how hard is it to set up an....

asp or jsp site? can an individual with not much knowledge of these two technologies easily do this?

would it be correct to say companies are better of using these because it can be costly? and maybe for individuals something like php or perl would be better?

i guess it still depends on what you want to do but just wondering generally if this assumption is correct? thanks

I haven't spent much time with JSP, but between ASP and PHP, I defintely prefer PHP. The great thing about PHP is that you can install it on just about any computer in the known universe, with many different webserver systems. This way, you can test out a PHP page on a Win98 machine or even a Mac, and run the pages on a Unix server, with little if any changes (at least for 99% of the stuff most people do with PHP).

So I recommend PHP for something quick and easy.. JSP is something I would not recommend for the small business, but for larger projects, especially with multi-tier software interfaces, JSP becomes more important.

ASP? Well, if you are more familiar with VBScript and VB than you are with Javascript, C, Perl, etc... then you might be more comfortable with ASP. Still, remember that PHP is more portable.

First off, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you are looking for cross-platform compatibility of your code, JSP and PHP would be the first choices. If you are developing for someone that is a Microsoft shop, your only choice is really ASP. However JSP and PHP will run on the Microsoft platform. Are you starting a a new project, our do you have code you want to reuse? If you have code you want to reuse, that will pretty much decide what you will have to do, except with Java's JNI (Java Native Interface) you can make calls to a C/C++, or VB app from Java, provided you have an open API that will allow this. JSP is very flexible for even then smallest site to large scale enterprise systems. However I feel the learning curve for java/jsp/servlets a little linger over PHP. PHP is not as object oriented as JSP either. PHP was designed to allow programmers to throw sites together fairly quickly. One downside to PHP is that if you need access to a new database or want a new feature, you have to recompile the php module. JSP will just let you import the new package right in your code, provided you have the .jar or class file. JSP is a pure object oriented language, and if you have never used it or not used to the OOP way of programming you might have difficulty grasping some concepts. In the long run JSP is probably the most portable, versatile, open, and widely supported language. But if you are looking to easily put something together and in a short amount of time PHP is the way to go. If you want to take the extra time to learn Java and JSP you will find it worth your while, because your code will be more reusable and more easy to grow if you need to expand your application (provided you follow OOP techniques). Like I said before, it just depends. There are too many variables to say this or that, but all of these languages can pretty much acomplish the same thing, and some might just be better at it, or more suited for your enviroment. That's just my 2 cents.