Php Vs Asp

[Arc]

I have recently learned php..I have never used ASP and i am pretty new to the whole web development deal. I am very familiar with VB though.

I know ASP is close to VB, but i hear ASP is hard to integrate with HTML and javascript etc... Whereas i find PHP very easy to add in.


Which would you say is better? PHP or ASP and why?

[Sastraxi]

Facts:

PHP and ASP both add in to HTML the same way... ASP uses <% ... code ... %> while PHP uses many (<?, etc).

ASP can be written in VBScript or JavaScript.
PHP can only be written in PHP.

PHP is proven to be a lot faster than ASP in many areas.
ASP has proven to be a lot faster than PHP in many areas.

PHP is cross-platform.
ASP is cross-platform, to a point (3rd party software such as Chili!ASP is needed)

ASP has thousands of objects and can use any ActiveX controls you have.
PHP has no support for ActiveX controls, to my knowledge.

So there are just some of the arguments. Personally, I prefer ASP because it's easier to integrate with what I'm already doing (GUI VB apps, etc). Others prefer PHP because it can be used with Apache very easily. It's really up to you.

[mendhak]

but i hear ASP is hard to integrate with HTML and javascript etc...

Where did you hear that?

HTML is already integrated with ASP, but I don't think Javascript is. For example, I have problems transferring a variable or a value between JavaScript and ASP(VBScript). Is it easy to do that in PHP?

[Feetstink]

ASP.Net, though I have very little personal experience with it, seems to be the way to go. It's quite easy to integrate with HTML. It also allows you to keep your code separate from the html, meaning you can keep the functionality separate from the design of the page (for the most part).
In terms of languages, you can use C#, VB (not vbScript), J# or some other languages.

[monte96]

ASP has only about 6 core objects but it is COM compliant which gives it access to thousands (maybe more than that) of already built COM Components, plus you can create your own server side COM components to handle complex tasks for your application.

I don't have much experience with PHP (read: none). But I can't imagine anything easier to work with than ASP.

[Incognito44]

I typically use ASP for a Windows box and PHP for Unix running Apache. If you do web page programming for others you may not always have a choice of picking a server that has your perfered scripting language since it is dependent on the hosting company and what they offer.
It is almost inevitable that you will have to learn to be a little dangerous with both.

[JoshT]

Originally posted by Sastraxi

ASP has thousands of objects and can use any ActiveX controls you have.
PHP has no support for ActiveX controls, to my knowledge.

PHP does have COM support on Windows, AFAIK.

[JoshT]

My random thoughts:

ASP is language independant - you can use Perl, Python, or Haskell with it, or you can write your own language for it, not just the obvious VBScript or JScript. However, this flexibility has to slow the speed down at least a tiny bit.

ASP has a simple OO wrapper around basic CGI functionality - any other functionality is left to language features or COM objects. PHP has a better chunk of default functionality, especially compared to VBScript, but not the ASP + PerlScript combo.

While both PHP and ASP have had their share of security holes, PHP seems to be worse in as far as encouraging its programmer's to write insecure code - things like automatically assigning form variables to $variables.

Also, PHP is too much like Perl to not always work like Perl, IMHO, but that's a personal preference coming from a big fan of Perl.