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Closed 12 years ago.
It seems to me that everyone on the Internet is talking about PHP/ROR/Python, but few care to mention ASP.NET. Ironically, here in China, most books concerning web development on the shelf in the bookstores are about ASP.NET. I just want to know what is "wrong" with ASP.NET on these web forums. I am really new to web development, and I've just learned a little PHP, and haven't touched anything ASP.NET yet. I would like to know the pros and cons of PHP and ASP.NET. Thank you very much!
There is nothing wrong with ASP.NET. Except the fact it's a Microsoft technology, so some communities avoid to mention it, or mention it only to say it's evil, without giving a real explanation.
Everything depends on the communities. Here, on StackOverflow, I see more questions about ASP.NET than about PHP. There are other websites which are more ASP.NET oriented.
If you want to choose what to use, try both. This is the only way for you to make a real choice, without being influenced by an opinion of a person who thinks that PHP sucks and is used only by beginners who don't know anything about programming, or a person who thinks that everything related to Microsoft is bad.
I'm assuming that you are referring to the ASP.NET, since ASP is obsolete and deprecated in some sense.
It's really difficult to compare PHP/Python/Ruby to ASP.NET. It would make more sense to compare frameworks. PHP has some popular frameworks called Zend and CakePHP. Python has Django. Ruby got, of course, Ruby on Rails. ASP.NET has MVC.
There is nothing wrong with ASP.NET. In fact, ASP.NET MVC2 is very neat. If you use it with Visual Studio, you basically don't need anything else, since you can debug your application with the visual studio webserver that comes with the IDE. MSDN has a lot of documentation on the MVC framework and a lot of people on stackoverflow are experts.
One downside is that you will need to host your site on Microsoft Server, which is typically more costly than Linux. If you are used to Linux, you will also need to consider some ramp up time and learning cost, because Windows Server is quite different. You might also want to use SQL Server 2008 because Microsoft technologies usually go well together.
There are a lot of things you need to consider when you want to create website with something you are not familiar with. I recommend you to just get started somewhere. If you are learning in order to acquire skills that may help you get some job offers, learn the skills you need. If ASP.NET is something used a lot in China, I would recommend you to pick up ASP.NET MVC and start developing, although this will cost you some money up front. Otherwise, go with PHP/Python/Ruby because there are tons of sites that use these languages and frameworks based on these languages.
For ASP.NET MVC2, this is a good starting point.
By the way, stackoverflow is built on ASP.NET MVC + SQL Server 2008 + C#
You got an IDE full of features and access to whole .NET infrastructure if using asp.net comparing to php.
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Closed 10 years ago.
For the past months I've been getting into Web Development, I tried both sides of the coin: ASP.NET and PHP, I quickly fell in love with the second, the documentation and the community was just very helpful.
I started out by reading PHP for Absolute Beginners, this gave me a decent grasp over the language.
Enter frameworks! After going around the web, it became clear that there was one framework that really suited beginners: Codeigniter. I absolutely love CI, through out my programming experience in college I've always relied on good books. CI didn't need a book. The documentation is so well written anyone with a little bit of PHP experience can get into it.
Learning CI led me to development websites (such as Stackoverflow) and I started reading things that kinda make me sad, "CI doesn't scale on big projects", "CI isn't even a framework", "CI is for newbies, get pro like me bro".
Ok, so maybe CI shouldn't be used for huge projects - at least that's what I got from the overall community. But I'm wondering here, where should I go from now? I feel like I should get some experience in at least a few MVC frameworks, but it's kinda confusing on where to go at this point, today Zend is best, tomorrow Symfony is, but damm, that Yii s looking good too! All of these frameworks are getting updated to 2.0 and the documentation is scarce, there's not many books going around (if any), the respective websites have a lot of information, but for someone coming from CI, it all just feels very intimidating to start out. Starting projects with Windows CMD? PHP accelerators?
I'm guess what I'm trying to ask here is, how do you professionals see the PHP framework world these days? Which Framework would you recommend? Should I hop into this 2.0 bubble or are these versions not stable yet? And if possible, could you point me in a general direction when it comes to documentation?
Thank you for your time.
A framework is merely a tool to achieve a purpose. For you, to get a grip on the language try continuing with CI. The things you will learn - the concepts - will translate to other frameworks, even if their implementation is slightly differnt.
I personally favour Yii, but I have dug up symfony, zend and CI as well as few others in the past. One is not better than the other for most apps; look into differnt things, see what you like and roll with it.
What framework isn't really the question. What you should be doing, IMO is, try to 'learn to learn' rather than just 'learn'.
What I mean is, you should try to learn php well rather than a specific framework X.
That way, when time comes, and you have to build a scalable[scalable isn't even on my browser's dictionary yet!] system, you can figure your way through, with the experience you would have accumulated. This is what I believe Steve Jobs refers to as connecting the dots in a famous speech.
I've used many frameworks in the past. I used CI to start and then moved over to Yii as I gained experience. Frameworks may provide the project with tools that you don't have to write yourself, saving time. However there may be performance issues. CI is great and I haven't had too much trouble with it. You can slim it down and remove functions that you are not using. With CI I have created full Web APIs with them with no problems.
I guess what I am trying to say is that it may be your preference or client preference on which framework to use.
Firstly, there web development isn’t a coin, and there’s more than two sides. There’s a plethora of web development languages: PHP, .NET, Python, Ruby and so on.
Secondly, I don’t think you should be looking at frameworks if you’re new to web development/PHP. Learn the language first. Frameworks instil framework-specific conventions only; so when it comes to working with another framework or even vanilla PHP, you’re going to be at a loss. A knowledge of PHP assists in choosing the right framework for the job. Investing in one framework this early will only make you reliant and dependant on that framework.
I speak of this from experience. I once worked for an agency that was hiring PHP developers. During the interview process, we got applicants that claimed to be PHP developers will knowledge in frameworks such as CodeIgniter. When given a simple programming task (take an all-uppercase phrase and make it title case) the majority failed. Why? Because they had built everything in frameworks and not learned PHP itself. So when they were put in a situation where their framework of choice wasn’t available, they stumbled.
Don’t make this mistake. Frameworks are good, but only when you know what you’re doing and definitely not as a language learning tool.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I have learned in my University time Pascal and C and RedHat Linux/Unix .
To get quickly one job, i started learning Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 for speed in development etc. In that time, with C its like more time consuming and i was not confident to use it for job purpose, where most of the companies demand fast/rapid development.
After that i had problems with my companies because they want web applications, then i started using PHP which is also great, because customers demand web projects and they expect Google like applications in short time frame, which is doable because PHP gives that speed and its huge community.
To explain my need for Go-lang is following:
PHP the syntax is friendly compared to C/Pascal.
I was very happy to learn Python, but its syntax is very much different then C.
Which just not gonna work with me to accept and really learn it better and better.
I have tried to learn Ruby, at-least so that i can have the knowledge of Python
like syntax, but i really skipped Ruby because of 2x time slower then PHP
Therefore,
Is Go-lang is the perfect choice for SPEED vs PHP vs Ruby, for Web development + Gtk?
Alas, I'd love to have 1 asset that I could use for all conditions but it's just not available in the world of computing. You're going to have to learn 2 or more.
PHP is very widely used, so you might as well stick with it. If you can create decent webapps using it, go for it. I would suggest learning C/C++ too so you can write any high-performance modules using that and call them from your PHP code. That's probably the best of all worlds for your webapps.
If you wanted to write for desktops, I think you'll be best off learning C++ with Qt (and look at Wt) (as it appears you're a Linux dev), or C#/VB.NET for Windows.
For mobiles, learn C/C++ as you can write apps in that no matter which platform even if you have to put up with some platform-dependant extensions - you either have to learn Java for Android, Objective-C for iOS, or (well we're not quite sure what MS has planned for Windows Phone 8, but I hear they like native code again, that means C++/CX). You can see where I'm going with this!
so anyway, if you're happy with PHP then keep with it. There is a ton of code out there that runs PHP so it's not like you're working with some bleeding-edge or hardly-used obscure language.
Well, this question is obviously quite subjective, but I find PHP can always be as fast as it needs to be. I spend a lot of time looking up on how my code can be optimised further.
Some good optimisation tips: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/50-php-optimisation-tips-revisited
Of course, in the end, everything depends on what you're willing to do for extra speed and what's practical or not.
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Closed 11 years ago.
The very famous open source CMS and e-commerce applications, i.e. Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Prestashop, are all written in PHP.
But Ruby seems to be awesome (I don't know it that much).
Why is there no such project written in Ruby?
Or would there be one I do not know?
I would say that at least one good reason is that Ruby is not used that much.
As a consequence :
Not many people use Ruby
So not many entreprises will use Ruby for their commercial projects
So not many people will learn Ruby (either at work or at school)
So not many applications are developped in Ruby
So not many web-servers (I'm especially thinking about shared hosting) have Ruby installed
So not many developper will use Ruby -- they want their open-source applications to run everywhere,
and so on ;-)
Just heard of : http://www.locomotivecms.com/
I've not tested it yet but it looks interesting.
I'm actually a php developer, working lot with Joomla, but I'll soon begin learning Ruby (some features just look awesome!, Like redefining operators,...) and Ruby On Rails for personal interest.
CMS-es allow building sites, Frameworks allow building applications.
You don't build a game in Drupal. You won't even think about a large community in Joomla! No-one will even consider building a large communication-platform (chat) with Wordpress.
PHP comes from a differnet ERA. The web-era where we all build off-the-shelve sites. Where user-interaction just started becoming interesting. And where it was hard to get an affordable LAMP stack set up for your latest-greatest idea. I am talking before Y2000.
Now-a-days one can hardly build a website without Twitter connections, Facebook logins and complex backend communication with several services.
Back in the days, these kind of projects were almost always Java. They still are, to a degree. Governments, corporate portals, media: they all have complex, integrated web-environments. PHP will hardly be used for this.
While in theory something like that is possible with a CMS like Drupal, it is certainly not a cost-efficient project. A CMS was simply never meant for that.
A framework like Ruby on Rails allows you to build what your client wants, exactly: nothing more, nothing less. Which means that the end-result is not generic, but extremely opinionated. and as such, not releasable as a tool for the masses.
PHP is cheaper and easier to host on a shared-server - installing mod_php into Apache is easy, and it uses less RAM than Ruby. So more providers provide PHP-hosting, and more less-technical people use PHP software.
Ruby does have some good CMSes - e.g. Radiant or Refinery - and ecommerce solutions e.g. Spree.
CMSs are, at least originally were, end-user products. End user doesn't really care how awesome the language that the software was built on is. On the other hand, PHP has much bigger penetration with hosting sites and deployment of PHP applications mostly comes down to "unzip this to your host, go through the wizard and you're good to go". Ruby got standard way of deployment just recently. Knowing all that, developers were (and arguably still are) choosing PHP over other languages when starting to build mass-marketed products as CMSs are.
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Closed 12 years ago.
I have opened a large web project on elance for a social network. I got over 30 bids on my project and many of the providers recommended php even though they had .net knowledge. many have said that php with drupal has many advanteges over the .NET framework but did not say what they were. Its hard to believe that a scripting language has advantages over a compiled language. Am I missing something here.
PHP will run on essentially any server, for free. That's a fairly compelling feature for many folks.
There are lots of pros and cons of both, and it certainly doesn't boil down to scripting vs. compiled (incidentally, opcode caches like APC and things like Facebook's HipHop even the score on that point).
I'd say if someone's recommending PHP over ASP.NET, they code primarily in PHP. If they're recommending ASP.NET over PHP, they code primarily in ASP.NET. There's probably not much more to it than that in the responses you're getting.
Ugg, the weekly PHP vs ASP/.net argument. Let me frame it this way:
Both work. Well, actually.
Neither is really more "enterprise grade" than the other.
.Net developers (at least in my area) tend to make more. That being said, the Government "drank the microsoft Koolaid" and most jobs in my area are for government contractors. It may be different where you are.
PHP really doesn't have a great GUI yet. Not an issue to those of us who are command-line types, but it could be for you.
.net solutions tend to be relatively unified since Microsoft is driving the bus. There's about a million different ways to skin a cat in the PHP world because it is relatively fractured.
In my experience, PHP tends to be better documented with many more how-to's online. If you disagree, you might be a writer for Microsoft's tech net, which is written partially in some alien/geek mashup dialect of English.
MANY php how-tos and forums are frequented by non-native English speakers, and entire projects can be frustratingly impossible to understand because of the language barrier. It seems that Europe has picked up PHP at a higher rate than those of us in the States.
I was indirectly involved in a Microsoft Case Study that I think illustrates the difference. I worked at one Olympic non-profit on a php-based site. They opted to standardize on Microsoft and move to an entirely .net/sqlserver based. I moved over to another nearly identical non-profit (just a different sport) who was embarking on an in-house build of a PHP-based website with nearly identical functionality to the one I left.. The .net website, when completed, cost $1.5 million, involved 16 servers, and required 3 additional full-time staff hires to extend and maintain. The same level of service, programmed in-house by 3 guys on PHP in a shorter amount of time ran on 3 servers (two application, one MySQL DB) and cost about $25k when all was said and done. Microsoft published the .net solution as an official Microsoft Case Study success. You be the judge....when you compare the solutions, I'm not sure they're even. Both serve nearly identical traffic and process very similar amounts of money. I know where my time and money would go.
The most significant advantage of PHP might be that it is free and you can start developing it without having to install too many things. (Apache, PHP and an editor)
After working with the Prado framework for a while, I don't see any big differences with it anymore.
OF Course : Visual Studio makes developing and debugging ASP.NET apps a dream.
I tend to prefer c# development to php development, but both are perfectly valid choices.
One of the main advantages php has over asp.net is just the volume of ready made components, controls, libraries, and frameworks out there that are available for use.
It is entirely possible that your project could be assembled in php much faster than in asp.net if the right tools are available.
It doesn't really matter if you choose PHP or ASP.Net, both can deliver, both have a solid base, both are proven technologies. PHP is a mite cheaper, but ASP.Net is getting there.
Unless you're going to maintain the app for a long time ASP.Net's superior OOP capabilities aren't going to offer you much advantage. But if you've got a non-trival app then the multi-layered ASP.Net approach might be helpful.
Just get the coder you're most comfortable with.
I would choose ASP.NET mainly because of Visual Studios, makes programming a lot easier.
I would choose PHP mainly because of variety of frameworks, such as CodeIgniter.
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Closed 13 years ago.
I'd like to make a website, it's not a huge project, but I'm a bit out of the web design loop. The last time I made a website was probably around 2002. I figure the web frameworks and tools have come a ways since then. It's mostly the design aspect that I'd like it to make easier. I can do the backend language in any language.
My question is:
What are some tools or web frameworks that make the design aspect of making a website easier. It could be a framework in php/python/ruby.
As far as tools go, free/open source is preferred, but I wouldn't mind looking at good commercial alternatives.
You'll get many different subjective answers for your question, but as for me I would recommend django. It is flexible unlike CMS and the admin saves you alot of pain.
For PHP, I like the CMS Drupal and have found it to be very fast in getting a site up and running. Drupal also has a ton of modules to do almost anything you want. It is also very customizable (although that takes a little reading to figure out how to do it).
Ruby's de facto standard web framework is Ruby on Rails. It's a straight web framework, not a CMS like Drupal, but it doesn't take very much work to get a simple site up and running. It uses convention over configuration to be that simple, so you've got to learn the conventions to really understand what's going on.
I haven't used a Python web framework (except the one I wrote back in college), but I've heard good things about Django.
If you have experience with Java, there's a Groovy framework called Grails that is similar to Ruby on Rails, but runs on Java servers.
I once played around with CodeIgniter for a couple of weeks and found it pretty easy and fast to jump into.
Check out this list of PHP frameworks:
http://woork.blogspot.com/2008/11/20-great-php-framework-for-developers.html
Joomla is also said to be amazing, although that's more of a Content Management System than just a framework. But it makes the design of the site really simple.
It really depends on a couple things:
What are you familiar with? You indicated that you've done some web development in the past. What did you use? If you were using classic ASP, then learning ASP.NET should be less of a jump for you.
What are you trying to create? If all you need are static HTML files with a tiny bit of functionality, you could try learning PHP as it's pretty quick and easy to get going. If you need light database access, then maybe Ruby on Rails will be your cup of tea.
With that being said, I'd recommend the following in no particular order (just because I've tried them and they're all pretty decent):
Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET / ASP.NET MVC
PHP
django on Google App Engine gets you free(up to a point) and scalable hosting