asp or php?

vac

Well i don't know a great amount about them, i plan to learn one or the other, so im looking to find out which is best. Just wondering what others think of them and their reasons.

Your views..

phaxx

PHP, definately.

Merely my opinion, I really like PHP. I haven't worked with ASP yet, but I'm sure they're pretty similar.

I don't know which would be more useful from a job/qualifications point of view, I'm sure someone else will fill us in on that.

http://www.php.net/manual/en is all I've used to learn php, and I like the fact that the online manual/function list has comments posted by ordinary users, things to watch out for, tips, and such.

That and the fact that it's open-source and runs on cool operating systems

yellum

Jobs wise lots more companies look for asp skills. I haven't seen many looking for php people. Saying that php will definetly grow as its powerful, easy to use and runs on many an os. ASP is windows only. While there is chiliSoft asp and other asp versions they are not MS versions and have many features that don't work.

If you are going to be using a lot of MS software on the server then ASP would be your only man. If you have a linux machine php is the job.

ASP is fairly easy to learn. I have a wrox book on it and its very good. Haven't looked indepth at php but from looking at source code its very guessable.

PHP does have the support of an army of geeks that are making some very cool open src applications. Fanatics can be helpful.

My quick and to the point reply is over.

Enygma

There's a review/comparison of the most popular server-side languages at webreview

I used to do quite a bit of Perl programming before so that was my first choice for a long time. I delved into a bit of PHP at one stage but as soon as I found JSP I was hooked, no going back.

PHP is quite simple to learn and portable too, also it's got a familiar syntax (a la C, Perl etc) so it'll be easier to branch off into other languages, or pick it up if you already know these languages. I see the newest version has pre-compiled scripts, cool!

I'm not really a fan of ASP, mostly because of it's ties with VB. I just couldn't get my head around that language. But from what I've read it's scaleable and very powerful. If you're doing enterprise apps this might be the one to go for (out of the two).
Also if you're looking for a job out of it go for ASP.

If you ARE doing enterprise apps I would definetely recommend JSP/J2EE. I've been working with this for the last year and I think it's the bees. It's similar to PHP and ASP in that you can include snippets of code in your HTML pages but you can also create your own library of Cold Fusion-like tags to ease common tasks and keep your code ultra-clean.
Good skill to have on a CV too. I'd recommend that you look into it at least.

bonkey

ASP, and its .NET successor (ASP+, I think) are pretty good for what they are supposed to do.

It is not true that you are tied to VB - you can use VBScript or JavaScript as standard, and apparently any other scripting language which you have a suitable interpreter for IIS to hook to.

Despite the existence of Chillisoft and others' emulators, realistically, its a windows-only jobbie, but its massively popular.

PhP, and its best-friend Perl, are far more pwerful in a lot of respects. However, to be honest, they also have a steeper learning curve, unless you're a well-experienced programmer IMHO.

A third alternative, which has rapidly become my fave at the moment is JSP. Dont get put off by the name...this is not just ASP coded in Java - it is way beyond that. If youre tempted to look at JSP, then check out Jakarta - particularly the struts and taglibs projects. Talk about massively changing the face of web-development (IMHO).

At the end of the day, you will find that MS tend to have the prettiest development environments, and their new .NET development platform looks like its almost completely redefining internet development in terms of development-simplicity (through a really neat IDE). However, not everyone will buy into it, and it is not a cross-platform solution.

PHP and JSP are the two top options for all-rounders, backed up by Perl and Java/J2EE respectively.

jc

DS

Look back a few pages in the Webmaster forum and you should find a topic I posted a few months ago posing exactly the same question. You should have a look at it, there were a lot of interesting posts. I decided to go with PHP in the end. So I picked up Beginning PHP from Wrox, and learned it in a week or 2. I thought it was extrememly straightforward, even more so if you have experience with any C-like languages (Java, JavaScript). It's, at the very least, a very friendly language to work with, due mainly to its massive function library, offering an easy way out of virtually any task, and then you've got superb online support at php.net. If you're on Linux, IMO there's no better option. Then with MySQL in the background, the old LAMP setup should serve you very well. And best of all, it's entirely free!