hello,
I am starting my 3rd year degree in computing at uni and I am writing a dissertation on php versus asp.

I was hoping you could share some of your expertise please, and share some of your knowledge by answering some

of the following questions. Please note that this is purely for my own

project to achieve my degree. The answers you give me will only be used in

my dissertation and referenced according,

When considering a server-side scripting language, what would you consider
the main points you look for.
Is Cost an issue(Obviously PHP free ) Asp.net ?Business use etc...
What can one language do that the other cant?
What can one language do more efficiently than the other?
What features does one language have over the other?
I basically need to get together some strong arguments that can be put together.
I need to be able to compare the language like for like and work out which
one has more advantages over the other in a constructive manor.

 Any help would be greatly appreciated.

One other option is to create a questionare and either post it on the site or if any individuals are willing to take part I will email the questionaire
again because of Plagiarism the information will be referenced accordingly.

Thank you very much

Paul

p.s I hope this is not irregular practice if so my apologies, just trying to use my initative and ask the people who are experts in the field

Thanks again

Maintainability, Ease of future expansion, Usability (the language is intuitively useable and understandable), Object Oriented (based on a paradigm I’m familiar with)

Cost is not an issue, both ASP.NET and PHP are free; the cost begins with the operating system and hardware. ASP.NET is generally run on Windows base machines, but can also be run on Linux (Apache with Mod Mono). PHP can also be run on either platform.

Both languages are fairly mature. ASP.NET in my opinion facilitates Rapid Web Application Development better through its rich collection of server controls, and mature Integrated Development Environment. PHP is a loosely type language offering a little more flexibility, encapsulation, and a little more room for error.

Efficiency is negligible for most languages – with the abundance of cheap hardware and powerful processors, language efficiency is becoming less important. I believe Steve McConnell once said that “4% of the code accounts for 50% or more of a programs efficiency.” This suggests that we should focus less on efficiency and more on actually completing our applications.

ASP.NET applications can be compiled into modular components. ASP.NET applications have many rich controls and other widgets that can basically dragged and dropped into your website. Look into: DataGrids, Themes, Skins, SiteMaps, Breadcrumbs, ADO.NET, DataSets, DataTables, UIPAB, nUnit.

My two cents:
In the late 90’s ASP 3.0 and PHP were at par, when ASP.NET emerged in 2002 I was instantly won over by the code behind model and the many new features. Today, I still find PHP applications to be very script based (making them cryptic at times), whereas ASP.NET applications are more Object Oriented based. The Object Oriented paradigm makes code much easier to understand and maintain.

For more info see:
Advantages of ASP.NET over ASP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asp.net...P.NET_over_ASP
PHP Criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Php#Criticism

- Adam Kahtava [http://adam.kahtava.com]

Hi Adam
Thanks for your reply
Your help is much appreciated
Thanks again
all the best

I use ASP.NET every day and it is my employers development server technology of choice.

My biggest critisism of it, is that in abstracting developers from that client layer, meaning from the actual javascript and the actual HTML that browsers run with), it encourages some deterioration of client programming skills, and in some cases it allows for developers to never learn the actual client side code at all. This layer of abstraction with server side controls can make development faster, but at the cost of potentially some ignorance, which can in many instances be costly in time debugging. Also if you actually do get into the client code the server controls produce, you will find the code it produces can be ugly to the human eye. Call me vain but I do appreciate elegant looking code to work with and I do spend time towards that effort where possible.

I haven't yet worked with the ASP.NET AJAX controls (which is still in Beta) but I fear this may only get worse as clients become thicker with the demand to provide more windows-like application interfaces in web applications.

I have a couple of ideas for improving this but thats beyond the scope of what you are looking for. Hope this helps.






Neil Timmerman
Programmer
Veris Consulting