ASP / PHP compared?

I'd learnt sufficient of PHP to construct shopping carts / Forum and other applications. How practical is it for me to learn ASP? What are the advantages of using ASP over PHP besides the the platform for the server?

and if I really want to learn it from the beginning, is there any ASP site that provide beginner tutorials?

Thanks a lot

http://www.hotscripts.com is chocka full of ASP scripts and tutorials.

But really, unless you already know a lot of ASP/VB you are better off sticking to PHP. If its for database access / dynamic pages etc PHP is just plain easier to use and probably more powerful.

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Simon Wheeler
FirePages -DHTML/PHP/MySQL

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica">quote:</font><HR>What are the advantages of using ASP over PHP besides the the platform for the server?[/quote]

What are the advantages with NT platform?? With php you can choose if you want to use NT or Linux, but with Linux you will have a much more stable server, and much faster too.

There is no use in learning asp, unless you are offered job with asp...

Consider ASP with JScript to begin with. Very much similar to JavaScript and not equally as different to PHP as VBScript is.

Off the topic:
In PHP4, if you have an error in your page and try to view it. Nothing is done with any of the code unless the code is "corrected".
I've had disasters with ASP where I both have a INSERT INTO table or UPDATE table AND a VBScript error.
Reloading the browser to test fixes to the VBScript error can cause the SQL stuff to be done more than once.

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¬ peterbe.com ¬

PHP is just cooler to say

And I think it is a lot easier....

Not to mention that the next release of ASP (ASP+) will no longer support VBScipt. So learning it now is a waist of your time. You'll have to know full blown Visual Basic or JScript to use it.

I know both ASP and PHP, let me tell you... PHP beats the pants off of ASP. It similar to perl... maybe that's why I feel that way.

Thanks. I think I'd stick with PHP for the moment. But let's say I want to take a job that requires ASP, is there any introductory site that I can visit? and off the topic, should I really be learning ASP+ instead of ASP given that I know Visual Basic?

For a pretty decent set of ASP tutorials check out http://www.activeserverpages.com

It's got a lot of good tutorials

Dan

I don't know what it is, but I have yet to see an employer say this in an ad:
"looking for someone who has experience with apache/mysql/php..."
Yet everyone else swears by that combo (myself included). It's frustrating because microsoft products have that name recognition and it seems a lot of businesses think: "hey if the system costs more than 5 grand to set up, it must be the best..." If PHP so's hot, then why aren't more companies into it? (I know there's some big guns running it, but they're a minority compared with ASP.)

Because companies have what I like to call, The Microsoft Bug. They own these servers that are NT and Win2000 because Microsoft told them it was the right thing to do. School systems all over the country use Microsoft servers..... It is like a catch phrase....

But then oneday a company is going to realize that they can't do something because their server doesn't do that kind of thing.........

Just a quick note: once I ran into an article on how to make a script to upload files via HTTP (i.e. from a browser) in ASP. The article was fairly long, as was the code. In Perl this is an extremely easy procedure. In PHP also. It is but a few lines of code...

So I would freely say that both PHP and Perl (and even Python) are far more powerful than ASP. The fact that most sites use ASP, has nothing to do with it. Yahoo! uses Python for its web mail, for instance.

You'll only see asp on sites that rely heavily on database calls. This is for several reasons:
1) Microsoft's SQL server is the best, most powerful and most reliable SQL server on the market.
2) NT servers (which is required for MS SQL) is designed to run ASP's, not PHP (though it can be done).
3) Since database is designed to handle data between the server and the user, there's no need for easy e-mail functions or uploads... so ASP is designed purely for database integration. E-mail and upload functions are all after thought add-ons.

But since *nix systems are so much better for web servers sendmail stuff, perl, Python and PHP have easy e-mail and upload functions.

To sum it all up: If you're running a major database driven website for e-commerce, use ASP (and yes, learning ASP+ will be more beneficial for the future, but now you'll need to know VBScript). If you're doing ANYTHING else, use a real language like Perl.

I'm a perl person myself, but have to use ASP for work... and I hate it more and more everyday URL.

Stick with PHP, Perl and other Unix based languages.

I am in the process of transfering a large ASP site to PHP. The ASP code is longer and not as easy to read, IMHO.

On a side note, ASP2PHP is a joke.

Ledjon,
I gotta disagree. Microsoft's SQL Server is not the most stable SQL server on the market. Through personal experience, Oracle, Informix, Progress, MySQL, mSQL and PostgreSQL blow it away in both stability and speed on NT/2k.

PHP easily runs on 95/98/NT/2k under any number of webservers, including IIS, Apache, Omnihttpd, Netscape Enterprise, etc. And performance is at least equal to ASP, even though it has to run as CGI.

As for DB access with ASP vs. PHP, PHP is fantastic for DB-enabled/e-commerce sites, that is exactly what it is built for (in addition to providing some of the functionality of Perl), which is why there are so many native DB calls built into PHP (Oracle, MS SQL, mSQL, MySQL, Informix, ODBC-generic, and a Progress on the way (since they are now contributing heavily to the MySQL open source project).

The PHP community is 1000x more phriendly then the ASP one. Oh, and if you want 'free' OPEN SOURCE scripts then you'll want PHP (yes asp ones exist but not as many). Did I mention PHP is free? Oh, you know this. ASP? Not free.

IMHO, the only reason you should consider ASP is if you find a job you can't resist but then again try looking for a new job URL Fact is, you'll have a much happier time with PHP then ASP. Friendly helpful people all over. Granted I don't have much experience with the ASP crowd but ... the PHP pholk are just down right cool. Oh, and you can turn 'f' words into 'ph' words and that's much phun! (shh, in one of those moods right now URL

Did I mention it's phree?

Oh, and try writing an email to the creators of ASP and see what sorta response you get. A PHP team member will most likely acknowledge your existence as a live human. Have an idea that _should_ be implemented into PHP? It could happen. Free PHP support? Exists all over.

I'm looking into Python right now, it seems nice too.

So, to wrap things up, I am obviously bias towards PHP but feel there is good reason to be.