PHP 5.0 Goes For Microsoft's ASP-dot-Net

Dozix007 writes "Uberhacker.Com reports : Zend Technologies quietly announced last week the final release of the open source PHP version 5. An interesting article reports the different strengths and weaknesses of ASP vs. PHP, and it becomes quite clear that with the release of PHP5, Zend has taken a shot at ASP's heart. The differences from PHP4 to 5 has created a clear advantage for the new preprocessor over Microsoft's proprietery ASP."

Comments

How about we post to a MS whitepaper instead?

[strictnein]

Interesting how the head-to-head with PHP 5.0 and ASP.NET is hosted on Oracle's site. I guess it's not like Microsoft and Oracle make competing products or anything.

We might as well Get the Facts on Windows and Linux.

Re:How about we post to a MS whitepaper instead?

[strictnein]

great... nice troll

don't click the link

Re:How about we post to a MS whitepaper instead?

[strictnein]

(Score:-1, Troll)

HOW the FUCK am I a troll for poitning out that you shouldn't click the link? IT GOES TO A PAGE THAT SHOWS A WOMAN WITH SHIT ON HER FACE.

Who the hell gets mod points these days?

Ok, here is where I object:

[Bold Marauder]

Price. Here, we must consider not simply the price tag of the initial investment, which, in the case of PHP, is obviously free, but also the implementation, maintenance, and debugging costs. In the case of PHP, you may invest in the Zend optimization engine. With ASP, however, you're investing from the very beginning, and you're spending for add-on technologies--libraries for doing graphics manipulations, for instance. But, in the long term, PHP isn't going to press you to upgrade and collect more licensing fees. Everyone who has dealt with complex licensing also knows that companies spend time and money just ensuring they are compliant. Furthermore, you have a difference in response when getting bugs fixed. This, of course, translates to time, which translates to cost for overall development.

So...I have to pay for features that I can get from the competitor for free, I have to pay (my employees) to insure that I am paying what I need to (for a product wich offers comparable services as the competitor) and I get to continually be pressed to upgrade and give them more money in licensing fees.

[sarcasm]Gee whiz, mister; where do I sign up?[/sarcasm]

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[SpaceLifeForm]

Yes, dealing with MS is a pain in the ASP.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[mingot]

Hrm, last time I checked the entire System.Graphics namespace was part of the framework and not an add-on that costs money. It's quite capable. And MS sells no graphics library to suppliment it, so I am wondering how they press you to upgrade and collect license fees for something that doesn't exist.

Last time I ALSO checked, though LEADTools (an image manipulation library) was really expensive. Of course it does a lot (LOT) more stuff than the built in libraries. Oh, and keep in mind that this is from a 3rd party vendor, not MS as the article would fud you into believing.

I guess the fact that a very competent libary is included and that MS is letting 3rd party tool vendors make money is a bad thing today. Of course if this was an article about MS buying out an image manipulation library company and then giving it away for free would be bad because it stifles competetion and puts people out of work. Funny how putting people out of work is only bad when MS does it. If a bunch of college kids do it in the name of 'free software' it's just peachy.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Pfhreakaz0id]

OK, I LIKE open source technology. I work in java everyday (not precisely open source, but we use many O.S. projects from Apache, et al). However, I would say this, in the midwest U.S., from a business perspective, if you have an opening for a PHP dude, you are going to get a trickling of resumes, but an ASP/ASP.net dude, you're gonna get a boatful. Now, seperating the wheat from the chaff is kinda tough. But, It's a consideration. Shallow labor pool == expensive labor pool.

The company I used to work at had a tough time getting decent resumes from Java/J2EE people to fill the postion I was leaving.

I'm just saying, it's a real cosideration. Remember, labor costs are the biggie. All those benefits. That said, I think Open Source is gaining ground on the development side.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[robertjw]

So...I have to pay for features that I can get from the competitor for free, I have to pay (my employees) to insure that I am paying what I need to (for a product wich offers comparable services as the competitor) and I get to continually be pressed to upgrade and give them more money in licensing fees.

Exactly. This is my biggest complaint against proprietary/commercial software, and the largest benefit of Open Source. As a sys admin I spend more time trying to figure out how many licenses we have, what is a legal use of a license, when we should upgrade, why we should upgrade, etc... Maintenance of the licenses cost us more than the license purchase itself.

On top of that, old versions are usually unavailable for purchase after the new version is released, so we can't just purchase one license of a perfectly useful product for a new employee, we have to upgrade 30 people.

For me, PHP vs ASP would be an obvious decision just because of the licensing. With PHP don't have to maintain the licenses. When I need to add a new server I wouldn't have to pay for an upgrade on the 10 existing servers.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Bold Marauder]

Funny how putting people out of work is only bad when MS does it. If a bunch of college kids do it in the name of 'free software' it's just peachy.

When MS does it, the tools they use to put people out of work with are hidden behind a wall of EULAs, patents and lawyers. When "college kids" (or professionals working in their spare time, or professionals working for a company such as IBM) do it, they release the product out into the community, where other people who are working are free to pick up on the source and either charge to customise it, or charge for support it. Of course, if that 'free software' is under the GNU License, it's perfectly ok to sell it.

So, to summarise; when MS puts people out of work with their products, only they benefit. When "free software" does it, the entire computing community benefits, as does the economy (eg, people working for Sun, IBM, Novell who work on OSS projects).

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[kpansky]

ASPs... very dangerous..... You go first.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[robertjw]

Shallow labor pool == expensive labor pool

Sure, but I can pay more for a developer when I'm saving money in license fees.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Bedouin X]

I understand licensing issues but they just aren't as big a deal in ASP.NET as these posts (and the article) are making it out. To use ASP.NET you need a license for the server and that's it. Most add-on components are the same. There is also so much ASP.NET sample code out there that there isn't a lot that you can't figure out for free using the same methods that you would use for PHP code.

Licensing issues get a little more complex when dealing with database servers and the like, but using Oracle isn't going to change that and it's not like you can't use MySQL with ASP.NET.

I'm all for the advantages of OSS and PHP does have advantages, but let's not cloud the issue unnecessarily.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[strictnein]

Indy!

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[robertjw]

understand licensing issues but they just aren't as big a deal in ASP.NET as these posts (and the article) are making it out.

That's all a matter of perspective I suppose. So I only need one license per server for ASP.NET and one license per server for any add-on components I want to use. So in a year I want to add another server, I have to upgrade both to get the same version of ASP.NET. A few months after I want to upgrade a add-on component, I have to upgrade ASP.NET and any other add-on compnents I have licenses for.

Licensing may not seem like a big deal, but it can quickly spiral out of control. Personally I have grown to HATE license agreements and will not purchase a product if an OSS is available.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Knuckles]

And while you're at it, do away with this "automobiles". My horse carriage business does badly

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Bold Marauder]

First off, your original strawman was when MS does something which changes the competitive landscape, people say it's bad; but when the OSS movement does it, people say it's good. I proceeded to explain the difference.

To answer your inflammatory question; the person who got laid off doesn't give a shit about anything other than how he's going to get by (and rightly so); but the developer who could have been hired by IBM or Novell to fix/support the code might care wether the program is OSS or wether it's hidden behind MS's patent wall!

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[ron_ivi]

if you have an opening for a PHP dude, you are going to get a trickling of resumes,

Quantity of resumes shouldn't be your top concern.

One manager I know looks for BOTH Python _AND_ C# skills of his developers because he says this pre-qualifies candidates for people with enough of an interest in computer science to understand recent technologies.

but an ASP/ASP.net dude, you're gonna get a boatful.

Just because I can find lots of people with McDonalds experience, doesn't mean my restaraunt should specialize in fries and burgers.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[mingot]

That's all a matter of perspective I suppose. So I only need one license per server for ASP.NET and one license per server for any add-on components I want to use.

No. You only need a license for the server itself. If you have a licensed installation of whatever running you can install ASP.NET. No need to purchase a license. Your developers can all install ASP.NET on their personal machines. No need to have anything but an OS to install it on.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I am wondering how they press you to upgrade and collect license fees for something that doesn't exist.

"That bug is fixed in the current release, I promise."

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Knuckles]

It's replaced by whatever comes along and people choose. Deal with it. There's no such thing as an approval board.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[AstroDrabb]

He is talking about ASP. Last time I checked ASP had no System.Graphics namespace. ASP.Net does, but not ASP. ASP pretty much sucks and requires you to write or buy code to supplement it. ASP.Net _finally_ has an acceptable framework, though it is still proprietary and will lock you into MS only solutions.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[AstroDrabb]

I don't think that is what he is trying to say. For example, say I have 5 Win 2000 servers running IIS/Asp.Net ver x.y.z. Down the road I need to add a new server and Win 2000 server is no longer available only Win 2003 server. Now I have 6 servers with one odd ball. I cannot take advantage of the new features on the newest IIS/Asp.net versions on the Win 2003 server without apps not working on the 5 Win 2000 servers. So I can either upgrade all 5 Win 2000 servers or not take advantage of the newer features on the Win 2003 server that I paid for. With OSS such as Apache, PHP and Tomcat, I don't need to pay to upgrade my server to get the latest features out of the _apps_ I want to run. I can grab the latest Apache, PHP or Tomcat and just install it. My server OS can last years longer then your average MS Winodws server by allowing me to upgrade the _applications_. MS ties or "integrates" their products in for a reason. They want that upgrade money. For example, you cannot get the "latest and greatest" IIS from MS for Win 2000 server, you need to upgrade your freaking OS just to get a new web server!. Talk about tie-in.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[DrPizza]

The software cost of Win2K3 Web Server edition (above and beyond a "free" OS; TCO be damned, the incremental cost of another server is approximately nothing once you've got a load of IT staff employed) pays for about a day of a developer's time (if he's in-house) or less if he's a consultant.

If you think that PHP's cost saving really allows you to spend much more on developers you're in cloud cuckoo land.

I am endlessly amused also by other posters' failure to distinguish between ASP and ASP.NET.

I'll bet they think "ASP is a language" too.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[UU7]

Yes, and you have to pay for a PHP accelerator to make it usably fast. Every free PHP accelerator project seems dead these days with employees being lured to Zend.

php (free)
php at faster speeds ($400)

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[SaDan]

Sounds like I wasn't the only one watching TV this weekend...

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[FruitCak]

if you have an opening for a PHP dude, you are going to get a trickling of resumes, but an ASP/ASP.net dude, you're gonna get a boatful.

actually this is a load of bull. In my experience when we advertise a PHP position we normally have the position filled within a week or two. Yet numerous positions for ASP/ASP.Net programmers are left sitting unfilled with the agency we advirtise through for weeks often months.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[ceeam]

..."Just because I can find lots of people with McDonalds experience, doesn't mean my restaraunt should specialize in fries and burgers"...

Dude, have you made it yourself? You're genius! Cookie-filed. Thanks! :))

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[ron_ivi]

Yeah, that was an original idea. It even came as I'm contemplating leaving the Software industry to possibly start a restaraunt.

And yes, it's hard to find highly qualified seafood chefs for a high-end fish place; and easy to find people with "food industry" experience from the fast food places.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[jayp00001]

Those of us charging to customize, support and sell MS products must have phantom jobs, 'cause I'm getting paid by someone. While it's ok to sell free software, you also have to provide the source code to whatever modifications you have made. The intention of the GNU project and the GPL is to cause more open source software to be written. That's not a bad thing. It's just not my companies goal. I don't think that OSS puts people out of work, neither do I think that regularly licensed software, distributed for free puts people out of work.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[rainman_bc]

But, in the long term, PHP isn't going to press you to upgrade and collect more licensing fees.

Now, I'm not 100% on PHP5, but with PHP4, Zend didn't hide the fact that you had to purchase their precompiler and accelerator to make PHP as fast as its competitors out there. I mean, out of the box it was still pretty damn good, but still, it's not as free as the article makes it out to be. I call bullshit.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[malfunct]

Yup, I agree with you, its funny how many people site software cost as a big part of the cost of getting a website up and running. Even if you had to buy a super expensive licence that ran 100k it would still only be the cost to keep on a couple admins for a year, and those are poorly paid ones.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[robertjw]

You must not be much of a sysadmin or you would know that you can "downgrade" any MS license and use the older version after buying a license for the latest version.

Not sure why I'm even justifying this with a response, but just so everyone knows I'm not an idiot:

1. Microsoft is NOT the only commercial software supplier out there. The company I work for recently sold some of our source code. There are a number of libraries that we use where the licenses are non-transferable and a previous version of those libraries is not for sale.
2. Be careful when you say "downgrade" any MS license and use the older version. Microsoft has some very specific terms under which a particular product may be "downgraded". It is definitely not accurate to say you can downgrade ANY Microsoft license

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[billcopc]

LEADtools is much more than GD, because it is built with the typical not-so-clever contract programmer in mind, where time is more valuable than money (because it's not HIS money), and whose code is worse than LEAD's (VB.net sucks!). You don't need to understand pixel theory to use LEADtools, you just tell it "Give me a Gaussian blur of X strength" and *POOF* instant Photoshop. A handy PHP/Perl developer could accomplish the same end result, except he/she will have to write the Gaussian filter on his own, which would involve coding a set of convolution matrix utility functions, color-mapping logic, perhaps some affine sub-pixel sampling. The time spent doing graphics R&D might cost more than just buying the LEAD library.

Now if a bunch of free-software peeps were to assemble such a graphics lib and release it for all to use.. hmmmm :)

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[man_of_mr_e]

You might want to look at WebMatrix, which Microsoft offers for free.

http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/

SharpDevelop is designed for application development because WebMatrix works so well already.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Skim123]

It's confusing b/c the article seems to reference classic ASP, but the title of the /. story says ASP.NET. I blame Kodos.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Pfhreakaz0id]

right, I recently got exposed to some figures from our PM for our contract. Here's how they figure: take an employee's salary and add 50%. That's the cost for the year with benefits, etc. Now, If I can get access to a much deeper .NET labor pool, and hire, on average, a programmer for about 1/3 less than a J2EE programmer (and that's the number he gave me for this market), that couple thousand for an enterprise 2k3 server license is downright cheap, cheap, cheap.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[einhverfr]

First, I am not that sure that you can't get decent resumes for PHP. If you are so unsure, start searching on somewhere like PHPBuilder.com.

PHP5 and ASP.Net are new technologies, and it will take time for people to learn them. However, if I get someone with PHP 4 and OO experience in another language (Python, for example), then it will be really easy for them to pick up on the differences and enhancements.

Also, one of your problems with J2EE and Java is that they are extremely in-demand skills. This means that it will be an expensive labor pool because the demand probably exceeds the supply. OTOH, you might find that if you ask for PHP skills you may get people whose experience is more around PHP/MySQL web pages when you really want someone who can do serious applications, say, backed by Oracle or PostgreSQL.

I am sure that many businesses feel the way you have expressed but I am not sure that it is the big reality you make it out to be. After all, we could be all using Perl/CGI. There is a LOT of talent out there in this area ;-)

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[einhverfr]

I am guessing that PHP programmers are probably easier to hire than Java programmers.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Eythian]

Knowing both Python and C# says nothing about computer science ability. Knowing Smalltalk, Haskell and Prolog says a whole lot more. Knowing Python and C# says that you are a programmer who is keeping up with things, nothing to do with computer science. (In the sense that an astronomer doesn't necessarily know much about crafting telescope lenses)

I'm currently doing my masters in CS, and don't know Python or C#, however I like to think I have an interest in it :) I tend to use Perl and Java for outright programming. However, I know that I could sit down and become competent in the others in a few days of learning, because I have covered many other languages, so learning a new one is no problem.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[Eythian]

Oh, in that case I totally agree. Someone with exposure to a range of programming paradigms (i.e. not just basic and C, or not just Java and Python) would likely have a better computer science 'mindset', they're used to thinking outside the imperative/OO square a bit. Like making faster and simpler code in Perl using it's functional-like bits (like map and grep) where they make sense.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[malfunct]

I haven't done too much PHP programming but given what I have done with PHP compared to what I have to do quite often with C# I think that it would show that C# is a more efficient language to code in especially given the widespread availability of world class development tools. I bet you get increased productivity out of your C# programmers to add on top of the lower cost to employ them.

Of course this is opinion and speculation just to ward of those who would try and accuse me of talking out my ass. I am in fact doing just that but I think if you studied it my hunch would have some truth to it.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[a1englishman]

We went through those pains where I work when NT4 hit EOL. (Ok, *technically* we hit those pains when MS refused to work on a fix because NT4 was going to hit EOL in the next 6 months.)

Second, an honest question. *WHERE* can you still get NT4? I know that were I work we had to push a bunch of products through testing on Win2K because all of our suppliers notified us the same week that they were no longer able to get NT4 licenses.

Basically, this is not much different from the old days of heavy metal. You bought a VAX or whatever, and you paid for an annual maintaince contract. DEC would provide upgrades to the OS, which were all paid for through the contract.

Fast forward to today. Instead of paying for a service contract, everyone pays for OS upgrades. Many people procrastinate, and leave their servers running NT 4, while the world moves on to Server 2003. It's all very well crying boo hoo, but if you want to remain current, you have to pay the licensing fee.

So, we're comparing a pay license from MS with a free license for Linux. Well, that's the decision you have to make. Do you want an enviroment that tries to make it easy for admins and developers, or do you want an environment where you have to memorize half a dozen HOWTOs and man pages to do anything?

Linux is a good thing, indeed, but sometimes you have to sleep with the Devil.

Re:Ok, here is where I object:

[ron_ivi]

Google agrees!

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

"[2] When Google advertises Java programming jobs, they cleverly require Python experience."

It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Cavio]

As a former PHP hacker now forced by the corporate world to program in ASP.NET, the article is forgetting the number one advantage ASP has over PHP. A killer IDE.

I really dislike ASP and Visual Studio, but PHBs tend to like pointly clicky interfaces. It makes them feel like if they have to fire the whole development staff, they can take over coding; after all, it is just a GUI.

Visual Studio is Microsoft's real killer app. That is what Monkey Boy was dancing around screaming developers about. Most developers are mediocre, and if you give them a handholding tool that keeps them from doing anything too stupid (or too great), they will love you for giving them some job security.

Alright PHP guys, can you give us that? Can you save us from having to think for ourselves? I may have filled my last remaining unallocated brain cells reading the man page for gcc.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[jcrash]

Yes, this is where Microsoft scores time and time again.

I code ASP (always) and ASP.NET (sometimes) in textpad - but the PHB's love the VS interface and the weaker developers have no idea how to code without it.

Similarly, SQL Server has grown to where it is not because it performs better, but because developers and DBA's have a built-in interface in Enterprise Manager and i-SQL (now query analyzer). Oracle never understood the need to release a complete product. Managing an Oracle database - shoot even coding in one - is like night and day compared to SQL Server.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[iamdrscience]

I'd say Zend Studio fits that position pretty well. Yes, you have to pay for it ($250), but you have to pay for Visual Studio as well.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[angst7]

I've been using Zend Studio for about a year and a half now, and it's a great IDE for doing PHP stuff. It has code completetion, a nice debugger, good integrated documentation, and a host of other nice features. I run it on both my Windows and Linux boxen, and I absolutely love it.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[bloggins02]

I agree with you that Visual Studio is a killer app, but you seem to think that it somehow "keeps you from doing anything too stupid (or great)." The last time I check, Visual Studio doesn't "keep you" from doing anything.

Especially in VS.NET, almost everything is in a human readable (editable!) source file or XML document, they warn you not to change stuff, but that's just a CYA for tech support. People can, and do, change VS generated code all the time, and since they've made it pretty easy to do, it works almost all of the time.

The open source world needs to realize that MS has them absolutely beat in the form of developer tools. Just because I know how to code in x86 assembly and twiddle bits to make arcance hardware work (been there, done that), doesn't mean I don't REALLY enjoy intellisense and auto-generated XML documentation.

"Real" programmers like good developer tools, too. That's one reason why I like Mono. I get to code in VS/SharpDevelop and copy the dlls over to Linux to run it. I will continue to do so until someone makes an IDE on Linux that compares to Visual Studio (and no, Eclipse is not that IDE, especially for non-Java projects). Who knows, maybe I'll even develop it, if I can find the time that is :)

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Jetifi]

If you want to build an IDE for PHP, you could do worse than build something on top of Eclipse. It's not just a Java tool, it's been done for Python, and the plugin architecture is pretty sweet.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[phazethru]

Beyond the IDE is also the documentation. I've been a PHP programmer for a while now becuase it was free and easy enough to use. But when first starting out, I was floored by how good the manual on the PHP site is. User comments, example code, etc. And it's not only that these existed, but that it was all in one place and easy to find.

I have written personal sites, shopping carts, and some basic management software, and I have never needed to go beyond that manual for help.

I'm willing to learn ASP in my free time (can never hurt to have things on the resume) but is there a comparable site? Or will I have to go back to swimming through the various how-to's on computer sites?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[PhrostyMcByte]

I will continue to do so until someone makes an IDE on Linux that compares to Visual Studio (and no, Eclipse is not that IDE, especially for non-Java projects). Who knows, maybe I'll even develop it, if I can find the time that is :)

Like MonoDevelop? It is based off SharpDevelop.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Nurgled]

Judging by ActiveState's Visual Perl (and the related products for Python and XSLT), Visual Studio.NET allows you to plug in support for new languages.

It might be worth investigating how hard it would be to adapt the ASP.NET stuff into a PHP IDE which works identically to ASP.NET's, or if necessary re-implement parts of it so that PHP has a comparable Visual Studio interface.

I don't use Visual Studio or ASP.NET, so I've no idea what the IDE is like, but I assume it can't be that special since, after all, we're just talking about website templates and backend code here, right?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[DorkRawk]

I have been deloping in PHP for a few years and I LOVE it. For my job this summer I may have to do some ASP stuff, so I was doing some research and looking for a site like php.net but theres just nothing like that out there for ASP (at least nothing I've found yet).

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Malc]

MSDN. Well, if you don't have access the CD/DVD that comes out twice a year then there's always Microsoft's website.

For community support, the Usenet is very good. Microsoft have a lot of groups on their servers (msnews.microsoft.com, or something like that), or you can use groups.google.com (microsoft.public.x.x.x), but that's a vastly inferior interface.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Ollierose]

as far as ASP.Net is concerned, I'd recommend www.asp.net as a starter site, along with w3schools' asp.net section for a reference/overview.

I'll add another namedrop for MSDN though, and point you to the .net Class Library reference

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[poot_rootbeer]

Alright PHP guys, can you give us that?

I bet PHPEclipse would be useful.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Elwood P Dowd]

I will continue to do so until someone makes an IDE on Linux that compares to Visual Studio (and no, Eclipse is not that IDE, especially for non-Java projects).

Well, I agree with you completely about non-Java projects. However, I promise you that the C#/VS.NET developers feel heat from Java/Eclipse. They feel that it compares well. Err, actually I haven't asked in a while, but about a year ago they seemed to feel that Eclipse was improving in leaps and bounds and starting to kick their asses. I think they're getting embarrassed about the lack of Edit & Continue.

(And this is completely unrelated to how the managers & marketting & strategy people might feel. They may feel zero heat. Iduno. But the developers want to be making the best possible product, so market share doesn't make them rest easy.)

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[onash]

i don't get it. I use IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio every day.. and i think Visual Studio sucks! .. especially compared to IDEA.

Most of the time when i'm doing some C++ stuff, i log on to a Linux box and use VIM rather than using an IDE with bunch of freaking Windows constants and stuff in autocomplete.. (my vi-dictionary and CTRL-P and CTRL-N is better)

Every time i read that Visual Studio is a killer app, i suspect that it's Microsoft-Marketing posting..

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Threatened by "Edit and continue"? Edit and continue has been a part of VS for C++ in some flavors of debug, and has been in VB since VB its first release.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[chris_mahan]

MSDN is crap compared to PHP web site.
Search works sometimes, if you're lucky
no user comments
code samples are crappy, and who wants to download sample code?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[stgermh]

There have been PHP plugins available for Eclipse for a while now. I have used TruStudio which is decent. Also check EclipsePlugins.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[stgermh]

Although not as good as php.net, there are a few decent places for ASP tips and tricks: 4 Guys from Rolla, Dev Articles, ASP Free, Juicy Studio)

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[peter_gzowski]

I will continue to do so until someone makes an IDE on Linux that compares to Visual Studio (and no, Eclipse is not that IDE, especially for non-Java projects).

I will continue to use Eclipse until someone makes an IDE on Windows or Linux that compares to Eclipse (and no, VS.NET is not that IDE, especially for non-C# projects).

I guess what I'm saying is, for what reasons do you believe Eclipse is deficient?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[chocobot]

i'm a longtime php coder myself, and the greatest weakness I see for PHP is the lack of an Apache module which lets me handle multiple requests with one php process. This seems to work with mod_perl or mod_python. It gives you a great speedup when your programs are smaller than the average guestbook, because parsing ini files and opening db connections have to be done only one time, not for every request. I guess I could use fastcgi for that, but I wonder why it isn't the standard mode for PHP execution ?!?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[stgermh]

If you're just doing ASP.NET and want a free IDE, Microsoft has WebMatrix.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you meant to type "weaker developers have no idea how to code *with* [the VS IDE]."

If you learned how to use it properly (hint: intellisense and context highlighting, along with the occasional to jump to context help). It's really nice to see the formal parameters of a function as I'm typing the arguments for invocation. Sure, I could memorize all that, but what's the point?

Your "old-schoolism" is tired--while you're trying to recall the type of the 5th argument to DirectorySearcher.Open, I'll be finishing up my project.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[_anomaly_]

I whole-heartedly agree.

Those who say that Visual Studio is a pretty GUI designed for the "weaker" developers have simply never used Visual Studio in a production environment (or don't know Visual Studio enough themselves beyond seeing Form designers).

It really is a matter of what you know and what you're used to. If I spent the amount of time I've spent in Visual Studio in another IDE, I might be pushing its superiority. But, I haven't, because in my estimation, if you're stuck developing applications targeted for a Windows OS, Visual Studio is practically impossible to beat.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[AstroDrabb]

MonoDevelop is based on the code for SharpDevelop. It was started after SharpDevelop so it is not as far along (the GUI builder is not done yet). However, it is very nice and moving along fast. Check it out.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[MobyDisk]

I have a theory: Once at least 10% of the people touting the ASP.NET GUI actually use it, the reviews won't be so good. The GUI looks good, demos well, but in actual use it is very inefficient. I thought that the idea of GUI design of HTML pages and separate code-behind files was the most revolutionary thing I ever saw in web development. Until I used it.

I believe that the VB-style property page GUI is a fad for quick & dirty development, but it won't extend well into larger systems. For example, try changing 1 property on 10 text boxes. You must click each text box, then click on the property page, scroll down to the proper value, click on it, highlight the existing contents, then change it. It's terribly inefficient.

The design of property pages doesn't allow for multiselect like most controls in other IDEs. The reliance on switching between mouse for navigation and keyboard for data entry is terrible. So the advanced coder goes to the HTML view to do a search and replace, but then finds another suite of problems. When you switch from the HTML view to CODE view (or vice-versa):

1) You lose undo history.
2) The entire HTML is reformatted.
- Much CSS is thrown out, units are changed
- Good HTML changes to IE-specific HTML
3) If any tags are not closed, the IDE deletes everything following the tag then closes it. This causes lots of problems when combined with #1.

Some of these issues can be fixed, but the propery page paradigm is intrinsic to Microsoft products.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Rucker]

VS.NET dropped this feature.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[dirty]

Something like PHPEclipse?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[XO]

From what I -hear-, Zend's IDE is awesome, but Ive never used it.

Only tools I've ever used personally for programming were Q-Edit in the DOS days, and 'vi' in OS/2 and Unix.

PHP scores a big win for me simply by being so damn easy to implement virtually anything that I can dream of, for web type things, in. A few xterms with 'vi' (i hate windowing vi's) and a web browser are all I need.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Vaginal Discharge]

I agree that VS.NET is a great killer app. But I don't buy that it's only for PHB or weaker developers. The one thing great about it is increased productivity, where it takes care most of the mundane details where you can just focus on the problem itself. No matter how great a programmer you are, if you don't use an IDE to increase productivity, then you're just plain missing the point.

I don't for a moment believe that writing all your code using 'cat' means that you're better than everyone else.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[NoMercy]

I'm still rather worried that I'm not going to fit in to well in any company because I have very little clue how to use Visual Studio.... but hey I fire up command line editors still.

Thankfully I don't edit my /. posts in vim before copy/paste them into the browser :)

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[XO]

My one complaint about all the documentation, is that so many things have changed across so many versions of PHP, that often the User Comments on things no longer apply.

My biggest complaint about PHP is that there's no coherent structure for function names, or order of function arguments.

some functions are named like
verb_noun(input1, input2, input3, outputvar)

some return their output, some modify the variable sent to it..

others are named like
noun_verb(outputvar, input1, input2, input3)

seems like i always have to look up the arguments to virtually every function after i go a few weeks without coding anything

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you get modded insightful, is a clear indication that, when it comes to ASP.NET, the /. community has no clue.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Elwood P Dowd]

I'm talking about VS.NET & C#, which is comparable to Eclipse & Java. It does not have Edit & Continue because their C# compiler does not support the requisite functions.

VS/C++ and VS/VB are not comparable in the same way to Eclipse/Java.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[hubrix]

PHP Eclipse! http://www.phpeclipse.de/tiki-view_articles.php nuf sad!

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[saintp]

Emacs! Full, builtin support for 88-key keyboards, can be run under vt100, and I've heard you can even use a mouse with it. What more do you want?

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[AliasTheRoot]

Unless you get Zend studio personal edition, and that's free.

Homesite is pretty solid also.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[bloggins02]

Have you tried it lately? It sucks. I know it's in development, but currently it really doesn't fit the bill.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Slime-dogg]

My company shells out for VS.NET and SQL Server. I initially tried to sway them away from this, mostly because I know that I can handle the administration of Linux based stuff, but my boss had other ideas, and we have an MCSE network admin now.

Anyway, I have to say that VS.NET is fantastic. Not only is the integrated debugging a godsend, SQL Server integrates well into VS.NET. I can debug stored procedures from within VS.NET, something that I haven't experienced anywhere else. I can also directly edit the database from within the development environment.

Just recently, I realized that I wanted to add a bit field to a table. With VS.NET, I just right click on the table in the "Data Connections" explorer, and click on "Edit." Then I just go to the data code and classes and add the boolean. I also would have to modify the stored procedures, which is just a matter of double clicking in the "Data Connections" explorer.

If I didn't have VS.NET, I'd have to open Enterprise manager, and do all of the changes there, or just type the SQL into Query Analyzer. I have no problem doing the straight SQL method, but it's not as fast as working with VS.Net. If I want to verify that it works, without VS.Net, I'd have to do a lot of testing SQL in the Analyzer.

The article doesn't go in-depth about the ways you can optimize ASP.NET. They thoughfully skip over ASP.NET's page caching, and they also seem to leave out the fact that an ASP.NET page gets compiled to machine code on it's first execution, and is optimized by the JIT compiler. The "long code" that they refer to isn't really that long in the end.

Another huge issue is the "platform." Mono serves as a cross-architecture platform for .NET, including ASP.NET. You can connect to a multitude of databases with Mono as well. ASP.NET is not limited to IIS, nor is it limited to Win32. IIS is also not required for ASP.NET to work, as they do note, but they fail to mention that it's incredibly easy to write an ASP.NET web server with .NET (look at Cassini, which is limited but functional).

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[davie]

A developer who is familiar enough with the language he's using that he can develop code without the use of an IDE will probably be much more effective with an IDE than a developer whose knowledge of the language has come only through the use of an IDE.

The value of an IDE is that it allows us to ignore details without suffering unintended consequences. If the IDE's designers have taken good decisions about which details can be safely ignored, the IDE-only programmer is fine, but when the IDE generates broken code, the programmer who knows the language can correct the problem and move on.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[nuggetboy]

Don't mistake the design faults of this version to be "VB-style" properties being a fad. Indeed, there are some issues with the design and UI, some quite glaring. However, the property page paradigm is quite useful. They just need to get it right, your multi-property example being good. Also, your numbered points are all pretty much rooted in the core flaw with "round-trip" HTML editing that has been present since v2002. [asbestosSuit] As I understand it, this is to be fixed in the upcoming release. [/asbestosSuit] Granted, if they let this one slip by again, I think you'll see a mass exodus of web developers from the product.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[cubic6]

Eclipse's C Dev Tools are pathetic in comparison to it's Java tools. Java is the only language that it supports well enough to be a decent IDE. Scratch that, with Java it's a *fantastic* IDE. C/C++ support needs to catch up.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[swordfish666]

Just because someone uses VS.NET and likes it does not mean they are a weak developer. What it means is they can get twice as much done.

For instance when you creat a VS Solution you create a top-level package which will contain parts of the application in proper n-tier fashion.

You then right-click (for those of you that don't know you click on the right-side-button on that mouse thinghy next to your keyboard) on the Solution and select Add > New Project and then select from a Visual List of Icons (graph representatiosn for those of you too cool for a GUI) and select Windows or Class Library or ASP.NET Web Service and so on. You can even choose the language. (Sorry, Binary is not a choice for you MIT lads)

When I am all set up meaning I have created a nice little class library and web serice I can jsut type in the class name and what pops up a list of methods and properties that I my self created.

So tell me does Textpad do that?

My wife said to me today, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."
I think that sums up our diffrences.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[jcrash]

Notice I said sometimes. Point being, if needed, I can. The problem with the VS Suite is not that it is bad, it is that it makes it too easy to do bad things. Coding with it is definitely superior to coding without it - but a lot of people coding without have no idea of how to do something without it. This means they repeatedly do the same thing over and over again instead of writing common objects that will do those things for them. Personally, intellisense is awesome - but knowing how to go into the page_load event and dynamically create all the fields I need on my forms allows me to write one set of code that will edit all my tables. If I had learned on VS, I don't know if I would've taken that approach. Which would leave me with 100+ pages used to edit 100+ tables across 10 different systems instead of one page that edits them all. Microsoft's IDE is very nice - .NET is very Nice - the reason Microsoft's product's do well, though has more to do with making the middle of the road developer more comfortable. There is nothing wrong with that. If Oracle had done it, they wouldn't be falling by the wayside like they have been over the last 10 years.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Bob Uhl]

I always thought Emacs is a pretty smart IDE. It can do IntelliSense-like things, and ties in with stuff like make, gcc, gdb &c. very well. But it's certainly not for everyone.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[RajivSLK]

Lets not forget:

*Sometimes there are no underscores nounverb (e.g. strrev) and verbnoun (e.g. ucwords)
*The order of needle and hackstack parameters are random in string functions

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[XO]

that's what i was trying to explain, couldn't think of the right words.. thanks! :)

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[Skim123]

For example, try changing 1 property on 10 text boxes. You must click each text box, then click on the property page, scroll down to the proper value, click on it, highlight the existing contents, then change it. It's terribly inefficient.

Actually, if you are changing a property that is common to all selected controls, such as the BackColor, you can select multiple controls, and the Properties window will display just those properties that are common to the selected controls. At least you can do this in VS.NET 2003.

I agree that the code-behind model leaves a lot to be desired. It is a hack, really, and despite the fact that MS has touted it as a clean separation of code and content, it's there solely because they could not get VS.NET to work any other way. With Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0, the code-behind model, while still available, will likely be left behind for the code-beside approach.

You can read more about code-behind's hackiness at this blog entry. There's also a good blog entry on the same topic by Andy Smith.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[dcam]

I code ASP (always) and ASP.NET (sometimes) in textpad...

I'm interested to know, have you got a syn file that does decent highlighting for ASP? I've found that Textpad seems to get confused by the <%%>.

I personally find myself still using Interdev (and swearing under my breath a lot) mainly because it offers decent syntax highlighting and because of intellisense.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[jbplou]

Real developers only code there ASP in vi and then command line ftp to the IIS server. If you don't do this you are a weak developer. Only the weak will use a better tool for the job. Just like weak carpenters use power saws instead of hand saws.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[dcam]

Oh dear! I so much wanted to be a real developer.

I guess I've lost so much cred I'll have to start editing my files off the HD using a magnet.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[CheeseTroll]

It makes them feel like if they have to fire the whole development staff, they can take over coding; after all, it is just a GUI.
It's frightening how closely you describe my former employer. After laying off half the developers, the owner then fired our IT director for not giving him unhindered access to the primary SQL Server databases. How dare we think we were smarter than boy-genius himself?
Whew - sorry - thought I was over that by now.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[eDogg]

And, Zend also runs on Mac OS X. Certainly helped me out when I drank the Apple kool-aid last year, heh.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[aoeuid]

I do all my stuff in text mode emacs, on the server. I can get stuff done incredibly faster than anyone else I work with, whose general mentality would be to be ftping files back and forth and using a Windows based GUI I guess.

I just can't understand why I would want to be working in a pretty GUI when I can ssh in to the servers and edit the code in emacs, with php syntax highlighting, etc. Changes take affect immediately, whether it is a production site or in development. I can edit any file very fast, create symlinks on the server, change permissions, copy my common base classes I use in nearly every client project that requires form input.

The sites are designed by others using pretty adobe products and then I come in and can do something like write an emacs macro to rename all their .html files to .php, strip out the common header & footer html and change it to standard includes, and take the content and put it in a simple content editor so we don't have to be bothered again by the client, and do this by recording some keystrokes.

For example, I can't convince some of these people we are working with to switch to XML, Latex, or something for publishing their articles, instead they want to do everything in Ms Word. But they also want it in HTML. When you export you get a horrible mess and it totally becomes apparent how messy and inconsistent the formatting is when formatted with the GUIs.

So for example right now I have the option of taking either a .doc or .pdf of a medical journal article and making an .html version. The word export is horrid even after cleaned up by tidy, etc, so I find myself copying & pasting raw text from xpdf and doing macros in emacs for the simple formatting.

For example 10 minutes before starting this comment I had to take the references and convert them from the plain text pasted from xpdf to html format.

In emacs I can do a simple macro like:

Ctrl-a (go to beginning of line)
Ctrl-o (insert blank line)
<tr> (type <tr>)
Ctrl-n (go to next line)
C-a (go to begging of this line)
<td> (type td, which is before the 1. or 2. etc)
Esc-f (jump forward a word, ie over the number)
Arrow-Right (move over the period)
</td>(type the closing td after the reference number)
<td> (type <td> for start next cell)
Alt-x search-forward-regexp
^[0-9] (regular expression to move to the next line starting with a number)
Ctrl-a (move to beggining of line)
Enter
Arrow-Up (essentially insert new line)
</td>
</tr>
Enter
Ctrl-n (goto next line, ie back to the 2.(
Ctrl-a (goto the begging of the line, ie the final position and ready for the next interation of the macro).

What I just described was to automatically change the plain text copy and pasted from the pdf like:

23. Ravussin, E., S. Lillioja, T.E. Anderson, L. Christin, and C. Bogardus.
1986. Determinants of 24-hour energy expenditure in man. Methods and results
using a respiratory chamber. J. Clin. Invest. 78:1568

to the following html:

<td>23.</td><td>Ravussi n, E., S. Lillioja, T.E. Anderson, L. Christin, and C. Bogardus.
1986. Determinants of 24-hour energy expenditure in man. Methods and results
using a respiratory chamber. J. Clin. Invest. 78:1568</td>

But in a macro that can be executed once to fix all 23+ reference entries (Esc-2-3 Ctrl-x e).

I would very much appreciate if someone could explain how the same thing could be done in Visual Studio IDE, with the exact same logic that I used to be able to automatically move to the next line starting with a number, etc, because of the references that have more than one or two lines, etc.

I admittedly have never used Visual Studio nor used anything besides Internet Explorer & MSN on Windows for several years and I am wondering whether the same things can be accomplished just as easily. Again, this was the last thing I had to do a few minutes ago, not the only type of stuff I do.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[gglaze]

I have a theory: Once at least 10% of the people touting the ASP.NET GUI actually use it, the reviews won't be so good.

Perhaps I could be a data point for verification of your theory. I've been using VS.NET for several years now for both web and windows projects. I believe you are very mistaken in your specific claims here, and also in your overall opinion that this tool does demos well, but not production development.


When you switch from the HTML view to CODE view (or vice-versa): 1) You lose undo history.

Could you give a specific example? I just tried setting some properties using the property page for a few controls, and then used undo to undo the properties i set, and then used redo to redo them. I didn't seem to encounter any problems.

2) The entire HTML is reformatted. - Much CSS is thrown out, units are changed

Are you referring to the rendering of your css in the design-mode view? Or are you saying that changing styles in the property pages for a control actually changes your css file somehow? In visual studio there is a nifty CSS file editor, and if you do css the right way (as an included style sheet file), you have full control, so I don't really see how it could be "thrown out"...

- Good HTML changes to IE-specific HTML

Care to give any examples? I have worked on a number of browser compatible sites - yes there is much of the same double-checking work involved as when using notepad, but I certainly haven't experienced the problem you are describing. Many of the sites I've worked on required a fairly decent level of cross-browser compatibility, and working within the Designer has not presented major problems for me in achieving that, once I knew what I was doing.

3) If any tags are not closed, the IDE deletes everything following the tag then closes it. This causes lots of problems when combined with #1.

Could you give a more specific example? I just tried this with an unclosed B tag, for example, and the IDE simply auto-completed with a /B tag at the very end. The IDE certainly did not delete any of my code after the tag, and I had some client-side html and some server-side controls.

Some of these issues can be fixed, but the propery page paradigm is intrinsic to Microsoft products.

First, perhaps your experience with VS.NET was with the original version, not 2003? I don't particularly remember what's changed, but perhaps all of the things you are describing really did exist back with the original VS.NET... They certainly don't seem to be the case with the 2003 version that I've been using for the last year or so.

Second, I think you are somewhat mistaken about the purpose of the property page - it is not meant to be the *only* place to edit all of the attributes of controls on the page - that is why VS.NET makes it so easy to switch back and forth between html and design view, without losing any manual formatting. Typically when I am working on a page, I find myself switching back and forth rather constantly, both because I find certain tasks more productive in the code editor and other tasks more productive in the designer, and also because in the end I am very anal about my html formatting.

I'm sure that experienced ASP.NET developers can come up with a decent list of actual current problems with development in VS.NET and the new paradigm that it introduces, but I don't really believe you've hit the nail on the head here.

Re:It's Visual Studio, not the languages!

[anomalous cohort]

it (VS.NET) takes care most of the mundane details where you can just focus on the problem itself

Hmmm, what features of the VS.NET IDE do that?

No matter how great a programmer you are, if you don't use an IDE to increase productivity, then you're just plain missing the point

What types of productivity increase are you referring to? Statement completion and code generation reducing the number of keystrokes? IMHO, the real gains in productivity are in a judicious choice of architecture including selecting, understanding, and using the right framework for the job.

This says it all

[d_jedi]

In this article I'll focus on PHP, the technology Oracle has chosen to incorporate into its products, and ASP.NET.

Yup, I expected a completely unbiased article after reading this in the second paragraph..

Re:This says it all

[Anonymous Coward]

This articles is all wrong. You cannot even compare PHP and ASP.NET. PHP is a simple document embedded code web framework. ASP.NET is a component oriented web framework. ASP.NET is light years ahead of PHP in technology.

The article side steps the most powerful aspects of ASP.NET.

1.) Component driven - All the power of OOP vs PHPs OOP which is just an after thought
2.) Event driven - Everyone who has used VB/Delphi/C++ Builder knows what a time saver this paradigm is.
3.) Browser abstraction
4.) Unified coding model. No more fiddling with half the code in JavaScript and half on whatever you use on server side.
5.) Complex, yet simple. ASP.NET does a LOT, yet is as easy as one can imagine. A RAD developer can pick the general application model up in a day. This is a sign of good engineering.

I have respect for PHP. I dumped classic ASP immediately after I came across PHP. PHP has it's advatanges but it is a simple and primitive framework by current technology standards. There is Java Server Faces which is open and will do everything ASP.NET can soon. But from what I know about Java programmers, they tend to complicate things unnecessarily applying every engineering principle EVERYWHERE. I tried Mono. It worked perfectly fine for everything I tried but I still feel a bit of uneasiness with XSP. I must give mod_mono a whirl.

Re:This says it all

[LWATCDR]

On the bright side.
It is not like Oracle paid someone else write a white paper and not disclose that they paid for it. It may be biased but it comes right out and says we favor this product and here is why so it is honestly biased.

Also I have to say that I have always belived in NOT learning much less developing in a language that runs on only one platfrom.

Re:This says it all

[space_man51]

The article was biased in that it compared ASP.NET with PHP in the areas that PHP is designed and works for. But the article was correct that for the things PHP is used for, it is definitely the better choice.

And the one thing that PHP does have over ASP, as the article mentions, is cross-platform and cross-server compatibility. Plus no complex licensing and being open-source helps.

Also, since HTTP is a stateless protocol, I would consider a client-side solution if the application is so complex it requires an event-driven interface.

I would recommend reading about the upcomming Perl 6, which amongst other things has a complete Object Oriented design.

Re:This says it all

[EllisDees]

>4.) Unified coding model. No more fiddling with half the code in JavaScript and half on whatever you use on server side.

I call complete Bullshit on that comment. I use ASP.net on a daily basis, and if you want to do anything - and I mean *anything* - outside of the little tool box Microsoft has given you, you will have to use javascript on the client side and various tricks on the server side.

Re:This says it all

[Keel]

I don't see how you can say that your only options are the MS Toolbox or client-side javascript. The toolbox is just a suite of components. You can create your own components, buy components, or download (many are free). This way, you can continue to use the ASP.NET framework the way it was intended, and you can continue to be browser-agnostic (because the components are server-side).

Re:This says it all

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, if you are working out side the toolbox, you will have to author JavaScript directly or JavaScript rendering components.

ASP.NET makes it possible to create components that circumvent the need JavaScript. The component writer will have to do the JavaScript of course. It does not provide every component to address every JavaScript need out of the box. In fact there never has been a RAD abstraction over a lower level framework that made every thing the lower level framework has done. If that is the case there is no need for third party components.

ASP.NET is a RAD component Framework much like VCL. Delphi/C++ Builder components don't do everything you can dream up of. Which is why people made over 4000+ OSS components and 4000+ proprietry component using the framework and native Win32 calls so that the end user developers can plug and play with components. ASP.NET is like that.

Re:This says it all

[Keel]

ASP.NET manages state on the server side. It's very impressive. The developer hardly has to do anything. Gone of the days of hours of "plumbing" work to manage state (or the days of web forms that lose your data when there is an error, because no one ever did the plumbing).

Re:This says it all

[hobbit125]

1) This article is about PHP5. You might want to take a look at PHP5's OOP before you make yourself look like an idiot. PHP5's OOP offers everything and then some that .NET does.

2) Event driven architecture for a server side language is silly. That's why ASP.NET's is such a hack with the giant postback hidden form element and the entire viewstate being persisted. It makes debugging all kinds of fun. no thanks.

3) Browser abstraction only if you stick to using the server controls and having your page postback and refresh every time the user interacts with it. Again...no thanks.

4) No unified coding model, (again unless you want the refresh...) there's no magic here. you want client side code, you still have to write client side code. There's a few canned controls for you with client-side code...many of which are (suprise) not browser agnostic.

5) More like "complex yet complex." .NET is an extremely verbose language almost on par with Java. The cludgy postback model that comes with the ASP stuff only makes it even uglier. I dare you to come up with an ASP.NET solution that would contain less code and be architecurally simpler and more elegant than a PHP equivalent.

As to "any RAD developer can use it...":

If I'm looking for a web developer, I generally don't hire a VB lackey. I hire a web developer. (And yes, it is fair for me to assume VB...it has over 90% of the RAD market.)

And I wouldn't be tearing on Java when you seem to be such a fan of it's MS rip-off. At least Java and PHP have a real developer community instead of a fake manufactured one that has grown up on proprietary software and hence won't share code or release anything to the community for the sake of the common good.

Re:This says it all

[space_man51]

Well, in PHP 4 you can just call session_start() and then put any variables you want to keep into the $_SESSION array. PHP can even edit all your links to add the session id automatically. Very convenient.

I would still think it's hard to do things like locking records while the user edits them. How would you know if the user hasn't just left the site (without using client-side tricks)? Or does ASP.NET have some nice feature for this?

Re:This says it all

[JamesOfTheDesert]

I would recommend reading about the upcomming Perl 6, which amongst other things has a complete Object Oriented design.

Or go use it now.

:)

Re:This says it all

[blix5]

Some of the benefits of ASP.Net that you listed are at a lot of times faults.

1. Component driven -- OOD/OOP isn't always the best way to develop, especially for small and focused scripts. Why create an entire database object, with dozens of properties and methods that you won't use (but they will still sit in memory)? With PHP, you can just procedurally create a connection, execute a SQL statement, then kill the connection. A B C, as simple as 1 2 3. (I hope that song sticks in your head for the rest of the day. Just kidding.)

2. Browser abstraction -- I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but Microsoft technologies are NOT known for their ability to send proper data to W3C compliant browsers. 'Browser abstraction' shouldn't be a selling point -- it should be a minimum requirement.

3. Unified Coding Model -- Unless you're making a site for a private intranet where you have control over the client browsers, you shouldn't be sending JavaScript to the browsers, because end-users have a need to disable it for security and spamming reasons. If you do have to output JavaScript, I see no problem with a skilled PHP coder also knowing JavaScript. If you're getting paid to be a web developer, then your minimum skillset should include knowing HTML, PHP/ASP, JavaScript and CSS.

4. Complex, RAD -- The majority of PHP functions can be encapsulated into classes, and there are a number of good 3rd-party kits on the web. A good developer can pick up PHP in a day or two, since its syntax and behavior are like C and JavaScript.
PHP has no need to be overly complex, because it doesn't pretend to be anything other than a webserver extension that generates dynamic web content. People have used it for more than that, but its home is on a webserver.

Re:This says it all

[stonecypher]

PHP is a simple document embedded code web framework. ASP.NET is a component oriented web framework.

This is the very first thing the author addresses. Did you even read the article?

2.) Event driven - Everyone who has used VB/Delphi/C++ Builder knows what a time saver this paradigm is.

Yeah, and it's not like you could write event driven code in PHP. Like, the entire error model. Which the author talks about.

3.) Browser abstraction

What? They output HTML. How is either one of them not abstracted?

4.) Unified coding model. No more fiddling with half the code in JavaScript and half on whatever you use on server side.

Horseshit.

5.) Complex, yet simple. ASP.NET does a LOT, yet is as easy as one can imagine. A RAD developer can pick the general application model up in a day. This is a sign of good engineering.

PHP has proven itself the single language I've had least trouble teaching, ever. Php has shown itself to generate small to mid-sized applications more quickly than ASP, but also in long-term case studies run by various large organizations, most publicly Yahoo!.

PHP has it's advatanges but it is a simple and primitive framework by current technology standards.

You'll find this very difficult to display with specifics. Besides, as anyone who remembers PL/I knows well, it doesn't matter how hard or beautifully you engineer the language. If it bloats, and oh god does ASP bloat (even from the perspective of PHP) then it's not going to compete in a real-world setting.

With all that money Microsoft is pouring into it, into free toolchains for it, into free hosting for it, why isn't it winning? PHP has no economic advantage over ASP, is a newcomer compared to Microsoft's web automation presence, and yet it's currently stomping ASP 3:1.

Tout all the vaguaries you like, but the numbers speak for themselves.

Re:This says it all

[GroovBird]

Well let me just say that whatever reason you may have that requires the use of "javascript on the client side" or "various tricks on the server side" you will have with any other server based web application platform, including PHP 5.0.

Dave

Re:This says it all

[spannah]

Are sure you not comparing PHP to Microsoft VB Studio .NET ??

1. Make sure you know PHP OOP before you make a fool out of yourself.

2. VB/Delphi/C++ Builder - sounds like you referring to the rad tools.

3. It's about time, although I have my doubts ...

4. Yes because the RAD tool writes all the client side scripting for you

5. Dump your pirated copy of VB Studio and grab a decent text editor. Code in both, then you will feel the ASP.NET pain. I have felt it even using a legal copy of VB Studio .NET when I needed something else other then what it was boxed ...

Really, you are comparing a RAD tool to PHP. I am quite sure someone could come up with a comparable PHP rad tool that writes half the code for you, just because you're to lazy to write it yourself ...

Re:This says it all

[julesh]

You cannot even compare PHP and ASP.NET. PHP is a simple document embedded code web framework. ASP.NET is a component oriented web framework.

Have you considered that ~95% of all web applications are incredibly simple, and are therefore more suited to the document embedded code paradigm, and that therefore the vast majority of ASP.NET programmers use it in this way, because it can be used that way too?

I'll admit at this point that I haven't used ASP.NET, my experience of ASP is limited to the old non .NET version. But, I think some of these points can be raised based on what I know of ASP.NET so I'm going to do it anyway:

1.) Component driven - All the power of OOP vs PHPs OOP which is just an after thought

What I believe you mean here is that ASP.NET applications can make use of objects implemented in any of the .NET managed code languages, storing them in session or application scope and accessing their methods.

I'll agree that this is a useful technique, but will point out the PHP supports similar operations with Java and CORBA objects, and COM and .NET objects have been added (under Windows only, although I would have thought a mono .NET implementation will follow) for version 5. It isn't quite as smooth, but you can achieve similar results with not a lot more effort. I've personally only used the Java integration, which was very helpful.

2.) Event driven - Everyone who has used VB/Delphi/C++ Builder knows what a time saver this paradigm is.

I use a very simple PHP wrapper script that allows me to write pages of an application as objects that have methods called on them to represent various actions. Users are allowed or denied access to methods based on configuration in a database for flexibility. I am not sure how this compares with the event driven behaviours of ASP.NET, but I find it hard to believe they're any more convenient.

3.) Browser abstraction
4.) Unified coding model. No more fiddling with half the code in JavaScript and half on whatever you use on server side.

I'm not sure what either of these refer to. I'd be glad to have their benefits explained to me.

But from what I know about Java programmers, they tend to complicate things unnecessarily applying every engineering principle EVERYWHERE.

There are people like that. And some of the core Java APIs show signs of this kind of mentality too. I've dumped AWT in favour of my own GUI library because all the levels of abstraction just make it too damned slow -- by doing this I've halved application startup times, and now my library's getting close to working I'm actually spending less time writing the applications, too.

Taking the world

[Karamchand]

Also read this interesting article about PHP trying to take over the world. While a bit long it's really interesting and spawn quite insightful discussions.

Re:Taking the world

[Jack9]

That article has such insightful editorializing about this "scripting language"

Zend in the clowns? (Op-Ed)...

Being busy with other projects when the announcement and early development releases were made, the first concrete information I became aware of was when a friend (primarily a PHP developer) wrote to me a few months ago, quite excited, to outline the new developments, send some sample code and provide links to the relevant URLs. Unhealthily interested myself, I dived into the information (beats working...) and had a total brain freeze:

"W.T.F.?"

The part of PHP which I'd always had the least respect for [OO specific functions] was the part they'd gone to great lengths to extend. Not only that, but they'd rewritten the engine just to support this new expansion. Looking for any non-object-orientation-geared improvements, the only solace to be found was in the aforementioned change to string indexing.

...oh I don't know, maybe because you might need destructors for making STANDALONE APPLICATIONS, which is now possible?

Update?

[Chuck Bucket]

This makes complete sense, looking at how PHP has taken so much of the bloat out of server side scripts compared to ASPs megahousal approach. Add in the fact that PHP is free/open and continuously developed, it could be a no brainer; if the market(ing?) allows for it!

How does one update from PHP4.x to PHP5.0? I'm running Drupal/Squirrelmail and the like at home, and want to see the diffs between the two, as well as understanding how to update them.

PCB$#

Re:Update?

[Chuck Bucket]

that's what I'm looking for.

CVB@$#Z!

Re:Update?

[Elamaton]

You might want to look into this: PHP 5 Migration for starters.

Re:Update?

[SphericalCrusher]

Yes, and PHP is also open-source -- a language which applies to a way larger audience. I'm sure ASP and its Windows app. developers have a lot of developers though, but not even a small fraction of that in the OSS world.

Another article

[jacoplane]

There was an article detailing the zend release on kuro5hin a few days ago. Quite a good read...

Re:Another article

[Jack9]

That article has such insightful editorializing about this "scripting language"

Zend in the clowns? (Op-Ed)...

Being busy with other projects when the announcement and early development releases were made, the first concrete information I became aware of was when a friend (primarily a PHP developer) wrote to me a few months ago, quite excited, to outline the new developments, send some sample code and provide links to the relevant URLs. Unhealthily interested myself, I dived into the information (beats working...) and had a total brain freeze:

"W.T.F.?"

The part of PHP which I'd always had the least respect for [OO specific functions] was the part they'd gone to great lengths to extend. Not only that, but they'd rewritten the engine just to support this new expansion. Looking for any non-object-orientation-geared improvements, the only solace to be found was in the aforementioned change to string indexing.

...oh I don't know, maybe because you might need destructors for making STANDALONE APPLICATIONS, which is now possible?

Sorry no

[Anonymous Coward]

I use php all the time, but php is more like the old asp than .Net. .Net is much richer in exeception handing and allows me to use any language I want. Php is great but not a stab at the heart of .Net. They have nothing like VStudio.

Re:Sorry no

[tomhudson]

I disagree. People seem to have forgotten that the goal is to serve up some information, usually from a database.

An IDE might be handy in some cases, but in many cases, because php can do the job without code bloat, the IDE will actually get in the way.

Here's an easier way to beat code bloat and simplfy your life:

1. Use php to grab the data and dump it into an array of arrays.
2. Use a javascript include to format the data on the clients' machine, using the clients' cpu cycles. (for example, a table with all text clickable)
3. Use a css include for presentation style.

The result is pretty close tho the holy grail - independence of data and presentation. Also much easier to code and debug. Your php files become so small that there's no point in using an IDE.

You can dump 1000 records into an array, and have a javascript include that lets them be displayed on the client side 25 rows per time, without having to do another fetch from the server to see the next/previous page, in the same time you would format 25 rows with all the hyperlinks.

Re:Sorry no

[mrtroy]

I use php all the time, but php is more like the old asp than .Net. .Net is much richer in exeception handing and allows me to use any language I want. Php is great but not a stab at the heart of .Net. They have nothing like VStudio.

Quote from article:

PHP 5's major new achievements come in the area of its exception handling and a new object that introduces features that bring true OOP to PHP

And my opinion added on: You do not need to use something like VStudio for anything smaller than enterprise sized ASP.net or PHP development. Textpad is more than adequate. I really dont see what u will gain by using some huge IDE for personal development.

Re:Sorry no

[Banshee99]

And my opinion added on: You do not need to use something like VStudio for anything smaller than enterprise sized ASP.net or PHP development. Textpad is more than adequate. I really dont see what u will gain by using some huge IDE for personal development.

Sounds like someone who's never used a really good IDE before. Try one out, and then come back here. Since the IDE for ASP.NET is a lot better than TextPad, the advantage still goes to .NET.

Code completion, Drag and Drop objects, visual page editing. You're right, how could those possible speed up development.

Re:Sorry no

[GeckoX]

Sure, but not all web sites/applications are simply lists of porn links ;)

On a more serious note, it's all about the right tool for the job. No, there is no silver bullet.

Re:Sorry no

[tomhudson]

Most business apps are mostly tables of records, or single records, which users call up, edit, and save.

The web platform is ideal for that. From a business perspective, it makes more sense than having to update client-side apps every time you make a change.

Re:Sorry no

[FictionPimp]

Syntax highlighting text editor is all I want. I have visual studio and the only thing its good for imho is laying out gui's for application. For web scripting, just notepad is more then enough. Mind you my work is with me and 1 other developer. I could see the need for an IDE on larger projects.

am I the only one who thinks that

[xutopia]

everyone wants a piece of Microsoft? Seems like anyone who's somebody wants to grab a piece of Microsoft's monopoly even if it means giving it away to people for free.

Re:am I the only one who thinks that

[roror]

well .. thats because, microsoft has grabbed way more than its share. they should just be making good crossplatform IDE, officeware, and mouse and keyboard. Not desktop windoze (leave it to apple) not windows server (leave it to BSD or linux) .. so on and on.

Re:am I the only one who thinks that

[xutopia]

I couldn't agree more. Microsoft is a Napoleon type company. It tries to extend it's territory as far as possible and holds position on each of those grounds.

Just like Napoleon lost it's power grip in Waterloo, Microsoft will fail because of the lenght of time Longhorn will take to come out. Microsoft is attempting to spread FUD as a last resort. Within a decade we will see Microsoft's hold of power diminish wich is a great thing in my opinion! :)

Re:am I the only one who thinks that

[wkitchen]

If you had a monopoly that extended into as many domains as Microsoft, everyone would want a piece of you too.

Re:Story Time

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

The guy who they hired was a Korean exchange student, who I happen to think was a great choice for the job...

Than why do you bring it up?

MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[MaxQuordlepleen]

From the article:

But, as Tom Kyte points out in his latest book, Effective Oracle by Design (Oracle Press), database dependence should be your real goal because you maximize your investment in that technology. If you make generic access to Oracle, whether through ODBC or Perl's DBI library, you'll miss out on features other databases don't have. What's more, optimizing queries is different in each database.

I've heard this same song from a few developers who work at Oracle shops - and I could not disagree more! Database independence in your code should absolutely be a goal! We can encapsulate our database-specific features into stored procedures or functions without having to pollute our application code with them.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[Dana P'Simer]

It all really depends on your application. Database independence should only be a goal if you may want to deploy on another database. If, however, you are constructing an applications that will only be used internally and your corp has already made a huge investment in one database or another then you should use the db to it's fullest capability.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[stratjakt]

The two aren't mutually exclusive. You should always think about DB and platform independence as much as you can.

So what if your company made a huge investment in Oracle. What if Oracle winds up chapter 11 in six months, what if the next great Enron scam is happening at Oracle now?

The very nature of an RDBMS is such that you shouldn't have to jump through any application-level hoops to use it to its "fullest capacity". I expect to issue SQL statements and that's it. To me, the measure of a DB is how well it does what it does - store and retrieve data, without fucking it all up.

As the grandparent said, you can encapsulate any specific stuff in stored procedures or custom functions. But you shouldn't be relying on it.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I've heard this same song from a few developers who work at Oracle shops - and I could not disagree more! Database independence in your code should absolutely be a goal!

This assumes that you are writing applications independent of the brand of database (or any other associated application), it's all part and parcel with blindly buying into OOP 100%. But, what if you are not writing for any other database, and your app will never be used with any other database? Than, there is not need for an abstraction layer which brings with it overhead, and has no real purpose within the context of your database-specific application.

I hear this abstraction layer line of thought quite often, yet in many applications, it simply does not make sense. If you are building for Oracle and only Oracle, it makes sense to use hooks that specifically take advantage of Oracle. Sometimes making abstraction the Holy Grail just does not make sense.

Besides, down the road, if you decide that you really didn't want to use Oracle, maybe Steve Balmer moves on to your company, well, that just means some nice Indian programmers have work!

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[jdh-22]

PEAR has done a great job in keeping many different packages updated for PHP developers. Their Database Abstration Layer provides great multply database support while still including features a good database needs.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[ajs318]

Abstraction layers are fine and dandy, but sooner or later there comes a point where you have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty dealing with actual data. So you can have this independent of that and whatever, but at the end of the day you have to move some data into or out of the database -- and no amount of pretending will change that.

If you "ride the metal", then you can run as fast as the system will allow you. The more layers of independence you try to add, the slower it will run. This is a fact. If you truly know for certain that you are never, ever going to use a different back end, then it is a complete waste of effort pretending you might. On the other hand, if you ever do need to use a different back end, then you might be in for a lot of work .....

I guess the madness will only end when we get a set of common "drag and drool" development environments that effectively create a programming language abstraction layer ..... it won't really matter whether your pretty diagrammatical representation of a programme is turned into C, Perl, Python, Lisp, Visual Basic, ASP.Net or Lua.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[arkanes]

The very nature of an RDBMS is such that you shouldn't have to jump through any application-level hoops to use it to its "fullest capacity".

This is almost totally wrong. The point of an RDBMS is to provide you with an implementation of relation data storage. There's nothing in that about performance or utility. SQL doesn't make any guarantees. It's like expecting the same assembly code to run equally well on a PowerPC and an x86 processor. I expect to issue SQL statements and that's it. To me, the measure of a DB is how well it does what it does - store and retrieve data, without fucking it all up.

Thats a great ideal, sure. On the other hand, the actual truth of the matter is that you can see (massive) performance increases by not coding to the lowest common denominator and sacrificing your db independence. Even in cases where you decide to code strictly to spec, some techniques work better with some databses than on others. When working with oracle, you'd normally use sub-queries where a SQL server or MySQL database would require temp tables. Etc.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[MaxQuordlepleen]

The amount of extra coding required to abstract data access away is relatively trivial, IMO. I certainly agree that your queries and database tables should be optimized for the database engine you support.

However, at least in my experience, application code can and should be entirely separate from database code - which should allow you to code for database independence without sacrificing the performance of your data access.

You don't have to sell me on the futility of database independence if the data access code is optimized for only one RDBMS anyway, there is a (nameless) small-scale ERP that I sometimes encounter which natively runs SQLBase, however it has been "ported" to MS SQL by basically shoehorning existing code into the new environment.

If you have different implementations supporting different back ends .. presumably these different implementations are driving revenue so having extra people on board to work on it should not be too much of a hardship :)

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[EnderWiggnz]

> You should always think about DB and platform
>independence as much as you can.

why? in the vast majority of cases, you are writing internal projects, for the company-specified database. why on earth would you not use platform specific features?

you're never going to sell the product, and there is no legitimate reason to go through the extra work to make the product platform independent.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[EnderWiggnz]

exactly - the vast majority of development has to work on exactly one platform, for one task, used internally, never to see the light of day.

when car manufacturers make a car, they tune it to run on their engine, with exsactly one set of data points. and only that configuration, generally any modification involves a ton of work. (certain chip mods aside)

why does every software project need to run with any backend? why does every app need to be infinitely configurable? it doesnt. it needs to do one job, and do it well.

Re:MS vendor lock-in bad, Oracle lock-in good

[smagruder]

why on earth would you not use platform specific features?

Ummm, then what happens when the upper-level PHB mandates that the platform be changed, or the provider of that platform goes asunder (and it will in time, you know it will). I equate getting hooked on platforms to be similar to getting hooked on drugs, in that the pain of getting unhooked is immense, and inevitable.

After reading the FA ...

[cablepokerface]

... I had to conclude the writer barely knows what he is talking about. I am not flaming him, but someone who mentions only the ODBC drivers for ASP.NET and has never even heard about a Managed Provider, additionally puts this in a summary table:
Speed:
PHP4: strong PHP5: strong ASP.NET: weak
Efficiency:
PHP4: strong PHP5: strong ASP.NET: weak
has some serious reading to do ...

Re:After reading the FA ...

[stratjakt]

Well, seeing as how this "interesting article", as the submitter calls it, is hosted on Oracle's site, you'd think the cynics here at slashdot would instantly recognize it as the typical marketing horseshit you'd find on any corporate page.

Yeah, according to Oracle, Oracle+PHP5 (and oracle specific application development) is the bomb-diggity, ASP.Net and SQL Server are teh suck. I'm sure MSFT would tell you the opposite.

This "article" has as much credibility as the MS-published Windows v. Linux TCO studies.

But - of course - marketing horseshit is Gospel here at slashdot, just so long as it says MS sucks.

Re:After reading the FA ...

[iwhittle]

I could not agree more, this guy basically goes out of his way to mention the fact that ASP.NET has a heavier object model and will thus use more memory without addressing at all the point of this model.

ASP.NET is a very different way of programming a web application that has significant advantages over many of the other platforms that exist. A ton of the work and overhead that goes into writing validation functions and other "plumbing" code in other web application frameworks is already done in ASP.NET. Also, the fact that form controls are created by objects means that you can easily create standardized controls that inherit from the built in WebForm objects and are customized for your application. Basically with ASP.NET it becomes much easier to encapsulate and reuse the code that you write for web presentation, which is certainly a good thing.

Having not worked much in PHP, I cannot say anything bad about it and have heard very good things about working in it. That being said, it just seems like criticizing ASP.NET for being slow due to its heavier object model is missing the whole point.

Of course I am not that surprised since is article is written by Oracle, and they spend significant time in it going on about how DB Vender Lock-in is a good thing. I think that shows where this authors motivations lie.

Re:After reading the FA ...

[GeckoX]

Not to mention the article stating that it's best to use Oracle specific drivers (OK, they said DB specific, but with a pretty major Oracle slant) from PHP or ASP.NET, and then try to explain why to convince you that you WANT your web app tied down to oracle.

Sure, in the rarest of cases you really want to use some DB providers proprietary features, WHERE REQUIRED. And even then, you abstract it so there is no impact on your front end if this needs to change in the future.

This whole article was slanted around an Oracle lock-in and is total complete FUD.

Damned, they even insinuate that you not only should, but MUST use vendor-specific drivers to access databases from ASP.NET. MS doesn't even go this far for chrissakes!

Re:After reading the FA ...

[Owndapan]

Couldn't agree more. Regardless of what you think about PHP or ASP.NET, much of the article is rubbish.

In terms of ASP.NET:

Provider specific DB Drivers? System.Data.SqlClient (Oracle drivers also available).

Speed? ASP.NET uses compiled code!?!?! How is that going to be weak compared to interpretted code???

I am not an MS fan, but if someone is going to have a go they could at least get their facts straight.

Re:After reading the FA ...

[Owndapan]

I have tried it. I work with it every day.

First request can be slow as ASP.NET compiles the Web.Config and ASPX page itself. Subsequent requests (non cached) are very fast (much faster than traditional ASP and ColdFusion -- haven't tried PHP but can't see it being faster than compiled code).

If you are having speed problems it might be a problem with your web server or your code.

Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[dalleboy]

The article states that Visual Basic .NET is Microsoft's default .NET programming language. I've always thought it was C#, because VB.NET lacks some of the features in C#.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[Renesis]

And vice-versa. They both have advantages and disadvantages.

Having spent 10 years writing C++ code I still prefer VB.NET over C#.NET as it's quicker to code in.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[Bedouin X]

Well they both get compiled to the CLI anyway so I would venture to guess that any differences would have to do with syntactical elegance.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[ClippyHater]

Also, the .NET SDK comes with a C# compiler (no need to purchase Visual Studio .NET if you don't want to). I'd say C# is the original language of .NET, but there are SO many VB coders out there that VB.NET will be the primary language used at a lot of shops.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I can't find any good links right now, but I've been reading the MS blogs for a few months (blogs.msdn.com) and I don't think there is a prefered .net language. Yes, c# was the original one, but the VB and C++ teams are also very actively developing new features. VB is getting a new namespace which makes lots of common taks very easy to do. C++ is getting an entirely new syntax (called C++/CLI) to make the .net integration even better. C# is getting generics, but so are the other languages.

The choice between the big 3 languages is still left up to the developers, without MS pushing one over another.

Going back on topic, VB.net might be more commonly used in ASP.net because the original ASP usually used VBScript.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[RupW]

Also, the .NET SDK comes with a C# compiler (no need to purchase Visual Studio .NET if you don't want to). I'd say C# is the original language of .NET, but there are SO many VB coders out there that VB.NET will be the primary language used at a lot of shops.

Actually it's the runtime that has the compilers, and it has both the VB.NET compiler and the J# compiler too (vbc and vjc respectively - J#'s probably v1.1+ only).

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[ClippyHater]

You sure about that? I've only managed to find a blurb about the C# compiler being included.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[RupW]

You sure about that? I've only managed to find a blurb about the C# compiler being included.

Reasonably sure, although it's hard to find a vanilla install around here to check against. This is from one of our servers that definitely doesn't have Visual Studio installed:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322&gt;di r ??c.exe
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is ACBE-6B14

Directory of C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322

24 /02/2003 17:42 49,152 csc.exe
24/02/2003 17:42 40,960 jsc.exe
24/02/2003 17:43 737,280 vbc.exe
3 File(s) 827,392 bytes
0 Dir(s) 752,177,152 bytes free

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.43 22>csc /foo
Microsoft (R) Visual C# .NET Compiler version 7.10.3052.4
for Microsoft (R) .NET Framework version 1.1.4322
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2001-2002. All rights reserved.

fatal error CS2007: Unrecognized command-line option: '/foo'

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1. 4322>vbc /foo
Microsoft (R) Visual Basic .NET Compiler version 7.10.3052.4
for Microsoft (R) .NET Framework version 1.1.4322.573
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1987-2002. All rights reserved.

vbc : Command line warning BC2007 : unrecognized option 'foo'; ignored
vbc : Command line error BC2008 : no input sources specified

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1 .1.4322>vjc /foo
'vjc' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4 322>jsc /foo
Microsoft (R) JScript .NET Compiler version 7.10.3052
for Microsoft (R) .NET Framework version 1.1.4322
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2002. All rights reserved.

fatal error JS2030: Unknown option '/foo'

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1. 4322>

I guess it must be jsc for J# not vjc - my dev machine's got both but I've had VS.NET 2003 betas on it.

Re:Microsoft's default .NET programming language

[Digital11]

I hear you. I think that'll change with VS.NET 2005, but for right now VB.NET is much easier to throw code in. The Intellisense/Autocomplete/Autoformat in VB.NET is much more effective and after developing in both I really don't see what the big deal is with C#. I'm just as fluent in both languages and much prefer VB.NET (and I too have a C++ background).

While PHP is nice...

[Mr.Fork]

I'll stick to my vanilla ASP coffee thanks. It's the old betamax/vhs story. Yes, PHP is better. Yes, it's free and easy to code. But most businesses tend to stick with micro$oft not because they want to, but because .net is designed to work with mssql and ie a lot better. . I want my betamax back... :)

Re:While PHP is nice...

[httpdotcom]

> But most businesses tend to stick with micro$oft not because they want to, but because .net is designed to work with mssql and ie a lot better.

This is so flawed as to be laughable.
What does the browser have to do with the coding? And more to the point, why should it? Cross-browser compatibility is easy and lack-there-of is one of the reasons crappy code continues to flood the internet in our little PHB-MS world.

And as to working with MS-SQL, FreeTDS (sybase library extensions) and PHP can do anything that ASP can do with MS-SQL. And that solution is cross-platform as well.

Re:While PHP is nice...

[nabil_IQ]

why not just get a DVD (Java/J2EE) ?

Re:While PHP is nice...

[Bedouin X]

It's flawed because it's total BS. .NET does work well with MS SQL and have special object properties for IE but any competent developer can build totally cross platform solutions with it. In my experience, you have to TRY to be IE specific in .NET. Now I learned ASP.NET without using Visual Studio (and still only use VS to build my assemblies) so maybe it pushes you in that direction but if so, I haven't seen it.

Also, does PHP support data molding? As it's an ADO feature I doubt that the FreeTDS library would deal with it. I don't use it because it's such a proprietary feature but I just mention it to say you should be careful with the "anything that ASP can do with MS-SQL" line.

Databases, Platforms, my opinions on using ASP.Net

[Ollierose]

I liked the way the article talked about ODBC being a downside, then showed sample code which used ADO.Net with the native OracleClient instead.

Apart from that, the main differences between ASP.Net and PHP5 appear to be platform related, rather than anything to do with the respective languages (or processors, if you prefer).

Don't forget some of us actually like a little bondage from the toolkit, so we can maintain the code afterwards. Its nice to have all the page manipulation code in page_load() where you can happily mangle everything using syntax similar to the XML DOM, rather than having chunks of code all over the place to insert the various dynamic elements.

Performance Claims

[DJ-Dodger]

Why do people think they can write these sort of articles and make performance claims in them without any sort of supporting evidence? Some quick numbers? A link to a study? Anything?

Re:Performance Claims

[Chester K]

and make performance claims in them without any sort of supporting evidence?

I thought it was particularly laughable that they just do some handwaving and declare ASP.NET slower than PHP because "there is a lot more code to run through to execute the same ASP page than ... an equivalent PHP page".

It's total bullshit.

ASP.NET JITs to native code. The extra baggage of the extent of the ASP.NET Framework has zero performance penalty after the initial compilation stage. PHP is interpreted, every request unless you buy their commercial solution, which gives PHP the "$$" they lovingly placed under "Platform Price" for ASP.NET.

They also take the easy potshots at IIS as a security weakness (IIS6, a rewrite of IIS which has been out and in production for well over a year, has zero security vulnerabilities); and they just poo-poo the fact that Mono/Apache runs ASP.NET just as well, if not better, than Windows/IIS.

Re:Performance Claims

[toby360]

The above poster is correct.

I code in Asp.NET nearly every day and have done performance tests on it VS the original ASP. It seems a lot of people may be confusing the old ASP with the new ASP.NET (aspx pages).

ASP.NET is literally a hundred times more efficient then the same application coded in ASP. I haven't had a chance to compare it to PHP yet...

ASP.net has caching at so many levels, page level caching, data caching, portions of pages can be cached. An efficiently coded application has very very minimal overhead, and these efficiencies "when coded by a capable programmer" can be done VERY quickly using visual studio. Everything is just a few quick lines of code to do. In the end, somewhat static pages use as much "horsepower" as a any webserver would for dishing out for a simple HTML page. After the intial compile the page is lightning fast.

This artical seems to have no real 'solid' evidence other than saying "PHP 5 New, Good and Fast, ASP Bad, the Devil and Slow!". ;)

Re:Performance Claims

[myspys]

commercial as in free?

http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/

yeah, it's not available for php5, yet

Re:Performance Claims

[nahdude812]

Or you use the freely available Turck MM Cache which has similar or better performance compared to the commercial Zend engine, and provides memory resident caching besides just storing post-compile scripts.

PHP vs. ASP

[iamdrscience]

For me, the choice is clear. You can compare the relatively minor pros and cons of PHP and ASP for days, but really they're both very similarly capable and you'd do about as well with one as with the other. The big difference I see is that PHP is cross platform and ASP is not. To me, that makes PHP the "winner", hands down. It makes it so that you can change platforms with your application later on and if you're writing code for other people to run then it means more people will have the opportunity to use it (whether this is an open source project or a commercial project you're doing).

ASP runs on Windows and really only runs well with IIS. PHP runs on pretty much any platform you would ever want to run it on (and plenty of platforms you wouldn't) and works just as well with any webserver I've ever considered using.

So while there may be small areas where ASP excels or where PHP is deficient, I think that those points are largely insignificant when you realize the platform limitations of ASP. Oddly enough though, I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone cite this as an advantage of PHP, whereas I come across an article comparing esoteric differences every few weeks.

Re:PHP vs. ASP

[Ollierose]

Where would you put Mono or Rotor (the BSD one?) in your global pool of cross-platform solutions? Theoretically (because I've not found anyone willing to actually try it, the solutions offered are all on IIS 6) you could offer a large hosting system run on apache + mono + mySQL in the same way you would now offer apache + php + mySQL solutions.

Granted, its not the officially supported path, but MS wouldn't support anything other than IIS anyway.

Re:PHP vs. ASP

[PhrostyMcByte]

The topic here is ASP.NET, not ASP. And ASP.NET does run on *nix (very well, too) thanks to Mono. There are a lot of large areas where ASP.NET excels over PHP too.

Re:PHP vs. ASP

[David E. Smith]

The big difference I see is that PHP is cross platform and ASP is not. To me, that makes PHP the "winner", hands down.

Exactly. :-)

I just moved a few sites around amongst various servers in my office.

Sites moved from old Linux machine to new FreeBSD machine, all PHP/MySQL: Fairly seamless. I had to recompile PHP and Apache because I forgot to put in all the different modules I'm using.

Sites moved from old Linux machine to another old Linux machine on a different architecture (going from i386 to a sparc machine I got for cheap): Again, seamless. (This new machine runs Gentoo, so it already has pretty much every PHP option on the planet enabled.)

Sites moved from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003: I'll let you know when it's done. Going from IIS5 to IIS6 is a royal pain in the arse, what with the ultra-paranoid new security options you have to contend with (it's nice to know they're finally trying to make their stuff secure, but all the settings are in about a half-dozen different places). And large chunks of precompiled code no longer work for no good reason.

FUD?

[Banshee99]

Looks like this article is full of it. Slow .NET code? ASP.NET can be compiled into DLLs, and at my old job we upgraded many of our ASP and PHP projects to .NET with a large speed increase. Only works on IIS? Try out the mono project.

Also seems like everyone is complaining about ASP. ASP and ASP.NET are two completely different beasts. ASP was buggy and a pain in the rear to work with. ASP.NET, however, was amazingly simple to use with an amazing debugger (VS.NET). Please keep on the subject and leave out ASP.

Re:FUD?

[unoengborg]

You are right ASP and ASP.NET are two entirely different beasts.

But this is probably more of a problem than an advantage. Many people that once was creating (bad?) ASP scrips did not have a programmer background.They were content creators that with some difficulty struggled to get their HTML code scriptable.

These developers still exists, and are very common. They will have a very hard time switching to ASP.NET or for that matter make good use of the new object oriented features in PHP5.

But if you are not a programmer, and need or can make use of all the fancy features of ASP.NET or PHP5 you don't need to consider what platform has the technical edge. You would consider what platform is most widely used as that would give you better return on your investment in learning the language.

So far PHP runs well on both Apache and IIS, while Mono is very untested on Apache/Linux. Given that Apache runs on 2/3 of all internet servers the PHP would be a better option for this type of people.

Object Oriented Scripting?!

[Desult]

I do C# development, for ASP.NET, where I work. I do php development (hacking phpbb), for my personal website.

For large scale projects (e.g. a messageboard), I would greatly prefer to use C# over ASP.NET... I strongly dislike IIS, and I suppose that's a stumbling block, but on the other hand, C# is a strongly typed, compilable language. I'm not clear on how all the benefits of scripting (faster output from looser coding) apply to large scale projects, or projects where things like OOP and Exception handling are useful.

OOP and Exceptions rely on, you know, strong, well concieved design. If you're going to take the time to design your large project, why the hell would you throw away the benefits of strong types and compile time debugging (incredibly useful in a large and/or shared project), not to mention things like unit testing and automatic documentation (things C# has).

The code example in the article makes little sense to me. For one, they use VB... which looks ugly no matter how you slice it. C# would have been more directly comparable, and it should be available in MSDN... but regardless, the code looks almost identical. Is the point that there really is little difference, or that PHP is better? In both languages, it seems you could abstract away the Oracleness of the behavior (negative on both fronts), and you'd be at square one regardless.

Eh, I don't see any real useful comparison in this article. Yes, it sucks that ASP.NET only works with IIS. I'll be happy to run mono when the opportunity presents itself. But this article was pretty useless.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[solidox]

scripting languages (as in, compiled at runtime) do have advantages over compiled languages.
if i'm out of the office and i get a call saying something is broken, if i'm somewhere with internet access then i can ftp/ssh into the server, make a quick fix and all is well until i can fix it properly.
with compiled languages, i need access to ide/compiler/etc and that's not too practical from most places.
admitidly, debugging php code can be quite a pain, altho with zend studio it can be done quite effectively.

why would you want to throw away the benifits of loose typing?
there are things i can do in php that i just simply couldn't (with ease) in strongly typed languages.
loose typing also cuts down development time dramatically.
similarly with OOP, there are some things that OOP can't do well, things that work much better in procedural coding.
i personally develop in a mix of OOP and non-OOP code. often i find myself writing a lot more code doing it the OOP way, so i'll do it procedurally.
OOP to me seems a bit of a con.
it's not the all-singing-all-dancing-best-thing-in-the-world-ev er that some people make it out to be. i don't have anything against OOP itself, more the way that people promote it and claim it brings great "benifits" which in reality don't provide any additional benefits over doing it procedurally.
OOP seems to loose a lot of power and flexibility too when coding too.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[Rucker]

... I would greatly prefer to use C# over ASP.NET...

You realize you can do ASP.NET in C#, right?
From Microsoft's "Getting Started: Web Applications Technology Map":

ASP.NET makes full use of the .NET Framework... using any .NET-compatible language, including Visual Basic® .NET, C#, and JScript® .NET.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[Skim123]

why would you want to throw away the benifits of loose typing?

To get performance benefits and fewer bugs (leading to less testing/debugging time). Plus I rather enjoy writing cleaner code.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[solidox]

performance i agree, loose typing isn't as fast.
bugs i would disagree with however,
rarely in an application i develop are bugs a result of the language being loosely typed.
loosely typed code i often find 'cleaner' than strongly typed code, you can do things in a lot less code.
for example: on my website, i have a bunch of 'modules' (consider them to be diffrent pages), each module is a class ModuleName, and has a render method to draw the page. now i can do things like this:

$module = strtolower($_GET['module']);
if(!ereg("[a-zA-Z0-9 ]", $module))
die("noshoes");
include("modules/mod{$ module}.php");
$mod = new $module;
if(method_exists($mod, 'Render'))
$mod->Render();

now if doing this in a strongly typed way, i wouldn't beable to instantiate an object based on a variable class name. which would lead to similar code.
if(module == 'home')
mod = new Home;
elseif(module == 'about')
mod = new About;
elseif(module == 'download')
mod = new Download;
etc. (dosn't look too big, but if i had 10 pages it starts to add up)
if i want to add a new page to the site, i can simply drop in a file into the modules directory, with the strongly typed way, i would have to add a new elseif statement too.
i belive loose typing (especially in php context) adds a LOT of flexibility in programming

obviously i wouldn't like to see every language use loose typing, but it's well suited to php.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[smagruder]

The question I ask if whether users would notice a performance decline with the use of loose typing over strong typing. I would say a definite No to that. Programmers need to concentrate on the much more significant bottlenecks in software development, and those bottlenecks usually center around data access.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[Skim123]

It all depends on the scope and scale of sites you are building, I guess. I recall hearing a stat from Microsoft that when comparing ASP and ASP.NET's performance on a real, frequently visited Microsoft Web site, if they used late binding with ASP.NET it's perf was just slightly better than classic ASP, but if they used early binding the site could handle something like 90% more requests per second.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[Skim123]

I agree that you can write your own loosely typed code faster, but try doing this is a software team. Or how about you are the new guy, the last guy quit, and now you have to make sense of his loosely-typed code. Or, hell, even if you are looking at your own code that you haven't looked at in two years, it's the same thing.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[smagruder]

I'm just saying that fixating on statistical server performance can distract the developer from concentrating on user perception of performance and the contributing factors to that. Those factors should be addressed first. Also, I used to be a big fan of strong typing, but that was before I realized that I was spending an unreasonable (IMHO, YMMV) amount of development time on typing variables and debugging type-related errors.

Re:Object Oriented Scripting?!

[Skim123]

I am wagering that you work on your Web applications as a one man show, and that you are not working with a team of, say, six others. Correct?

Visual Studio .Net

[SpiffyMarc]

I'm sorry, but ASP brings Visual Studio .Net with it to the party, and, well, it always manages to get in my pants.

Until any of these other solutions can offer me an IDE as advanced as Visual Studio .Net, instead of being one version behind attempting to copy it and feeling "not quite right" in their attempts, I'll stick with my .Net-based solutions.

ASP.NET inaccuracies

[Burb]

A few comments from an ASP.NET user:

The article implies that CLR code is interpreted. All .NET runs compiled code, either JIT or AOT compiled. And there's an unsubstantiated remark about efficiency and "Long code paths". That looks like FUD to me, and without something substantial it seems suspicious.

Re:PHP 5.0 Goes For Microsoft's ASP-dot-Net

[superpulpsicle]

Seriously this is probably priority 100 on his list. ASP already has had such a long foothold on server side scripting that it'd take a lot to convince existing pages to change over to PHP.

Evidence?

[metasyntactic]

I found the article quite interesting, but lacking in supporting evidence for many claims. Specifically, he states that on both speed and efficiency (not quite sure the difference, but I'm guessing that he's referring to memory usage for the latter) ASP.NET is weak. I'd be interested to see comparisons showing the difference between equivalent sites written with PHP5 and ASP.NET to see the difference.

Also, he mentions (a few times) about IIS insecurities (at posts a link to bugtraq), however I'm unable to check since the site seems to be crawling. How does PHP5+Apache's security record compare to ASP.NET+IIS6?

-- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)

Re:Evidence?

[Bedouin X]

IIS has a much thicker dossier of vulnerabilities. PHP seems to have really gotten their act together over the past few years.

However, it all comes down to the administrator. If you use best practices, and stay on top of your patches, IIS is much less of a headache than its reputation would lead you to believe.

Re:Evidence?

[nahdude812]

Likewise, if you install Apache in its default state and fail to stay on top of your patches, Apache is much less of a headache than IIS's reputation.

What I mean to say is that Apache in the worst case (aside from bad configurations, which are not ever the case by default) is more stable and secure than the most perfectly well groomed IIS install.

Frequently claims about Microsoft insecurity are attributed to its being the broadest target, and thus the most attractive and effective against which to write an exploit. That does not hold true for Apache vs IIS; Apache accounts for 2/3 of the server share (67.22%), while IIS holds a little over 1/5 (21.35%) (source).

Despite being the far minority in this category as far as deployed installations, it's still consistently the largest source of security problems.

PHP drawback?

[The_Real_Nire]

Another weakness is that PHP's function names are case insensitive. Some programmers might find this feature annoying, though this isn't a serious drawback.

How is this a drawback at all?
In my opinion, it prevents programmers from perhaps accidentally naming their own functions the same as a built-in, which is a good thing since there are so many, its useful to know as many as possible. However "annoying" this maybe to some people, its actually a good idea.

Re:PHP drawback?

[eddy the lip]

I agree it's not a major drawback, but it can be annoying if you have different programmers with different preferences. If one is naming things "getfoo()" and another is "getFoo()", they lack visual similarity, which is important if you're scanning large blocks of code. Also, if you're looking for the occurence of a particular function, you have to remember to do a case-insensitive search which may not be the editor's default. Even if you've got some kind of sane capitalization system that everyone follows, it's easy to accidently type "getfoo()". If capitalization matters, you'll catch these things and keep your code just a little bit cleaner.

More annoying, I find, are inconsistencies in the way built in functions are named, eg "file_get_contents()" versus "readfile()". It's a small thing, but remembering if they decided to break this function with an underscore on words or not is an irritant. It's one of those little things that makes the language feel sort of thrown together, as opposed to perl or python that have a nice, consistent feel.

That said, I use PHP almost exclusively these days, so this isn't a flame against the language. Just something I wish was different.

Re:PHP drawback?

[dougqh]

Regardless of your opinion of case sensitivity, PHP is bad because its inconsistent.

Function names and class names are case insensitive, but variable names are case sensitive.

Go away Microserf FUDster

[FreeUser]

Inflexibility is yet another trait that linux users need to come to grips with. As it says here:

[MS FUD snipped]

Quoting Microsoft-sponsored (or not) FUD websites as authoritative on Linux development is hardly insightful, or indicative of any intellectual honesty at any level. Quite the reverse.

Indeed, "what a load of absolute nonsense" you have cited there. Linux programmers are at least as capable of "thinking outside of the box" as Microsoft developers-developers-developers-developers. Even considering Linux (or FreeBSD, or even Mac OS X) requires some degree of thinking outside of the Wintel box from day one. Enlightenment, Blender, Gentoo's packaging system (designing a distro that builds itself from source code, from scratch, to custom specs, on demand is about as far outside of the traditional "binary" box as it gets), etc. are all examples of folks thinking much further outside of the box than any of their Microsoft developer-developer-developer-developer counterparts generally do.

Re:Go away Microserf FUDster

[YU Nicks NE Way]

You didn't bother to click the link, did you? LinuxMyths is a porn site, not a MS-sponsored site. The parent was no Microsoft FUDster; he was a troll.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:Go away Microserf FUDster

[FreeUser]

You didn't bother to click the link, did you? LinuxMyths is a porn site, not a MS-sponsored site.

You're right. I thought I recognized the quote from Microsofts "get the (non)facts on linux" site and wrote my rebuttal without actually clicking through to the site. My bad, such as it is. :-)

Re:Story Time

[azaris]

I worked as the web admin to my student association when I was in college, and a job opening came up to redesign the programmers site, bringing online a bunch of new tools for students of that department. This was basically a summer job, and they had interviews where myself and four other students made it through the selection process to the final interview.

[...]

Did they ever get screwed. The guy who they hired was a Korean exchange student, who I happen to think was a great choice for the job, but the problems started cropping up with the ASP code. It was buggy as hell. The system took all summer to code out the object oriented code, and it was never opened because it was never quite good enough.

[...]

In my opinion, this was not the fault of the guy they hired at all, it's just that ASP takes a lot more time to get together than PHP. You can "know what you're doing" all you want, but when your boss wants you to make changes to core behaviours, there is nothing faster or more efficient than PHP for handling anything web related. It's just easier to whip together any site with any behaviour and get it working and stable.

Why isn't there a "-1, Jumping to conclusions" moderation option on Slashdot? Let's reiterate. This was a student body, hiring a student for the summer to hack some website, alone I might add. And the fact that it all went miserably wrong is supposed to imply that the Microsoft ASP platform is fundamentally flawed and everything would have magically worked with PHP?

PHP is "ServerSide"

[bogaboga]

PHP is "Server-Side". Can it be forked into some sort of "Client-Side" PHP? Something similar to MS-Visual Basic? Later on drag 'n' drop for widgets and addition of business logic, can be implemented to create web based front-ends to popular database back-ends. Just a question.

Re:PHP is "ServerSide"

[httpdotcom]

VB was not part of the argument. This was an ASP vs PHP troll.

However, there currently exists a PHP compiler (from Zend with a hefty price tag) that can create stand-alone, compiled PHP applications/executables.

Re:PHP is "ServerSide"

[CableModemSniper]

Well if by "client-side" you mean stand alone (where stand-alone means still requires the php interpreter) applications that don't run on a webserver, the answer is yes. You can even make GUIs using PHP-GTK.

As for "web based front-ends to popular database backends" take a look at phpMyAdmin

Re:PHP is "ServerSide"

[CableModemSniper]

Oh I see what you are saying. In that case, I would point you to something like the GTK bindings for PHP. Ther are some example DB apps here. For a GUI builder you can use Glade, the PHP-GTK site has some tools to allow PHP to use Glade files.

lies lies and more untruths

[pc-0x90]

I do a substantial amount of ASP.Net coding and they seemed to just give a weak gloss over the actual technology they were comparing here. First, IIS & Win32 are *not* the only places where you can run ASP.Net. The mono project is getting better and better fairly quickly. This is mentioned briefly in their "security" section.. which is also a load of crap. Price: PHP has a habit of becoming very perl-esque over time because of the language. Maybe 5 changes this, but I doubt it's enforced. So an IDE that's going to clean your code vs. cost in man-hours spent debugging some "super efficient php code" (read: "looks like perl") bleh.. I'll take the IDE The database code samples *Don't do the same thing* .. but they DO show the people who wrote the article don't know ASP.Net, because they're using the old and insecure form of database connections as opposed to parameterized queries. Nice to know that both sides of the fence are as equally capable of FUD.

Re:lies lies and more untruths

[pc-0x90]

either that, or part of my job consists of maintaining other people's code that never bothered to take that class.

It's not a matter of if us "fucktard assholes" know perl and/or use perl.. It's a matter of not wanting to spend 90% of our time chasing retarded bugs because people can't be bothered to write clean code.

It's a matter of better use of time. Not skill. Try working in a dev shop bigger than your mom's basement sometime.

We use Apache exclusively .....

[ajs318]

..... so we have no ASPs, but plenty of Pythons!

Meinel

[Scoria]

This Web site is actually managed by the infamous Carolyn Meinel, whose tendency to sensationalize is well documented. YMMV.

It looks good

[Orion Blastar]

I was hoping for an OSS alternative to Visual Studio so I don't have to shell out the money.

Re:It looks good

[gwicks]

OSS != Free (beer)
OSS == Free (libre)

Re:It looks good

[mobiGeek]

I was hoping for an OSS alternative to Visual Studio so I don't have to shell out the money.

Then get busy; the OSS-train awaits your boarding! ;-)

Are you saying that you are willing to dish out $$ for an MS product, but not for some other company's product?

Re:It looks good

[MadChicken]

Ding! Wish granted.

I switched to SharpDevelop a month or so back... once you get the hang of it, it can do much of the VS.NET editing and compilations stuff. Oh and you'll need the SDK installed so you can get at the debugger DBGCLR.exe. Check out this great article on how to do it.

One thing I really miss is a viable pointy-clicky WDSL tool.

Re:It looks good

[pclminion]

Are you saying that you are willing to dish out $$ for an MS product, but not for some other company's product?

You forget, this is Slashdot. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday we're capitalists. On Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday we're communists. And on Mondays we waffle.

Re:It looks good

[Ollierose]

Where did the OSI/FSF distinction appear in your parents post?

The great-grandparent wanted an OSS solution because he believes he can get it at zero-cost, where the grandparent corrects him about OSS and price (ie, that they are unrelated).

Re:It looks good

[MORB]

There's a PHP development plugin for eclipse that looks pretty good: http://phpeclipse.de/

Re:It looks good

[EnderWiggnz]

mmmmm.... waffles.

Re:It looks good

[1110110001]

After trying the Zend Studio you get the personal edition: http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-studio-per sonal.php
It's free and if you can live without having some features it's quite nice.

However I like Editplus2 under Windows and like SubEthaEdit now with Mac OS X.

b4n

Exactly

[Burb]

No one should be using ODBC to access Oracle with .NET. There's a "managed code" provider now, and there's an OleDb wrapper too. And, if memory serves, a choice between Microsoft's provider and Oracle's. I've not had an issues with the MS one, but your mileage may vary.

PHP 5.0

[Orion Blastar]

it would be great if they integrated with the Mono project and allowed the use of ASP.NET type tags to actually run almost the same code as ASP.NET?

Imagine PHP based C#, VB.NET, etc.

Re:PHP 5.0

[Sunspire]

Mono could become the melting pot of all things cool. Imagine doing and , inlined in the same web page just for the hell of it, running on mod_mono. The whole lot would then be compiled down to CLR in one pass.

Throw in GD from PHP or Python, ADO.NET from Mono, C# for a rigid backend and you'll end up with a real bouillabaisse of either the best bits of all languages... or something horrible, very much like my cooking. At the very least it would be interesting. This way you could choose the language and libraries best suited for the particular problem domain for each programming task, a language would just be another tool in your programmer's toolbox.

Forget Mono/C# vs PHP vs Python. I want it all! Once you've programmed long enough you realize that languages come and go and really the only significant thing that separate them is their applicability to specific problem domains. Yes you can probably force a language into any niche, but usually it's like forcing a square peg into a round hole. I wouldn't want to code a 50kloc backend in PHP, and I wouldn't want to code my presentation layer in C#. With Mono I wouldn't have to make an either/or choice or implement some horrible xmlrpc kludge.

Re:PHP 5.0

[TheSync]

I wish someone would port Zope from Python to C# Mono/.Net. That would rock my world.

Quiet?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Yea, that was really quiet.

Re:Story Time

[levell]

The link in the parent opens up an infinite number of obscene pictures requiring you to kill the browser.

Re:It's Visual Studio .. PHP Editor Galores!

[Phiu-x]

Need to find a good PHP Editor ?


All of them (commercial,free,OSS) reviewed and classified: http://www.php-editors.com/

My personnal (and free) favorite : PHP EDIT: http://www.waterproof.fr/

Need a PHP Debugger? DBG can do remote debugging and it can be integrated with the PHP Edit IDE, which is very nice : http://dd.cron.ru/dbg/

Now, who need Visual Studio? Almost every (php) editors now has code insight, integrated help, code completion, skins and whatnot. Hell, I sometimes go back to Notepad for quick fixes because its faster to fire up. But if you said PHP need an IDE, I think that you have not looked around very much.

Now people start your eng-uh editors and go code some PHP!

Incomplete review.

[miguel]

The review states that ASP.NET only works on
Windows, which is incorrect. Mono brings ASP.NET
to Linux, MacOS, BSD, HP-UX, Solaris and many more.

Mono's ASP.NET can be hosted in Apache (through the
mod_mono module) or as a standalone server (xsp).

The platform price is also wrong (by extension),
Mono's ASP.NET runs on pretty much anything.

The source code to Mono's ASP.NET is also available.

And I have to say, am puzzled by the "Speed"
column. If ASP.NET has something going for it
in terms of dynamic pages is speed: they have
all kinds of tricks:

* page generation code is running at native speed.

* caching is provided at the control level,
page level, database connection level.

And of course, there is no evidence to back any
of the performance claims.

I love PHP as much as the next guy, but that review
was done by someone that did not understand ASP.NET.

The code they posted to compare PHP vs ASP.NET
talking to Oracle is uneven, as the rest of the
article: in one case it shows data being rendered
from the database, and even has a connection string.

The other example only shows a class that wraps
reading and writing, but does no actual job.

A bit deceiving.

Re:Incomplete review.

[AlXtreme]

The review states that ASP.NET only works on Windows, which is incorrect. Mono brings ASP.NET to Linux, MacOS, BSD, HP-UX, Solaris and many more.

I know this is /. but RTFA:

However, if you want to host ASP.NET with Apache, a couple of options are available that may or may not be supported by Microsoft. As a last alternative, there is Ximian's Project Mono, which is working to build an open-source module. Check www.go-mono.com for more information.

Last alternative. Guess Oracle isn't betting on Mono. Sorry Miguel.

I love PHP as much as the next guy, but that review was done by someone that did not understand ASP.NET. [..] A bit deceiving.

Also notice that it's filed under the section 'Open Source' and that it's writer is a consultant working at Oracle to integrate OSS. What did you expect, a fair review? PHP has been around for years doing fine and gaining mindshare, Mono is still growing up (in spite of the 1.0 release, kudos!) and ASP.net still smells of your favorite monopoly. What would I bet on, hmmm...

Credibility simply doesn't happen overnight. I do hope Mono will get the mindshare-snowball rolling, but prying ASP.NET away from Microsoft just isn't as easy as implementing an alternative. Good luck.

Re:Incomplete review.

[Qwavel]

First, for people who don't know who you are, you should tell them that you are not an unbiased observer. Actually, the fact that you have a financial interest in the success of Mono makes you about as biased an observer as possible.

For me, though, the real question is the status of mono's ASP.NET. Is it part of the MS proprietary stack? If I adopt ASP.NET today might the free and cross-platform option dissapear in the future?

The mono website used to be clear about which API's were really free and which weren't, but now that information doesn't seem to be there anymore. What happened? Is ASP.NET MS proprietary?

Pros and Cons - Speed and Efficiency

[Afty0r]

The author is miles off when he talks about the speed and efficiency of asp.net - he simply says "because there is more code and it's OO, it will take longer to run, and that slows web pages down".

Well I would agree that on first execution of a page (the first time a page is loaded after a reboot or restart, or the document is changed) asp.net is slower than ASP or PHP - however on every SINGLE subsequent page execution asp.net is considerably faster in my experience. Programming intranets and deploying/testing them has proved it to me - when the latency across the network is tiny the difference is notable on all non-trivial pages to the HUMAN eye, and the test suite backs this up.

Of course, code execution speed depends to a large extent on the coder and his techniques, but a good coder will be able to achieve much more rapidly responding web applications with ASP.NET than he would with Classic ASP or PHP 3 or 4. I can't talk about PHP5 because I moved exclusively to ASP.NET some time ago due it's superb libraries, saleability (clients like to hear MS and buzzwords) and the fact it's truly OO - just a personal preference.

Cross platform development / deployment

[amichalo]

What I love about PHP is that it is cross platform:
- The Designers can use it on their Macs
- The Developers can use it on their XP boxes
- The Servers can use it on their Linux boxes
(* yeah, I know any of these functions could be performed by any of the platforms but you get the jist.)

Where I work, PHP is used because we don't deploy Windows boxes as production servers anymore (actually just deployed the first Apple Xserve and it is a dream!) So ASP is O-U-T out of the running.

Re:Cross platform development / deployment

[Ari_Haviv]

ASP is cross platform too. heard of mono?

Re:Cross platform development / deployment

[kiddailey]

And before that ChiliSoft ASP - now owned by Sun Systems and refered to Sun Java System Active Server Pages (though it's only classic ASP compatible).

Re:Story Time

[Malc]

To counter this, we have one ASP programmer in our company. He's been knocking out fairly complex database-driven web sites in ASP for us for several years. He's fast, his work is reliable and there are no complaints. What's your point?

It sounds to me like they made a poor hiring choice, not a poor choice of technology. If you'd given them a PHP+MySQL solution, it might have worked well by itself, but how would it have fit in to the overall picture? How much extra would it have cost them in maintenance and training for their IT department supporting a new or different/additional platform?

Re:Story Time

[PhrostyMcByte]

Are you talking about ASP, or ASP.NET? The two are very different. ASP is a raped VBized PHP that needs to die, but ASP.NET blows PHP out of the water.

With ASP.NET you can use C# which isn't hackish like PHP (4, at least, I do realize there were some changes in 5). You have code-behind which organizes everything nicely and is great for keeping designers from stepping on developers toes. All the basics are encapsulated in controls where handling a click is as easy as assigning a method to the Click event. There is built-in authentication. You also get the backing of the entire .NET framework. Plus, ASP.NET is *fast*. Without caching, it is moderately faster than PHP. With proper use of caching, it smokes PHP.

PHP w/ MS SQL (vs. ASP)

[sid crimson]

Could someone offer some info on realworld experience using PHP to pull data from Microsoft SQL Server?

Thank you,
-sid

Re:PHP w/ MS SQL (vs. ASP)

[Oxy the moron]

I currently use PHP 4.3.3 on a Windows box running IIS. It connects to several SQL Server 2000 boxes. I haven't had too much trouble with it unless the queries get too complex. At one point I had to do a join across physical servers and the script died. (workaround? used COM+ in PHP... it's a nightmare... argh)

My advice is to use it if that's what you have to use. The speed is decent (my speed is hampered by the fact that is running Windows Server 2000 on PII/350 with 256MB) and the relaibility is there. I would say, though, that it probably isn't suited for heavy load mission-critical stuff.

Re:PHP w/ MS SQL (vs. ASP)

[ScytheBlade1]

Sure. Take it from someone who has an entire forum running on IIS + PHP + MSSQL on a networked server. (26k posts, 1.4k threads)

Here's a basis as to how I compare MySQL, MSSQL, and Oracle:
MySQL: General feature lax, but incredibly fast. Free.
MSSQL: Feature rich, but MySQL beats it in the basics (SELECT). Mildly expensive.
Oracle: Feature rich, blazing fast. Also, it costs...a lot. Yes, I like my understatments.

Likewise, due to expense and because most web developers like (relatively) cheap stuff, Oracle isn't really deployed for web applications. Likewise, there aren't that many Oracle "how to" sites out there (compared to MSSQL/MySQL).

So for web apps where speed is a MUST? Oracle or MySQL.
For real applications where some processing time is allowed, and it needs all the advanced features possible? Oracle or MSSQL. (Would be interesting to see how fast MySQL came without all of the 'features', however.)
For an enviroment where the budget is somewhat lacking: MySQL or MSSQL.

The hardware that the servers are on are not Xeons or anything special. Rather, it's regular desktop hardware, basically.

Consequently we're trying to switch over to linux+apache+php asap. We have an old code base running, and likewise we're writing a new one. We have 2 main people writing it. One is the general coder, the other is the database back-end coder.

And I'll tell you this: the database coder has 2 choices for databases. MySQL, and MSSQL.

He chose, MSSQL, against my advice.

However, he did for a reason: for ANY page, the MOST queries used PERIOD will be ~4. That's right. Picture a complete forum thread. Not like slashdot, but rather phpbb. In 3 queries, it does:
-Auths user, selects style, general page layout, if you've got messages, the works. (1 query)
-Generals the side menu (categories with links as a sub level), and the links in it can be visible/invisible due to group membership/per-user basis/logged in or out/anything. So it's also checking many, many 'if' statments per link. (1 query).
-In the example of a forum thread, we have the username, userid, posts, forum rank (dependant on number of posts), thread title, post title, the post itself, and the works. To grab ALL user data, ALL posts per user, ALL posts in the thread, EVERYTHING. (1 query)

So, 3 queries for a thead. This thread could have 60000 posts in it and 2626 different posters, it'd still be 3 queries to generate the page. All of the 'logic' for the menu is in the SQL query. It's ALL being done via MSSQL.

This is, in my opinion, the ONLY way that MSSQL can beat out MySQL in terms of speed. Through insanely complex and long (half-page to full page, 12pt font, 1600x1200 resolution) queries.

I have yet to see how well it scales vs MySQL, but as a rule of thumb: if you do know enough about MSSQL to use those features, by all means do. If you don't want to spend your entire time debugging a query, use MySQL.

I try to like PHP but...

[joeykiller]

It may be right that PHP5 is targetting ASP.Net, but I can't say I think PHP5 and ASP.Net will appeal to the same audiences.

PHP shines because it's not so much a language, as it is a front end for different C libraries. This is PHP's strength, but it's also it's main weakness. It lacks a coherent object model, or even a coherent naming system for the different libraries it integrates. As such it is a mess, and difficult to learn -- though it's more feature packed than you can dream of in ASP.Net.

Both .Net and Java are better in this way, things look and feel like ASP.Net/Java from library to library. Even Perl are better in this respect. (PHP is becoming a little bit better, with the new DB classes in Pear, but the core is still very function oriented).

So even though I'm "born and raised" (as a web developer) in the Unix/Linux/OSS world, I can't bring myself to quite like PHP. It's a mess (but a lot of people doesn't seem to mind, so I guess the problem lies with me, not PHP).

I don't trust Zend.

[JessLeah]

I really can't believe I'm the only person out there who doesn't trust Zend. The Linux kernel is backed by kernel dot org, Perl is Larry Wall (an individual hacker) and his Merrye Bande of Hackers, and no one company "owns" C (contrary to what some might think re: Microsoft Visual C++ ;) ), but PHP is "owned" (read: controlled) by a commercial entity, Zend.

What's to say PHP6 won't be released with a MS-style EULA? Do we really trust the company called Zend? Frankly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft would start working with Zend-- much like how they have worked with those guys who made "ActivePerl"... MS likes to dip their fingers in every pie, so long as it's commercial-- and Zend is commercial.

Again, why should we trust these guys? They're just another company out to make money, and in this day and age, this likely means that they'd get in bed with Microsoft in a heartbeat if BillG or MonkeyBoy came a-knocking. So perhaps my question should be: Will Zend sell out? (Remember: Even Sun sold out.)

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[Quill_28]

> They're just another company out to make money

Well heaven forbid if a company is actually trying to make money.

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[caluml]

I've never looked at the Zend/PHP licence, but I assume that people would just fork PHP from the moment before the sellout occured.

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[JessLeah]

Well, if it means that a decent open-source/free software technology will become closed and proprietary, then yes, may heaven forbid it.

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[IpSo_]

Not that any other open source project has changed their license in the past. XFree86 dot org

If Zend decides to do something stupid with PHP, it will simply be forked.

Zend has been around for quite a while. At least since PHP4 was released years ago, if I recall correctly. My guess is they are doing relatively well, and having a company that actually makes some money backing an open source project is a _good thing_ (tm).

It means for the most part that the project will be pushed ahead with customers in mind, and won't die off from lack of time by the developers, or head in a completely wrong direction due to the developers growing out of touch with reality.

There is no reason to treat every company as if they are the next Microsoft. Not every single company is evil by nature. We should be encouraging companies that actually find a way to make money off open source projects.

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[imroy]

Perhaps just as important as the licensing issue is that of performance. Zend makes (or made, not sure now with PHP5) a PHP compiler and optimizer. Just buy the Zend product and make your PHP site faster and more efficient! But what about the free version? Would they cripple the performance of the free version just to sell more copies of the compiler/optimizer? Perhaps not. But I wouldn't be surprised to find them simply neglecting peformance problems in the free version.

I'll stick with Perl, thankyouverymuch. Python's looking interesting as well...

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[kris]

PHP5 is available under the PHP license, version 3.0: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/php.php. This is a variant of the Apache license 1.1: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apachepl.php. The Zend engine license 2.0 also is a variant of this license.

I can't see why this is a problem for you - is the Apache license also problematic for you?

The Apache license and the PHP/Zend licenses are incompatible with the GPL, but they do qualify as free licenses under the DFSG guidelines.

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[XO]

It's a similar relationship to what IBM has with the kernel. Do you trust IBM with their kernel code?

I do.

Zend is the largest contributor to PHP. They are paying people to develop open source products, alongside with their own commercial products that take advantage of the open source products. Sounds like they have a utopia going there, as far as I can tell. Making commercial utilities for use with open source products. It's brilliant!

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[/dev/trash]

Uh. If Linux wanted to take Linux 3.0 to a MS EULA, what would stop him?

Re:I don't trust Zend.

[-noefordeg-]

Why is this modded +5 interesting, when it's not based on real world facts, but a construced situation where you don't have access to the source and if something like this was to happen, you couldn't fork off the project.

Who cares if Zend sells out? Well, the parent does but who else?

What is the best way to learn PHP5?

[testerus]

What book or tutorial is recommend to learn PHP5 (skipping PHP4, for programmers with knowledge of Java)?

Re:What is the best way to learn PHP5?

[stgermh]

Check out Advanced PHP Programming. Also O'Reilly's OnLAMP.com has a fairly good collection of tutorials.

Re:Story Time

[x0n]

The guy who they hired was a Korean exchange student, who I happen to think was a great choice for the job, but the problems started cropping up with the ASP code. It was buggy as hell.

LOL! How much more rope do you want to throw us to hang you with buddy? Did you even read your own post? Uhhh, he was a great programmer but the problems were in the "ASP code". And who wrote that ASP code? pffff. Sounds like you're annoyed because you didn't get the job.

And more to the point, which morons modded this +5? Perhaps Slashcode should be changed to hide slashdot IDs as a low ID obviously dazzles people into not reading the post and just robotically modding it up. Parent post is complete hogwash.

Re:Story Time

[scottyboy]

You're offtopic. The article is talking about ASP.NET and you are talking about ASP. They are two very different technologies.

Re:Story Time

[swb]

Oh come on, that's a cheap criticism and you know it.

The guy was presumably a full-time student, in a foreign country, away from his family and support system -- might these demands or limitations limit his ability to do the job well? I can only imagine how well I'd perform doing a moderately complex job while being a full-time student a half a world away.

My guess is that the parent poster recognizing that these are both meaningful and valid considerations, but the Diversity Police would rather that you not consider them because it works against their goals, hence he self-censored himself.

Re:Story Time

[ron_ivi]

"it's just that ASP takes a lot more time to get together than PHP"

Well, as BillG said, Open Source kills jobs. Exactly as this story indicates.

Re:Story Time

[nmg196]

How on earth has the parent got to +4 when it's totally off-topic and irrelevant to this article?

This ignorant poster obviously hasn't realised that this article is about ASP.NET and NOT ASP (which is in NO WAY comparable to ASP.NET apart from the letters in it's name!).

surprised no one mentioned the documentation

[MattW]

For me, one of the best things about working in PHP is the online documentation. We've got:

(1) Thorough, beautifully organized, accurate documentation with minimal but effective examples.

(2) Fast searching. php.net/[searchterm] - it doesn't get much easier to look up a function, short of having the docs built into the IDE (Zend)

(3) User comments. I've contributed a few comments myself when I've run into sticky issues and then realized what was going on. And more than a few times, I've found little code snippets attached to the relevent functions that are good ways to use them. PHP and ASP, in my mind, are both tools for RAPID development and deployment. PHP is good at rapid; very good. The docs are a major reason. They make familiarizing with something like a new extension library very easy.

Re:surprised no one mentioned the documentation

[Digital11]

The only thing the PHP docs have over MSDN collection is user comments, other than that the MSDN docs are thuroughly the best collection of developer docs out there.

The new SimpleXML module is worth it alone

[ShatteredDream]

I have been playing around with this module a bit and have found it to be damn good at what it does. It really makes it easy for people to take advantage of XML for simpler operations which takes away an advantage of ASP.NET.

For many operations, SAX and DOM are simply too convoluted or complex. As long as you have an idea of what the document structure will be like in advance, you can quickly handle documents.

Here is an example from my site of what it looks like

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("test.xml"); //where test.xml contains the XML from up above
print $xml->statement[0];
print "<br/>";
print $xml->statement[1];
?>

Re:The new SimpleXML module is worth it alone

[js3]

if dom is too convoluted, you should get a job flipping burgers and forget being a programmer.

Re:PHP 5.0 Goes For Microsoft's ASP-dot-Net

[strictnein]

Completely off-topic but:

Troll rhymes with Truth: "THE DRAFT IS COMING BACK, National Service Act of 2003 - 2004, S.89, H.R.163"

That bill is dead in the water and has been for over 1.5 years.
2/3/2003:
Referred to the Subcommittee on Total Force.

Total hearsay FUD

[abelikoff]

I've been doing ASP.NET development for relatively little time, compared to about 3 years of PHP programming (nothing of production quality though) but I have to say - this article is total BS.

It is actually quite sad to see such superficial attempts to justify an open-source product merely on the "merits" of not being produced by Microsoft. I mean, using criteria like "strong", "weak", "$$" is not what I would consider professional. I good way to compare products actually would be to get the experts to implement a relatively real-life project (like the famous Pet Store) in both languages and then compare the development time, speed, code metrics, scalability, and potential for extensions. That would be a true comparison, not the "metrics" used in the article.

Now back to personal preferences. Being a UNIX programmer with about 16 years of experience, I can assure you ASP.NET blows any other Web framework out of the water. Yes, it is that good. You get a very nice and consistent object model with full .NET power behind it. JSP and servlets shouldn't bother either as all HTML is generated transparently - in many cases you don't have to write a single line in HTML! As a result, you write less code, it is easier to maintain, with fewer opportunities for bugs or security holes. All are considered best practices in my book. I'd love to see PHP mature to the ASP.NET level but it is simply not there yet and even the attempts of PHP 5 to tackle these problems is a step in right direction, there is still a very long way to go.

Re:Total hearsay FUD

[abelikoff]

Hmm... What share of PHP projects are using this toolkit as opposed to direct HTML rendering? Based on my personal experience, not that many (I'm yet to encounter one).

Once again, I didn't say that PHP cannot have an object model. It definitely can have such and I hope one would be provided in future releases (again, thanks to ASP.NET for raising the mark). However, ASP.NET is much much more than just a set of objects abstracting the developer from HTML. Just to name a few features:

• Full-blown .NET environment with all API (as opposed to "Darn! I should've compiled SOAP into my PHP installation")
• Very powerful set of client- and server-side validators (again, no HTML or JavaScript writing required).
• A set of very versatile data-centric web controls making the task of displaying tabbed (or otherwise) data extremely simple.
• Very nice tracing and debugging features. I especially like the automatic handling of errors in a different fashion based on whether they come from a localhost or from a remote one (In the former case, you can get a nice CLR traceback).

In my opinion, Microsofties have done a major (as in "revolutionary") step forward with ASP.NET. Other web frameworks are yet to catch up. Java has probably best chance to do so, as it already comes with a full-featured runtime environment. I think, we will see fairly soon some Java alternative to ASP.NET and I hope that PHP will eventually move into that space as well.

Re:Total hearsay FUD

[swimmar132]

JavaServer Faces does the webcontrols/validators you mentioned. Plus java has all the APIs you could want.

Re:Grr

[JustNiz]

> You also do NOT have to pay for ASP.NET - you can > download the SDK and deploy a commercial website
> without paying a penny.

So you plan on trying to run ASP.NET on linux then? If you run your web server on Winodws it isn't free.

But Wait, Theres more...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Visual studio isn't just a platform for developing asp.net solutions. Its a single enviornment that can be used for enteprise server and desktop applications as well. It can do so much more than Zend can do.

Re:Story Time

[pclminion]

Why not bring it up?

If you feel that even the mere mention of a person's race is automatically a subtle indication of racism, you either are really stuck in the tar pit of political correctness, or you have some deep insecurities yourself about the race issue.

Your nickname is "Saeed al-Sahaf." Is that a true reflection of your racial origins? If not, can you explain why your handle is not a racist reference, but the mention of a Korean's race is racist? I doubt you can.

Sorry, we're not going to tip-toe around on your racial eggshell playing field. Guess what? People have different colors of skin, come from different places, and speak different languages. How are we supposed to rejoice in our diversity if the mere mention of it is taboo?

Doesn't look like true OOP

[FriedTurkey]

I am just guessing from reading the article but it seems that PHP5 isn't really OOP. More like VB6 when they added things called "classes" but it still wasn't OOP. VB6 just had a bunch of crap for marketing to say it was OOP. It wasn't until the complete re-write of VB.NET Microsoft really had OOP. Seems like PHP5 is doing the same thing and adding something called a "class" but doesn't have any other features of OOP. I know everyone seems to have there own definition of OOP but PHP5 seems to be off by a lot.

Re:Doesn't look like true OOP

[mios]

These wild and crazy things they "just" added called "classes" have actually been around since php4 (which I believe was released sometime in 1999). PHP5 _IS_ a complete rewrite of PHP's object handling business. It would be interesting how, in your official definition of OOP, PHP5 seems to fall under the bar for you. Classes can be declared abstract. Has the same single-inheritence model as java. classes can implement interfaces. visibility of instance methods/vars can be declared public,protected,private try/catch/throw is there inside (not that that's oop, it is nice, tho) -steve

Re:Story Time

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Inflexibility is yet another trait that linux users need to come to grips with

Nice how you utterly fail to cite any examples. Rather, you just assert the same thing 3 or 4 times.

Re:Story Time

[vgaphil]

I've been the same boat, I applied for web admin position at a very Microsoft-centric college and I was turned down because I wanted to use LAMP. The guy in charge of hiring actual said this "Open Source is not secure because hackers can get a hold of the code and break into servers"

Now that I look back on it, I'm glad that I didn't get hired...

I like leadtools too

[JeanBaptiste]

...but ImageMagick is free as in GPL....

Its not quite as 'slick', but you can do most the stuff you otherwise could with LT. Did I mention its free?

The only real drawback I can see is you have to access it as a .COM object rather than a .NET object like you can with leadtools.

They don't make it easy to find the licence

[DFJA]

I've just had a good look at their website, and I can't find licensing information _anywhere_. I guess if I download the source code it probably has the licence in it, but I can't be bothered to download 5MB just to read a few k's worth of licence.

Re:They don't make it easy to find the licence

[dago]

top of the page, search for "license" in the "whole site". Seem you didn't searched.

BTW, google feel lucky as weel.

Re:PHP 5.0 Goes For Microsoft's ASP-dot-Net

[AstroDrabb]

ASP already has had such a long foothold on server side scripting

Exactly how does ASP have a "foothold" on server side scripting when IIS has only 21% of the web server market?

Most important difference not mentioned!

[the quick brown fox]

It sounds like the author is comparing PHP to old-style ASP. ASP (non-.NET) was a web scriping language like PHP, JSP, CF, etc., where basically all you did was intermingle code blocks with HTML.

ASP.NET (and the Java equivalent, JavaServer Faces) have a much different, (arguably) more sophisticated approach to web development. There is actually a pretty good story for UI/logic separation, eventing, and maintaining state. You can have your HTML tags constituted into a mutable object graph before rendering (example).

The end result is a development style that lets one write web apps the same way one writes desktop GUI apps, and as a bonus you get far more compile time guarantees than before (even vis-a-vis compiled scripting languages like JSP). Whereas in most scripting languages, getting a dynamic <select> to default to the proper selection and remember its selection across page redraws takes an annoying kludge of code, it's trivial in ASP.NET.

You don't have to like the direction MS has taken with ASP.NET, but the fact that the author didn't even mention the fundamentally different programming model it offers vs. PHP says to me that he didn't bother doing much research into it.

Oracle's Licensing Argument

[Erik Hollensbe]

Price. Here, we must consider not simply the price tag of the initial investment, which, in the case of PHP, is obviously free, but also the implementation, maintenance, and debugging costs. In the case of PHP, you may invest in the Zend optimization engine. With ASP, however, you're investing from the very beginning, and you're spending for add-on technologies--libraries for doing graphics manipulations, for instance. But, in the long term, PHP isn't going to press you to upgrade and collect more licensing fees. Everyone who has dealt with complex licensing also knows that companies spend time and money just ensuring they are compliant. Furthermore, you have a difference in response when getting bugs fixed. This, of course, translates to time, which translates to cost for overall development.

Yep, anyone who's had to deal with oracle's licensing knows this one very well. :)

I work at a primarily Oracle/mod_perl shop, and one of the biggest hurdles we've had as a team is making sure we don't step on oracle's toes.

Way too much FUD

[spideyct]

Inaccuracies:

• ASP.NET does all DB interaction through ODBC (it can, but it also has native drivers)
• ASP.NET is slower/less efficient (pointless statement without evidence)
• ASP.NET is more expensive than PHP (they are both freely downloads)
• ASP.NET platform is more expensive (kinda. both work on Windows - PHP also works on more expensive Unices (so can we say PHP's platform is more expensive?) - PHP works on Linux, ASP.NET can kinda work on Linux if you count Mono)
• ASP.NET is less secure because it requires IIS. Absolutely false! ASP.NET has no dependence on IIS. It just happens to be the default web server on Windows. You are free to write your own web server to host ASP.NET. An example to get you started.
• VB.NET is the "default" .NET language? That statement doesn't make any sense.

The author completely ignored one of ASP.NET's greatest advantages - it is an abstraction from writing HTML (which I guess they think makes it inefficient, just like C is less efficient than machine language). When I write:
TextBox t = new TextBox();
t.Text = "Hello World";
I do not know, nor care, what actual markup will be returned to the client. Before you start worrying that you need absolute control - consider the problem of delivering to multiple browsers/devices. ASP.NET will render different markup, depending on the browsers capabilities. When browsing from a PDA or phone, it will render appropriate markup. Does PHP do that?

Re:Way too much FUD

[Anthony Boyd]

ASP.NET will render different markup, depending on the browsers capabilities.

I don't trust Microsoft to make that decision for me.

Re:Way too much FUD

[spideyct]

There will always be people that do not trust anything at a higher level of abstraction. It would be foolish to try and talk them out of their command-line interface and machine code nirvana.

However, a lot of developers just need to get the job done. Part of that is using the tools that are available to reduce repetitive/tedious code. I personally would never want to create code for every possible browser or device.

Are you fine with abstractions, but you just don't specifically trust Microsoft? Is there any competing dynamic web application platform that offers this abstraction?

Also, with the upcoming ASP.NET 2.0, you will have a lot more control over the way markup is rendered, based on the client's capabilities. Read about adaptive rendering if you are curioius.

Re:Way too much FUD

[smagruder]

There will always be people that do not trust anything at a higher level of abstraction. It would be foolish to try and talk them out of their command-line interface and machine code nirvana.

No, grasshoppper. It's a matter of what abstraction to trust, and it doesn't have much to do with Microsoft. It's a matter of whether the abstraction is 1) accurate, and 2) adaptive, in a world where (currently) non-IE browsers are being updated at a fast pace, and support of older browsers is oftentimes a must.

Re: your assessment of ASP.NET 2.0, it may or may not fit the bill of "adaptive rendering". Hopefully, any programmer worth their salt will evaluate it to ensure it's accurate and adaptive, and not simply trust it by rote.

"Not trust[ing] anything at a higher level of abstraction" is actually a healthy aspect of a good programmer, and it doesn't mean that abstractions are automatically rejected, as you imply.

Re:Way too much FUD

[spideyct]

I agree with all of your points, and I don't think they counter any of mine.
The post I was responding too sounded an awful lot like an "automatic rejection". It was pretty much flamebait, so its my fault for even responding.

The point of my original post was to bring the discussion away from the flimsy comparison points used in the article, towards the real potential power of an abstracted web application platform. An aspect completely ignored by the article.

Whether Microsoft's current implementation satisfies your needs, I think it is great step in the right direction for web application development. Admittedly, I'm not a PHP expert, but I didn't see anything to imply that PHP has progressed into anything more than beefed up server side includes (like the original ASP).

Re:Way too much FUD

[smagruder]

Using PHP like server-side includes is a beginner's approach.

PHP can be used like Perl... that is, the pages can be fully scripted. Further, PHP has demonstrated the capability and direction of interacting with other server-side technologies. Also, consider its tremendous library of functions. Last, with PHP5, its OO capabilities are essentially complete. "Beefed up" is really an understatement.

Re:Grr

[nmg196]

> So you plan on trying to run ASP.NET on linux then?
> If you run your web server on Winodws it isn't free.

What a load of rubbish. I do not have to buy a copy of Windows for EACH application I install! Windows is an operating system - not part of ASP.NET!

Extending your argument - how exactly is Linux free if it requires a computer to run?? Does linux come with a free computer? Unless you can get computers for free then Linux isn't any more free (as in beer) than using Windows using your argument. EVERY system has prerequisites of some sort or another...

You're talking rubbish. Unless you are forced to buy an operating system with EACH and EVERY piece of software you install then you cannot factor it into the cost. I might ALREADY have the operating system. It might have come with my computer. It does not cost me any EXTRA money if I suddenly decide I want to use ASP.

And what if I WAS planning to run ASP.NET on Linux? It's possible with the Mono project. Then it would be free. And it would still be better than PHP IMHO - at least for anyone wanting to do anything more complicated than a pet project.

turck-mmcache

[solidox]

you musn't of seen Turck mmCache
when a php script it first run after change it is kept (cached) in it's bytecode form, thus eliminating compile time for subsequent requests.
true there is no JIT in php, but for a web application the bottlenecks will most likely be elsewhere.
And of course, if the best performance it required, intensive bits of the application can be offloaded into a C extension.

Eclipse is way ahead of VS.NET...

[sonofagunn]

... if you are comparing Java programming to C# programming.

VS.NET has the whole WYSINQWYG (What You See Is Not Quite What You Get) html/asp editor, but after pages get slightly complex, or you start taking advantage of User/Custom controls, the visual designer is more of a limitation than a benefit. The ability to create User controls is a really useful feature in ASP.NET.

I currently use both in an enterprise/production environment. I much prefer the CVS/Refactoring/Auto-Compile/etc. features that Eclipse has over the few minor advantages of VS. VS.NET also has some annoying bugs, whereas the latest and greatest Eclipse has been rock solid for us.

Also, at home I dabble in PHP and have good results using Eclipse with the PHP plugin from xored.com. It would still be nice to have a Visual HTML/PHP designer plugin (that was free).

Re:Getting what you pay for

[Digital11]

Where can I get some of this crack you're smoking???

1. We're talking ASP.NET, not ASP. Welcome to the conversation.
2. How does ASP give you nothing? Last time I checked the .NET CLR is packed full of more classes than you'd ever know what to do with. I rarely have to buy any 3rd party components other than for interface-related things.
3. It is VERY feasible to run ASP.NET on a totally free platform using Mono.
4. If you think ASP.NET is inferior than PHP then you know nothing about web development. They both have strengths & weaknesses, but ASP.NET is by no means inferior.

Someone MOD this FUD-believing sheep down please.

Re:Story Time

[wtrmute]

I don't believe these are meaningful OR valid considerations. I was an exchange student, myself, and I can say I never felt pressured or less-able to perform work for being away from my family and/or support system. In fact, immigrants who leave their countries in a non-exchange-student capacity aren't less able to do useful work, either -- the United States were, in a significant part, built upon the efforts of people in this condition. And neither is, in fact, the New Yorker who moves 5000 miles to the West Coast to work.

The only valid concern one could state about the guy being an exchange student is that he might be gone at the end of the school year. You take too little stock in the ability people have to work in foreign environments; and that has nothing to do with race.

Funniest thing is, I don't think great-grandparent was particularly racially biased; parent, though, is openly so.

Types?

[trainwrek]

I don't understand how the article could fail to mention that PHP does not include strong types. In my own experience a lack of strong typing is one of the more annoying aspects of scripting languages.

In addition there are no numbers to back their speed and scalability arguments. I don't doubt them, but I'd like to see the facts.

I like the idea of being able to bounce in and out of OOP at will in a language, but this often leads to novice programmers destroying an otherwise sound application infrastructure.

Re:Story Time

[NulDevice]

Just to be clear, despite the name ASP and ASP.NET have very little in common.

ASP = VBScript or occasionally Jscript-based top-down imperative page-based language.
ASP.NET = OO web-app framework, usually event-driven, usually in C# or VB.NET.

It's rather misleading to anecdotally discuss the strengths and weaknesses of ASP.NET using ASP programming/programmer examples.

Web RAD

[wtrmute]

A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I agree completely with the code completion deal, it really does speed up development. Unfortunately, I hate the Forms Designer with a passion. I've been doing nothing but develop ASP.NET for a year now, and I dropped that thing in my third week.

Don't be fooled: the Forms Designer is great if you're building the simplest textbox-and-submit-button pages. When you start dealing with components (both third-party and self-made), the Forms Designer seriously barfs. It's also terrible at detecting that a control was instantiated in the base class for the codebehind, generating a double declaration and then dying when you run the application. You're better off previewing the page on the browser...

Re:Story Time

[WarMonkey]

Reminds me of a recent job interview. I mentioned Linux and the guy said "Linux wouldn't fit our needs because it doesn't have a GUI." I smiled and shut up, thanking God this man had revealed himself as a moron before I might get trapped working for him.

Huh? C# *is* ASP.NET

[rd_syringe]

ASP.NET is any .NET language, or VB.NET or C#. If you'd like, you can even use C/C++.

ASP.NET doesn't just run on IIS either. Apache runs it along with Mono.

Re:PHP vs. ASP.NET

[NulDevice]

Really an apples/oranges kind of comparison.

NObody's going to argue the cross-platformability of php. Not even MS.

And despite Mono and so forth, ASP.NET and the rest of the .NET development platform is created by Microsoft for Microsoft so developers can write Microsoft apps for Microsoft servers. .NET encompasses windows apps too, not just web apps. The codebase between the two is almost identical - okay, a winForm is stateful and a WebForm is stateless and the UI widgets are different, but the rest of the backend database/XML/IO stuff is the same. I don't think you'll want to use PHP to write a desktop app, or a suite with desktop/web integration. On the flipside, ASP.NET would be complete overkill for a majority of web-apps. .NET's main competitor isn't PHP. It's Java. The way the architectures and libraries are set up, the target audience, even the langauge skills requred. Hell, C# and Java resemble each other so much that switching back and forth is a dawdle (well, almost. I just came off a 5-mo C# contract and am now on a java gig and I keep accidentally swapping keywords). I realize PHP5 has added some OO functionality, but I'm doubtful that it's as ground-up OO as either Java or C#/VB.NET etc.

PHP is great, I love it and use it all the time. But for the kind of work where ASP.NET would be an option, PHP wouldn't be. Regular old ASP? Sure, and I'd choose PHP over ASP in a heartbeat. But .NET is a different beast entirely. ASP.NET is as different from ASPclassic as it is from PHP.

Re:Story Time

[EnderWiggnz]

>"-1, Jumping to conclusions"

Damnit... I couldve made a million dollars with that idea...

Re:Story Time

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

The guy was presumably a full-time student, in a foreign country, away from his family and support system -- might these demands or limitations limit his ability to do the job well? I can only imagine how well I'd perform doing a moderately complex job while being a full-time student a half a world away.

No, I'm sorry, the fact that he was an exchange student of any race has nothing to do with if he can write good code, if his code has bugs. And indeed, it has little to do with writing godd ASP code, which can be done (as far as writing "good" ASP code is possible).

Re:Story Time

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Why not bring it up?

But again, WHY bring it up if it has nothing to do with anything? It's like saying "I know about this project that went to Hell in a hand basket. But hey, by the way, the guy was Indian.

Re:Grr

[JustNiz]

>> You're talking rubbish

And you sound like a troll or an ignorant Microsoft zealot.
Most 'real' web servers run on their own dedicated box(es). And if you run Ms Windows on those boxes, yes YOU DO need a licence for each one, therefore it IS more expensive than Linux.

>>Extending your argument - how exactly is Linux
>> free if it requires a computer to run??

You're just trolling. The hardware cost is the same no matter if you run windows, linux or whatever on the same box. (well actually you probably need more expensive hardware to get the same performance under Windows but thats another issue). The point here is that Windows costs a licence for each server, but Linux is free to download/use.

>> And it would still be better than PHP IMHO
Well everyone is entitled to their opnion no matter how crazy it seems to others...have you actually read this article?

Very Simple

[rjdohnert]

Many people say you cannot run ASP.NET forms on Apache, yes you can. I do it and many people do it. I found a short little tutorial for you guys. http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/cassini_apache_1 01.asp Here is the announcement from the Apache team that they would be supporting ASP.NET on Apache http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,54072,0 0.html OMG, Microsoft actually helped Covalent and the Apache teams get ASP.NET working on Apache 2. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18740.html This is more Oracle anti-MS rhetoric to get more money in their pockets.

Very Simple

[rjdohnert]

Many people say you cannot run ASP.NET forms on Apache, yes you can. I do it and many people do it. I found a short little tutorial for you guys. here Here is the announcement from the Apache team that they would be supporting ASP.NET on Apache here OMG, Microsoft actually helped Covalent and the Apache teams get ASP.NET working on Apache 2. Read it This is more Oracle anti-MS rhetoric to get more money in their pockets.

Re:Story Time

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Because whites are common. Go intern in Korea and see what they call you.

I assume you have experience in this area? NOT.

Having lived in Korea for 2 years, perhaps I may not really know how they treat other races. But they treated me just fine.

what PHP lacks for the moment

[nsebban]

ASP.NET has a strong advantage over PHP, being the development environment. Visual Studio is a really excellent and productive tool, that helps a lot the developper. Most PHP users use basic text editors, losing the advantage of WYSIWYG.

ASP.NET also has some excellent data access and manipulation tools, managing backoffice and middle/front-office job, which is a big win over the "do everything yourself" PHP approach.

Most of the time, the success of a project isn't based on how the application runs (fast, without bugs), but on the time spent to develop it. And for this point, ASP.NET is still really good.

Re:what PHP lacks for the moment

[ChopsMIDI]

WYSIWYG is not an advantage in my experience.

Re:Oh, PLEASE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not everything MS does is evil. But their EULA comes might close in my book.

Re:Story Time

[pclminion]

But again, WHY bring it up if it has nothing to do with anything?

Because people form mental images. Someone refers to "a developer." Immediately, I think of a white male geek, probably overweight, in his twenties. Why? Because in my experience, that's what developers tend to look like.

Is the mental image important or relevant? Maybe not. Do I have willful control over whether my mind conjures such an image? Certainly not. But at least I now have a somewhat accurate mental image.

No he's not

[DRWHOISME]

He mentions the differences between the two.

Don't be naive.

Re:Well look at that!

[jenkin sear]

Well, actually, I think it was Oracle flinging the FUD... not that the FOSS folks don't, but this one has corporate wank written all over it. Check the URL...

Please Read Parent

[Yazheirx]

I have used PHPEclipse for the past year. Prior to that I used TextPad.

I have used Visual Sudio 6 and .Net.

PHPEclipse rocks, though I do have some complants (mainly the auto double quotes are a pain to get used to) I still recommend it to all other PHP developers I know.

I leave a copy at all of my client sites to ensure that they can make changes to the code I generated for them.

Please read the parent, look at PHPEclipse and (if you like it) mod the parent up to help inform others

Re:Please Read Parent

[dirty]

There's an option somewhere to turn off the double quotes, and that damned "code hint" popup or whatever they call it. The new devel version 1.1.0 is also much better. The only thing that ZendStudio still has on PHPEclipse is the debugger and the profiler. The debugger in ZendStudio is hands down better, and AFAIK PHPEclipse doesn't have a profiler.

Re:Story Time

[pclminion]

Having lived in Korea for 2 years, perhaps I may not really know how they treat other races. But they treated me just fine.

You seem deeply confused. Referring to a person's race is not an insult. I'm quite certain that people in Korea probably referred to you as "white" (or whatever the term for your particular skin tone happens to be). I'm also certain that, as you say, you were treated "just fine." How does acknowledgement of a person's race equate to bad treatment?

Let's follow your muddled logic to its conclusion. An individual named Mbutu moves to your home town. From his name, it is quite clear that he is a black African. But according to you, we are not supposed to acknowledge race because it is some type of insult. Hence, you must not refer to this person by his name, since it would be a clear acknowledgement of his race. Essentially you are telling this person that his own name is an insult to him. You are telling him that his blackness should not be acknowledged. That his race makes you so uncomfortable that you cringe to even mention it.

At this point I'm about 80% sure that you are white, because only whites, in my experience, have such a neurotic view of race.

Why not have PHP.net for Mono?

[darthcamaro]

Here's an idea, instead of kowtowing to Bill, why not promote the fact that PHP will run smoothly on Mono's implementation of .NET? There is no question that PHP 5 is a superior choice for open source developers so why not embrace it? Or is that something that your bosses at Novell won't let you do?

Important security comparison left out

[kurt.griffiths]

In the article they compare the web servers, but neglect the languages themselves. PHP is atrocious - there are many well-known exploits, some that can even let you see the PHP code (better not hide any secrets there)!

Re:Story Time

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

At this point I'm about 80% sure that you are white, because only whites, in my experience...

At this point, I am sure you are White American, because only White Americans feel the need to bring race into a question where race was never an issue.

DotWeb

[ahe3]

Nice article since I'm working on an implementation of ASP.NETs webforms in PHP.

Check it out: http://dotweb.berlios.de/

Re:Story Time

[pclminion]

At this point, I am sure you are White American, because only White Americans feel the need to bring race into a question where race was never an issue.

Get real. A penchant for irrelevance is not limited to whites or Americans. Here on Slashdot, we specialize in mentioning Linux in the most unlikely of circumstances. If we follow your logic, apparently that means we all hate Linux.

Oh please...

[john_smith_45678]

PHP5 is a clear shot at ASP? Maybe ASP 3.x, NOT ASP.Net. PHP's library pales in comparison to .Net. I'd rather use Mono.

If I had the time I would

[Orion Blastar]

The OSS community needs a decent IDE development application. I am busy with other things such as college, family, my illnesses, etc.

I am out of work, on disability, and going to college, I cannot afford to buy anything right now. Be it Visual Studio.Net or anything else.

So no, I am not willing to dish out $$ for an MS product, or any other company's product.

Re:If I had the time I would

[k98sven]

A lot of people think Eclipse is more than decent.

How good the plug-ins are with respect to PHP beats me though.

Thank you very much

[Orion Blastar]

now I have an IDE to learn in without having to pay too much money. When I get some time I will experiement with it. Thanks again.

Re:Thank you very much

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, for ASP.NET development, you should use ASP.NET WebMatrix. SharpDevelop is more suited towards app development than web development.

http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/

Re:Thank you very much

[MadChicken]

WebMatrix is part of the equation, yes, but you can still use SharpDevelop for the codebehind stuff, it's really a better way to move code around. Just include in your #D project *.aspx.vb, and edit the *.aspx files in WebMatrix.

Man, talk about drifting off topic, though. Let's see...

"...is there any suite of tools as free and good as that for PHP?"

No it is not

[Orion Blastar]

I do not pirate Visual Studio.Net, in fact I am looking for alternatives to it. Possibly OSS projects I can use.

My PoS ISP is so unpredictable that I cannot even download the CD ISO images for Debian without them crapping out on me, even with WGet and other download helpers. So even if I wanted to pirate the mammoth VS.Net CDs, I couldn't.

I did join on the Microsoft Movie Review to get a free copy of VB.NET Standard Edition, but I haven't installed it yet. It was a promotion that Microsoft put out to review VB.NET movies and get a free copy of their VB.NET software. It is not for resale, but I am reformatting my systems every few months due to worms and viruses and spyware/adware and other stuff, so activating it and then reactivating it after a reformat would be difficult. Eventually I want to move towards Linux and get away from Windows. I am working with Linspire now, I paid $60 for the install CD and blew most of the money I had saved up on it.

What about WebObjects?

[jimijon]

I don't know about ASP,,, I know about PHP... but WebObjects puts them all to shame!

Re:What about WebObjects?

[Anamanaman]

Sorry, but you really need to take a look at ASP.NET. I'm a former webobjects developer (and fanatic) and ASP.NET has webobjects beat.

Take a look at a presentation I made to the Seattle WebObjects group. Having been developing in ASP.NET for over a year now since I made it, I can definately say ASP.NET is more capable in just about everything.

http://www.dbug.org/sigs/webobjects/downloads.ht ml

Re:What about WebObjects?

[jimijon]

Well the powerpoint slide show didn't really inspire me. However, I am just loving the productivity I have achieved using WebObjects, Direct2Web, mySQL, Apache, BBEdit, jFreeChart, Java all running on my powerbook. My rsync deploy scripts make my server updates a piece of cake and my clients.. at least those who don't need ASP.. love my productivity and the robustness of my applications. Maybe, when hell freezes over, they will be able to tear my 17"Powerbook from my hands... but until then... there is nothing in my book more productive and easier on the eyes than WebObjects.

Re:What about WebObjects?

[f00zbll]

I can definately say ASP.NET is more capable in just about everything.

This just in, no single tool is more capable than all other tools for all jobs. Back to your regularly scheduled program.

Re:Story Time

[ejito]

I'm gonna have to agree with pclminion on this issue. The OP said the dude was an exchange student to clarify later in the post that his origins and his programming skills were not the real issue, but rather the coding language.

Responses would have likely brought up the programmers skills anyways. He just wanted to kill two birds with one stone.

p.s. And no, I'm not some random white dude. My name does actually reflect my ethnicity.

Re:Story Time

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Get real. A penchant for irrelevance is not limited to whites or Americans. Here on Slashdot, we specialize in mentioning Linux in the most unlikely of circumstances. If we follow your logic, apparently that means we all hate Linux.

One set of logic, being found valid, this does not make it valid for all situations, only the situation it is formed around. You make no sense now, my friend.

He'll have to what?

[leonbrooks]

Now if a bunch of free-software peeps were to assemble such a graphics lib and release it for all to use...

You rang, sir?

Gaussian blur, anybody?

NEXT! (-:

Likewise borg'ed

[leonbrooks]

Now on file here, give us a whistle if the attribution needs improving (or, of course, change it yourself).

this guy is a maroon

[tater]

As of beta version 4, PHP 5 still has a few shortcomings, including its lack of exceptions [...]

PHP 5's major new achievements come in the area of its exception handling [...]

Uh... George? Is that you?

Also - he's basing this on the December 2003 release? Why is this article even here?

Re:this guy is a maroon

[capt.mellow]

A 'maroon', eh? Like http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=maroon? Or were you thinking maybe of http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=moron?

Re:this guy is a maroon

[jasonzzz]

"Maroon" is a reference to various Bugs Bunny cartoons where he recognizes that moronic acts and the people doing them as "What a Maroon!" and of course, purposely mispromouncing the word "moron" for comedic effect.

It's not funny when you have to explain it.

Re:this guy is a maroon

[capt.mellow]

Ahah. I stand corrected. It would have helped if I could have heard a Bugs Bunny voice when I read the post. ;)

Re:this guy is a maroon

[tater]

Though that did lead serendipitously to

aubergine: <jargon> A secret term used to refer to computers in the presence of computerphobic third parties.

I like that a lot.

Would this do?

[leonbrooks]

You'd expect the purveyors of PHP tools to answer developer requests, and they have.

There are several alternates around.

If you want to try something a bit different, there's this or this.

Re:Getting what you pay for

[XO]

What Microsoft has been giving it's customers isn't "nothing".. it's technically called an "ass-raping"

Re:Secure Apache?

[sloanster]

OK, I'm a fan of Linux
hmm, it seems that every anti-linux troll these days begins with this sort of thing...

but I also have a bullshit detector, and anyone claiming that Apache has a good security track record is full of it.

Actually, the security record of apache has been exemplary over the years, especially when cmpared to microsoft iis. Even though apache runs the lion's share of internet sites, guess what the lion's share of the worms & virri have infected?

Yep, microsoft iis.

Let's race!

[leonbrooks]

only whites, in my experience, have such a neurotic view of race.

You need to get out and about more, work on that experience a bit.

Not a few Asian cultures look down on Negro people, or for that matter different kinds of Asians. Negro culture, in turn, often looks down on Asians. Indians (as in, the big pointy bit hanging off the bottom of the Himalayas) and occasionally Arabs have wars amongst themselves over racial differences a typical Westerner would be struggling to pick - the Indians especially typically have a tremendous and overlapping range of skin colours within a racial sub-group, so they squabble over different racial differences. Various groups in China and Russia waste time looking down their noses at one another, and Japan looks down its collective nose at both. Which is a somewhat gentler approach than their historical one.

It's pandemic. Get used to it - which is not to say that you have to accept it, just acknowledge that it's there and plan for it.

Full disclosure: I am a male Caucasian Australian. I have meet-in-person friends who are from Zambian, Indonesian, Australian Aboriginal, Chinese, Singaporean, Japanese, Rhodesian, Russian, Romanian, Inuit, AmerIndian, Phillipino, Thai and other cultural and racial groups, and think nothing of it. We fostered an African-Negro/Chinese-Indonesian toddler for a year while his mum recovered from a back injury (dad was stuck in Africa until he could work up to getting a new visa). I have on-line friends all over the planet and no real clue (in most cases) as to what their race might be.

Re:It's Visual Studio, ... do you really mean 'cat

[Herschel Cohen]

To me, in Linux or UNIX 'cat' is calling a command that displays the contents of a file, like 'ECHO' in DOS.

Are you talking about an editor is this a new/old editor that not too many programmers use?

I am coding currently in perl using emacs that formats, color codes and highlights critical words in context. It lacks the lookups I have seen on other editors and I am making my share of errors. However, I am still at home with this editor and pleasantly surprised and impressed with its power.

Of course, I am just making another pass at perl to really learn it well this time. Nonetheless, I do not see myself dropping emacs when I begin to use it in producing real code.

ASP.net is as OSS as PHP

[Nailer]

One possible ASP.net (1.1) solution

Server: Apache
Module: mod_mono
IDE: Monodevelop

All OSS last time I checked. That's pretty samn similar to PHP, and a whole lot better than JSP.

Counterexample

[leonbrooks]

I am setting up a Linux-based thin-client Internet cafe yesterday, and in strolls a dude from the cafe next door (this place will have its own cafe in a day or two) who wants some Internet access to show a client their Internet cafe software.

He likes the setup, doesn't care what technologies lie behind it, and is absolutely flabbergasted to discover that coding the glue logic to turn Mandrake Terminal Server into a viable Internet cafe including time accounting is under two man-days. Look for a project named "lincaf" in a month or so.

One card-swap later and I'll probably have tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in business out of this one tiny installation, which in turn was made possible only by the unhindered availability of a broad swathe of software, and especially the sources for functional items that I can tweak instead of having to create from scratch.

Re:It's Visual Studio, ... do you really mean 'cat

[Jester99]

No, he means 'cat' like you mean it.

As in:

hcohen@src#cat - > hello.c
#include "stdio.h"
int main() { printf("hello, world"); };
^Z
hcohen@src#

Real men cat straight to /dev/hda1 and include the inode data.

Re:Story Time

[Herschel Cohen]

That New Yorker that moves 5000 miles to the West Coast better bring a passport and life preserver. I wonder if that would suffice to reach the 'East' coast of one of the Hawaiian islands?

You've got it ass-about

[leonbrooks]

Microsoft wants a piece of everyone. That's how their business works, it's their entire ethos - all of it, the whole package, anything else is just decoration. What you're seeing here is an example of a classic reaction to that.

Just like Linux, PHP didn't set out to "beat" anybody. It just happened, grew "like Topsy" but more to fill specific needs rather than at random. Its eventual total annihilation of the corresponding Microsoft product will, as always, "just be a completely unintentional side effect." (-:

PostgreSQL has now grown enough features to pretty much outclass MS-SQL-Server across the board, and by years' end will have grown even more. This, too, is "a completely unintentional side effect" since their target - if any, maybe "benchmark" would be a better word - seems to be Oracle.

It's hard to point to a serious Open Source web browser without pointing to a nail in the coffin of Internet Explorer. At the other end of the link, Apache - not backed by any particular company, just a product which stands on its own merits - absolutely 0wn3rz the webserver market.

What makes the difference?

On one side, we have a company which hoards code and doles it out to users in carefully measured (and paid for) amounts. Any support etc done by the company is simply to increase the perceived value of the doled-out item, and often it's charged for too. This has bred a generation of Minesweeper Consultants and Solitaire Experts.

On the other side, we have people solving their own problems, and not hoarding the solutions. Because it's their own code, they take pride in it, and some of them support it for that reason. Much other support is done in passing; someone's reading a list to find out more about their pet project, a question appears which is either easy to answer or an interesting challenge, and so an answer happens. That kind of responsiveness is difficult to buy.

Licensing

[einhverfr]

You are only talking about the actual basic framework from MS. There is also the issue of any components which may need additional licenses-- third party controls, etc.

Now, this whole discussion misses a couple of extremely important points. These include:

1) An extremely vibrant open source community surrounding PHP. This has cost and licensing advantages in some areas, but cost and licensing disadvantages in other areas (for example, ensuring license compliance when distributing commercial software).

2) Mono is available on Linux too. And there is a vibrant community there. Mono is mostly licensed under the LGPL allowing people to link to it from proprietary apps. And there is a great community there too.

These licensing reasons are mostly bogus.

Re:Story Time

[dcam]

Nice troll.

I've built and continue to maintain a web application that consists mainly of 65,000+ lines of ASP code (With some perl, VB, the odd batch file and a boatload of SQL Server procs. This application is very stable. I could rewrite it in php or .Net, and have the same stability.

The platform doesn't make a whole lot of difference to stability. The programmer does.

MS HTML etc

[sbszine]

You've made many valid points, but anyone who works with the intricacies of HTML will tell you that Microsoft's markup is woeful.

However, I'm sure it would be simple (in both ASP and PHP) to write your own w3 compliant HTML library and serve up different stylesheets based on the client, so it's not really a huge issue.

To answer your original question, Perl has a popular module called Mason which abstracts HTML, and integrates well with mod_perl.

Re:Secure Apache?

[ketilf]

Apache's security record hasn't been

exemplary over the years, especially when cmpared[sic] to microsoft iis.

Apache's security record is good ONLY when compared to even more buggy alternatives. It has had several remote exploits, and probably even more DoS problems. This is hardly exemplary.

Perhaps you should read these changelogs:

http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/CHANGES_2.0
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/CHANGES_1.3

Pay attention to the SECURITY related changes.

The author misses nice combination - Apache::ASP

[chicks.net]

Apache::ASP provides ASP for free. Given the issues the author has with PHP (and there are plenty of other complaints beyond those he cites) it would seem that having ASP on a free platform would be an ideal combination for him.

Re:Huh? C# *is* ASP.NET

[murat]

Sorry, you can't use C/C++ for ASP.NET.

Re:PHP 5.0 Goes For Microsoft's ASP-dot-Net

[smagruder]

As of April, 2002, more web sites across all web servers use PHP than use Microsoft's Active Server Pages.

I'd guess the same thing

[cbreaker]

I had very little programming background, but I was able to learn and use PHP effectively, and put together a web site with a database backend and lots of cool features, in a few weeks time. And I didn't even have to use any code from anyone else.

If I spent more time with it, if I read more websites on PHP (don't underestimate these - there's a LOT of PHP fan sites out there and a lot of training to be had on the web) and applied my newfound skills to new types of sites, I feel as though I could do PHP programming for a job.

Java is orders of magnitude more complex.

[OT] sig

[BandwidthHog]

Excellent Ghia, man!

Pointless...

[Myolp]

Personally, I prefer Java Servlets and JSP. I have friends who consider Ruby to be the best platform for web applications and others who prefer Perl.

In the end, it all depends on what the customer is using for the rest of their systems. Arguing which language is best for a web front-end is quite pointless.

I doubt he's even used it

[stormcoder]

He's just repeating what's on MS website.

Being a long time Delphi, Builder and more recently, a .NET developer, I can tell you that just because there are components and events doesn't make it a magic bullet. I've seen the horror of an entire applications business logic residing in event handlers as well as very procedural code using components. Also, the only browser abstraction microsoft believes in is Internet Explorer or Internet Exploder, take your pick.

ASP.NET makes it easy for you to do whatever Microsoft thought you should be doing with it, otherwise it is very hard to shoe horn ASP into doing what you want. Then there is the problem of taking your code and running it on something other than IIS. Given MS security record, it is nice to be able to run your apps on something secure.

I'm not a PHP developer so I don't know if PHP is better but it is hard to believe that anything is worse.

Real Coders...

[RAMMS EIN]

Real Coders don't use cat.

Real Coders say: as <<EOT

Re:Secure Apache?

[sloanster]

Ah, you're assuming I hadn't seen the changelogs or heard of the potential security issues which have been found (and no doubt will continue to be found) and corrected by apache developers in the course of the ongoing development of apache.

While continual security fixes are the norm in the open source world, I suppose it could be alarming to an outsider when taken out of context, but I think the point is, that apache security issues are generally a matter of an developer's entry in the release notes, while iis security issues are generally a matter of a significant number of businesses suffering downtime or worse due to bugs in iis.

I'd wager that if you could look at the source code for iis, you'd probably have a stroke.