If you are only doing work for fun, or for small projects, then there is
really no match for PHP in what you can do easily or quickly. ASP comes
somewhat close in ease of use, but ASP has some really annoying lack of
features ( Such as not being able to use variables for file includes )
But for serious projects that will need much more functionality, you are
going to run into a wall in PHP because of the lack of interop with
other technologies(other than linux versions).
One of the things that you can definitely do in ASP.NET is actually see
what you are designing. You can use custom controls that have properties
that you can set in a GUI, instead of just using code.
And one of the big areas of improvement in .NET is it's ability to
handle XML data. PHP has to use extra libraries to even handle it, which
have to be installed in the binary distribution, and you won't find them
on every web server out there. It's been a while since I've used PHP,
but that was a severe problem before.
You have much better control over data in general in .NET as well, with
all of the flexibility in ADO.NET.
But again, PHP works really great for sites that don't have a ton of
functionality.
Lowell
news@celticbear.com wrote:[color=blue]
> Hmm, OK, all that sounds impressive, but there's the deal...I don't
> have a CIS degree. I taught myself PHP (and ASP too for that matter) by
> the process of:
> "I need to figure out a way to store this info and recall it later. Oh
> and formatting it this way would be nice too," and then using webmonkey
> or php.net or newsgroups or an inexpensive book from Amazon to figure
> it out.
> So I know how to store, recall, format dynamic data but I don't know
> the proper names of any of the processes. "Array" and "Function" is
> about as far as I know.
>
> So, in stoopid-idiot terms, what are the benefits? If that's even
> possible to do it that way.
> Like, ".Net allows you to make swirly colors and go 'moo'." Better yet,
> I know this is nearly impossible, but are there Web sites out there
> that use .Net technology that is doing something I can SEE that is not
> doable in PHP/ASP?
>
> Like "A site using only ASP to make swirly colors go 'moo' looks like
> this: aspsite.com; but if one uses .Net to do it, it looks like this:
> aspnetsite.com plus because of asp.net you have these options whereas
> you can't with ASP."
> You know what I mean?
>
> Saying "it isn't a true OOP language so you end up having to do a lot
> of tricks to get something to work right." unfortunately doesn't mean
> anything to me. =( I wouldn't know OOP from an apple. I know if I have
> a mySQL database, and I need to store data, and search data, and print
> the data back to the user, or create a shopping cart even I can do that
> pretty easy in PHP. I can't imagine anything I've had to do in PHP that
> I've had to use a "trick" to get to work. But then, I probably only
> know 5-10% of what even PHP is capable of.
> Which is why if .Net is going to be the way of the Internet, I'd rather
> learn about all the cool things C#.Net can do instead of the rest of
> the 90% of PHP. But, I need examples of what .Net can do over
> PHP/JavaScript to know just what I'm missing. What kinds of things
> would I be able to do, sites I could develop with .Net that I can't do
> now.
>
> Thanks for your time!!
> Liam
>[/color]
