[RESOLVED] Deciding on the right technology - input appreciated.

[wuzz]

I want to learn how to develop web applications. Initially because it interests me, but down the road perhaps also as a means of earning an extra income or as a full time job.

Essentially I have no background in programming, although I have played around a little with php, sql and vb. This means that I’m not really preferential to any particular language at this point.

My basic question relates to which technology to start learning – PHP or ASP.NET. Realistically I will not be developing any large corporate web sites or applications in a foreseable future, but rather small websites of a community character or small business websites.

PHP (along with Apache and MySQL) have the great advantage of being freely available, which means that web sites and applications can be used by basically everybody. ASP.NET on the other hand offers what seems like a great and free IDE in VWD Express along with SQL Server Express. The idea of drag-and-drop ASP.NET controls seems like a real simple way of developing web applications for example. Downside is that IIS is not free. Though you can find pretty cheap, or entirely free, ASP.NET hosting. But some people would like to host their own server, and then Apache since being free might have a bigger appeal. Mono seems like a pretty big, and not that straight forward, solution if you want to host .NET applications on an Apache server.

For a beginner, with no special preferences, what would seem like the best choice? Considering learning curve, available development environments, technology penetration, etc? What about portability of programming skill? What free or relatively cheap IDEs are there for building PHP web sites and applications?

Thanks for your time. 😮)

[bpat1434]

I would suggest you learn PHP only because it's 100% FREE and so is the server software. Plus, Linux hosts are much cheaper than Windows hosts.

Not to mention that the community that is available for Windows seems to be smaller than that of Linux. So if anything ever goes wrong, you can quickly get help on a wide range of topics, and everyone is typically very helpful.

With IIS, the only thing I've found are bulletin boards which aren't very active so you wait a few days to hear anything. Plus, "plugins" or "addons" for IIS aren't as well supported as Apache or LightTPD are.

I've used ASP back in the day, and I have to say that I wasn't impressed. I never got the real hang of it like I did with PHP.

You don't need a real IDE to develop PHP applications. A good text-editor will do just fine (EditPlus, TextMate, NotePad++, e-texteditor, Ultraedit, etc.). But there are some good free IDE items like Eclipse with the PDT (PHP Developer) plugin, or Aptana (which is built on eclipse). Then you could go and pay for Aptana, or Zend Studio Neon (which is built on eclipse) or use Komodo or NuSphere PhpED as alternatives. The good thing about Eclipse is that if you want to learn more than one language, it's one IDE that can handle them all. Just need to download the plugins.

[wuzz]

Thanks for your reply.

That PHP is free as well as the other required software is a great advantage. But I don't think that the level of community support is that much different. People seem to get feedback on questions rather quickly in windows forums too. I did post this to the asp.net forums too to get that side of the coin, but the link appear to have been removed. Here goes again http://forums.asp.net/t/1353935.aspx

IIS is a problem, not a big one, but a free server is the preferred choice at this point.

Alot of my thoughts revolve around how difficult it is to pick up either technology, since, at this point, this is more of a hobby than anything I can do for a living. That might change, and that is part of the plan, but it's not a high priority right now.
Of interest also of course is how easy you can perform regular and common tasks like securing a site, restricting access based on membership roles, etc...that sorta thing.

[bpat1434]

I guess my main point was that I don't know of any IRC channels specifically for IIS help. It's all MS forums (or user forums). But Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Ruby (and RoR) all have their own channels. Not to mention Linux, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Debian all have channels as well. So support with server setup and maintenance can be a breeze when you have "live" people to talk to. My experience with IIS has been that the MS forums are slow (48 to 72 hours before I get a reply) and I haven't found any real "chat" type of places for IIS like IRC has for almost every open source item.

I started with PHP almost 7 years ago now, and it is easy to pick up just because you can start of procedurally and then move to a more object oriented approach. Start of easy, then move to the more advanced items. But PHP is easy because it's not a strict language.

I find PHP to be easy. Take it for a spin. Spend a week with PHP. If you don't find it easy, spend a week with ASP. Then make a decision.

[cahva]

Heh.. Reading the other(dark 🙂 ) side's comments and the reasons to use ASP.NET.. Why does using Microsoft technology make you more money? So when using asp.net you can add couple of zeros to your invoice? 😉 Now I have to think about switching! 😃

Ok, seriously.. My experience with ASP(I have not used ASP.NET) is very limited and used it couple of years ago only couple of weeks on one project so I cannot really comment on that. One thing I can say that I hated VB 🙂

I think it would be good to learn PHP's OOP from the start or atleast very soon after learning the basics. This is from my own experience: after years of procedural coding, it was a little bit hard to start thinking object oriented way, so it might be a good idea to start using OOP features right away(or very soon after you handle the basics).

At some point it would be good to start looking at some of PHP's frameworks. I myself have started to use Codeigniter which will also teach you MVC(Model-View-Controller) approach to code. And you also learn OOP on the side because it heavily leans on that. CI is also very beginner friendly and the documentation is superb. There are many other PHP frameworks but I mentioned CI specifically because that framework actually changed my way of coding to better and was the first PHP MVC framework which works the way I want, is fast and dont have steep learning curve.

[wuzz]

I guess that this is not a life or death decision (I know it isn't), so it shouldn't be taken that seriously. Since I essentially lack any programming experience, there's alot to learn apart from a new language. Taking on too much from the very beginning might just be discouraging altogether.
One common point from both forums seem to be that PHP is simpler to pick up than ASP.NET, and that it offers better control of layout and rendering - things not unimportant. PHP also have the advantage of being deployable to any platform, along with Apache and MySQL. For a beginner I feel that is important.

I think I will take PHP for a spin, and if I find that I don't like it for some reason there's always the option of a different language instead. Like I said, I already have a job so I'm not depending on this at the moment.

Thanks for your replies. There might be many more opportunities for those. 😉