| There's been a lot of discussion about this topic and I | | | | to do things much easier than with.NET resources. Due |
| guess everyone have different opinions about it. I am a | | | | to the open source nature of PHP development. |
| full-time freelance developer and do projects with PHP | | | | The things on the other end that I like more about |
| and ASP.NET so I may have a more neutral opinion | | | | ASP.NET development: |
| about the two. | | | | - Access to the.NET Framework (CLR) - The libraries |
| In the old days if you asked me to compare PHP and | | | | has everything you need built-in. There's no need to |
| ASP, I would have said PHP without any hesitation. | | | | download a class to do nicely formatted emailing or |
| ASP was cumbersome to me with way too much | | | | encryption, it's all there. |
| overhead and lacked the OOP aspect. But these days | | | | - Better UI controls out of the box - The grid |
| with the newer.NET frameworks it's much harder to | | | | components make it quick and easy to slap together a |
| make up my mind. | | | | data viewing or editing screens. I suppose with add-ons |
| Both languages have their own pro's and con's. I come | | | | to PHP like jQuery the same can be achieved. |
| from a C++ background and writing code with C# and | | | | - Good Debugging Support - I am using Nusphere's |
| PHP both give me a lot of satisfaction, so on the style | | | | PhpED for development and it comes close with its |
| and object oriented coding level they are both on equal | | | | debugging functionality, but nothing beats Visual Studio's |
| ground for me. I know ASP.NET has much better | | | | debugging support. |
| OOP support, but for what I need and the projects I | | | | So which one do I choose? |
| do, PHP is fine. Without comparing too much low level | | | | Well, if I were new to web development and had to |
| differences between the two engines. | | | | choose. I'd choose PHP. But I would also invest the |
| The things that stand out most about PHP are: | | | | time to learn ASP.NET in C# of course, not VB.NET. |
| - Platform Independence - And yes, I know there's the | | | | I'll continue to support both languages in my business. |
| mono framework that supposedly makes ASP.NET | | | | There are times when PHP is more suitable and |
| independent. Well in my opinion, if it was not natively | | | | others when ASP.NET makes more sense. A lot of |
| build to be platform independent then it's not. I don't like | | | | my Government work also requires ASP.NET |
| hacks to make things work. | | | | because of their licensing agreements with Microsoft. |
| - Easy Deployment - I've never once, deployed and | | | | So it makes sense to learn both. |
| ASP.NET application from a dev environment to a live | | | | If you're interested in quickly running through a |
| environment without any issues. With PHP it's almost | | | | comprehensive crash course in PHP with step-by-step |
| always flawless. | | | | examples visit |
| - An Abundance of Resources - You always find | | | | To learn ASP.NET go to for learning material. |
| answers to questions, problems and third party classes | | | | Good luck! |