this site. The problem was we couldn't find another ISP who was big enough and either had EXACTLY the same com object or was willing to load them.

So, I told the client I'd have to rewrite it all to move it anyway, so let me just do it in PHP. They bit.

Go find a list of things that you can get PHP to do without loading any objects (mail, upload, graphic manip, regex, support any database under the sun)

The other reason people use PHP is because coding is "C like." And if someone prefers C they aren't going to enjoy writing in ASP which is VB.

That's what I think anyway. Plus it's DAMN FAST!

bastien

both are server side languages, both run almost anywhere now (ASP will require third party component to run on Unix - see chilisoft, or asp2php)

both are very powerful languages...the main downside to ASP is that all programming really makes use of COM objects which makes things a little slower (however in most cases it doesn;t really matter)

both do all sorts of stuff

what it comes down to is how comfortable you feel with the languages and most of all what language the CLIENT wants you to use. (ASP may have a few more security holes in it (typical MS product, but that will change)

some one should write an article

😃

bretticus

Well Well, I MAY have an ASP advantage. I work in a development environment where we use ASP, PHP, and now ASP.net abundantly.

The only thing I wish I could do in PHP that I can do is ASP is use Application functions of ASP. For example, in ASP I can have the Webserver automatically do something when a session times out. If anyone has a PHP alternative to this, let me know?

My general impression of ASP. Well, it's like having at least one hand behind your back. There are so many more possibilities with PHP than ASP. Some of the "things" are possible in ASP but you end up paying mega bucks to third-party components you usually have to install.

Also, arrays are just a nightmare in ASP.

Finally, the ASP community is even moving away from ASP for ASP.net which allows you to code in C# (resembles JAVA - probably ripped off ;-). C# has some nice refinements however. Basically, the bottom line is ASP is a dying scripting tool (was gonna say language but it's really just VBScript with a tiny bit of ASP stuff that makes VBScript work wioth IIS.)

[deleted]

I use both PHP and ASP/VB. I have found no difference between the two as far as straight script(no db calls) performance goes. I think they are both fun to work with. My ASP pages are delivered from a MS-Win2K/IIS server, and my PHP pages come from a FreeBSD/Apache server. I use a Win2K system as a development platform for both.

It currently costs me < $0.50 per thousand page views to operate my web service. A comparable MS-based system today would cost me triple over the next two years, assuming I don't have to upgrade any software.

ymmv

bretticus

Sure, ASP is cheap if you happen to have paid bucks for your Windows Server with IIS and you decide you don't need the $500 Development Studio or you do nothing more complicated then display and upload text. As for the database, MySQL does come with a ODBC driver for Windows if you don't wanna fork out another couple grand for MS SQL ;-)