php vs asp

Anon

Hello there, i have a question regarding php and asp.

Which is better? by better i mean more robust, and more secure; what one can do more things? I know that they are both exelent languages, but you never see a huge e-commerce site like amazon.com, buy.com, cnet, egghead, zdnet .etc programmed in php - they always use asp.

This would suggest to me that asp is more functional and more pratcical in large, complex implementations and php is better for small stuff. Is that true?

Anon

i like php much better than asp, and ive worked with both. the main reason its not used more is because it is not a widespread enough language. when i started with it just over a year ago, there was only one book on php in barnes and noble. since version 4 was released the use of php has exploded. the speed is now comprable to asp. im sure you could find some benchmarks at http://zend.com

-paul
http://xhawk.net

Anon

but then why don't the larger sites choose it over asp? There has to be some reason; i'm thinking asp is more robust. All i ever see php at is on small websites rarely dealing with e-commerce, user custimization, etc.

Anon

The reason that some of those companies are using asp over php is because there are more schools teaching c,c++, java, and visual basic. visual basic and java are the basics for asp. Perl is closest to php. I find that php is more powerful, and easier to program. There are several hundred built in funcions for the users to use to simplify the programs and program length. Personally i don't like to have to declare all the variables all over the place and worry about returning everything to the main part of the program. It took me about 5 hours to build this page which was a test for a support page that i made for a company. This is not the final result, but a working one.

rycamor

Actually there are quite a few things PHP can do that ASP cannot! One of the more ironic ones is the fact that PHP can connect to MSSQL in native mode, while ASP must use ODBC, so PHP is actually faster at MSSQL connections. Tha fact that PHP is open source means people are constantly writing modules to do new cool stuff.

Another really fun irony is that www.vb-world.net (a Visual Basic portal) uses PHP.

Seriously, there are a few large sites using PHP with no problem, such as www.alltheweb.com, and Nasa, in some places, and Lycos uses it for music and media searching.

With the new release of the Zend Optimizer and Cache, I seriously doubt ASP can scale like PHP (especially on non-Intel architectures). The reason many of the bigger businesses have not bought into PHP yet is really more a social question than a technical one. They are comforted by the false security of dealing with other big businesses such as M$oft, and are afraid of using software developed by those rag-tag open source people. This attitude is starting to change, though, so don't lose hope.

[deleted]

I think larger sites...
1) don't know about PHP yet
2) don't want to spend more time and money converting a working site to a new language.
3) believe that ASP is better simply because there is a large company behind it, someone they can phone to get support.

If you look at http://www.php.net/sites.php you'll find lots of big sites that use PHP.

Why does everybody always put the emphasis on e-commerce? E-commerce is nothing special at all.

There are only two important things: Can you make PHP do what you want (and that's really up to you) and will PHP hold out under stress?

The answer to the last question is a loud "yes". I've seen a PHP/MySQL driven site take a beating of 1Million pageviews per hour on a SUN 440MHz system.
(that's with apache at 1000 concurrent servers)

I'm sure ASP could to the same, but that's beside the point: PHP can take a beating and survive.

Anon

Simple answer - there's more ASP programmers around than there are PHP programmers. Thus, it's easier for companies to recruit ASP people.

Secondly, PHP doesn't quite have the marketing muscle that Microsoft has. As a result, many technical directors are simply unaware of PHP.

Anon

btw: last time I asked one of the amazon.com programmers they used quite a bit of straight C for their cgi. In fact they use linux and solaris for almost everything.

Also, zdnet has been a MS bedfellow for a very long time.

Anon

My programming experience up to mid 2000 was
occasionally writing M$-DOS utilities in C++
(Borland 3.1) and one large DOS program with
it's own GUI (5000 lines of C/C++).

I started learning php in october and started
doing serious stuff in december...

The more I use php, the more it seems custom
designed for me.

The more I use php, the more it seems custom
designed for what I want to do with it, which
is probably far from what the design team
expects the average php user to do with it.

I dont know asp...

Anon

You'll find in a lot of cases that most big websites use a mixture of languages and back-end engines.

I've worked on big website projects that used a mixture of middleware applications, Perl, Java, Oracle, ColdFusion and straight C++

So, whilst ASP might be used by the e-commerce sites you mention, you'll probably find that there's a bit of Perl or even PHP sitting in the background.

It's really a matter of picking the right tools for the job and making these tools stick together.

The sticking together bit is the hardest part of any big website project.