Why would I use ASP.net instead of PHP?

[aidanjt]

PHP does not, and will probably never have, the depth of framework behind it that .NET and Java have.

That's an intentional feature.

There's nothing stopping you from building your own PHP framework for what you use it for most frequently, or use someone else's, or none at all. Not having a stock framework just makes framework competition more viable for people who need/think they want some giant bloated system. There's even an official Zend-supported Zend framework which is free to use.

[TheAnimus]

There's nothing stopping you from building your own PHP framework for what you use it for most frequently, or use someone else's, or none at all. Not having a stock framework just makes framework competition more viable for people who need/think they want some giant bloated system. There's even an official Zend-supported Zend framework which is free to use.

Nonsense.

The language lacks key features, has no coherent design pattern.

Classes, piss poor, lack of refelction, no functional syntax are the ones that spring to mind immediately.

There are many competition frameworks to the main .Net ones, in fact as I've already suggested m0n0rail.

But there is NOTHING in PHP that comes close to nHibernate, Rx, LINQ, TPL.

I think the difference is here that there are people who have done extensive PHP and modern languages, and those who have only done PHP. Its easy to tell because there is nothing, not one thing, that I ever miss from PHP when working in .Net or Java.

[aidanjt]

The language lacks key features, has no coherent design pattern.

And despite that, PHP is the most successful web programming language in the world. And practically every 'lacking language feature' has been developed by 3rd parties. A really good language is not one which does everything for you, but let's you do anything you want to do.

Classes, piss poor

More flippant PHP classes comments? Really?

lack of refelction

http://php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php

no functional syntax are the ones that spring to mind immediately.

http://php.net/manual/en/functions.anonymous.php

There are many competition frameworks to the main .Net ones, in fact as I've already suggested m0n0rail.

I didn't say there wasn't any alternatives to .Net. But framework proliferation is particularly high in PHP circles.

But there is NOTHING in PHP that comes close to nHibernate, Rx, LINQ, TPL.

http://devzone.zend.com/1205/linq-fo...query-for-php/

I think the difference is here that there are people who have done extensive PHP and modern languages, and those who have only done PHP. Its easy to tell because there is nothing, not one thing, that I ever miss from PHP when working in .Net or Java.

And likewise, there are people who only know .Net, and don't know the first thing about PHP, and never the less, feel obliged to attack PHP, as if it ate their first born.

It's just a language, it doesn't matter if you can't get your head around it, other people can. The world keeps falling towards and away from the Sun.

[finlay666]

ASP.net also requires compilation, which although may have some advantages, it does mean that it is harder to make small changes and also requires a package with which to do it, whereas all you need is a text editor for PHP and if there is a quick fix that needs doing you can do it from anywhere as the source code is right in front of you.

Not strictly true.

Asp.Net Websites (older systems) don't require pre-compilation, it's optional (though updating more than 75 files will IIRC trigger an IIS restart on the website)
Asp.Net Web Applications do

One of the things with ASP is that you need to invest in more hardware and pay licence fees to Microsoft in order to run it, whereas PHP runs on Linux (and Windows!), which requires less hardware for the same performance and no licence fees.

Asp.Net runs on Linux. It's called using Mono correctly, Miguel de Icaza has demoed off the latest version of Asp.Net MVC running on a Mac with Mono before at conferences.

Sure it is well and good that you are able to programme ASP.net in a number of different languages, but if you have someone programme it in say J# (or any of the other countless languages), but you only know C# then you are pretty much screwed for making changes. PHP on the other hand changes very little, so if you know PHP you can work on any project that has been done in PHP. This also means that you can move PHP projects from version to version with generally no changes required.

Yes and no, CLR is an awesome thing (expecially when I can write a small binary add on in VB that C# doesn't support (XML literals)) but does introduce this error, but in general locking yourself down to one language/technology is a bad move as a developer. I can also write a script in IronRuby or IronPython and include that thanks to the CLR.

In addition to Mono running on most things, I should point out that Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC under a Free Software license too.

Web API is open source as well as MVC now
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archi...en-source.aspx

http://devzone.zend.com/1205/linq-fo...query-for-php/

Shame it hasn't been updated in 3 years, the new Parallel computing methods on large objects is pretty funky. It also doesn't seem to support standard dataset queries such as Union, Intersect or even Distinct

I'm not going to sit and attack PHP, I use it very rarely (usually through choice of knowing the tool I use, over bludgeoning about with something I don't need to know). But a lot of what has been said against ASP.Net isn't 100% true and some of it is quite outdated information.

End of the day... use what you want to, there is a lot on asp.net training on places like http://asp.net (pluralsight provided the videos IIRC) and there is a lot of flexibility, like making an external oData feed in about an hour for a mapped database with query interceptors to remove, order and enhance data

On a side note... the perfomance part is a bit of a pissing contest. I rewrote 3 SQL views on a clients database today and it's now faster without javascript or caching (their site loads a LOT in post page complete) than the number 1 ranked site on google in the UK in their line of e-commerce, writing efficient code is far better than relying on the speed of your tech to do it for you

[blokeinkent]

to answer your original question, and without getting involved with the other discussion and seeing if I can piss the furthest, it really depends on what your project needs are, where you plan on hosting it, how much time you have, and what you plan to do with it in the future.......

If it's a mickey mouse project for yourself and you want to get it up quick then stick with what you know and use your PHP knowledge.... cheap hosting platform as well.

If it's something to go commercial and needs to be scalable then perhaps ASP.NET, but your deployment will cost you more and beyond your current abilities you'll need time to learn as you go.

You can write a load of inefficient tosh in either so I wouldn't let that sway you.

[meems]

And despite that, PHP is the most successful web programming language in the world.

Presumably with that logic, WinXP is the best OS in the world too?

I was a web developer doing PHP in a former life - it's probably still the language I am most proficient with now. Since switching to Python (Django if you have a particular web emphasis), I've never looked back. PHP isn't an efficient language - maybe that doesn't apply in many cases, but for me the performance pushed me in the direction of firstly java, and then python.

Nowadays I'd rather write a bash script than PHP. Did I mention that I think Python is great?

Mono will allow you to run asp outside of a microsoft platform, but how compatible and supported is it? How efficient is that additional layer of overhead?