Hi Everyone, 

I've been learning asp.net now for about 4 months and its going well, ive managed to create some basic stuff which im very happy with. But if im on a different forum to this then they only talk about PHP, have I learn't the wrong lanaguarge? I dont no anything about PHP but from what i can see asp.net looks to be alot more technical and advanced, is this the case. What is the benefit of using ASP.NET against PHP

 Thanks Guy.

It's going to be a matter of personal taste mostly. 

 Personally, I prefer .NET because the code-behind model lends itself well to the Model-View-Control construct.  Seperating the 3 is a good design habit to get into because either one should be modifiable with very little change to the other two.  I don't get along with "Gateway Interface" languages where you have to embed code with the visuals (as is the case in PHP, ASP, JSP  etc).

 Also, I work as a contractor for the government, so I don't have much of a choice.  All systems are microsoft.  :-P

 It is easier to learn PHP, it is easier to create a basic PHP script with Notepad. But it is more difficult to debug PHP scripts and update them. ASP.NET is more solid. Anyway I'm using both of them. PHP has lots of examples and ready-to-use libraries. And if you need something simple, you can do it with a Notepad and 30 minutes of time. With PHP you should not recompile your project with Visual Studio every time you need to change a single line of code.

 It is easier to learn PHP, it is easier to create a basic PHP script with Notepad. But it is more difficult to debug PHP scripts and update them.

On the contrary, PHP interpreter is very good with pinning the error. The error messages are a lot clearer than with .net which usually give you a criptic message and a stack print out.

 
If you want to learn PHP, skip PHP4, go directly to PHP5.  It has a good OOP support, plenty of frameworks written in PHP to support the MVC pattern, you do have to be pretty disciplined to write good code.

 
I find PHP a lot more clear, no frills and dll hell, assemblies, and all that other .NET jazz. No dataview controls that have their own flavour of html....ASP.net certainly has introduced a lot of bloat and complexity to web dev.

Well i started off learning asp.net first and have been learning it now for 8 months. Learning the asp first has given me a understanding for server side code so now when i look at PHP i have a understanding for what is going on which is good. I think that if someone is going to learn Server side code they should start with asp.net and use the VWD program because its brilliant, easy to understand shed loads of resources and everything is built into it. I have downloaded Zend for PHP but its not great.

But i do need to learn PHP.

I came across this schema called VS.PHP for Visual Studio. But i only have Visual Web Developer (the free one) but VS.PHP doesnt work with it, it only works with the paid one.

Has anyone got any ideas how i could write PHP in visual web developer, is there any software out there or plugins which i can connect to VWD???

apg1985:

Learning the asp first has given me a understanding for server side code so now when i look at PHP i have a understanding for what is going on which is good. I think that if someone is going to learn Server side code they should start with asp.net and use the VWD program because its brilliant, easy to understand shed loads of resources and everything is built into it. I have downloaded Zend for PHP but its not great.

I think you are actually misunderstanding a very important point here. PHP is an interpreter, and ASP.net code needs to be compiled. There is a BIG difference. PHP5 is OOP so you can use the same OOP patterns as in .NET, but the code is still being interpreted which is fundamentally different that Adding references, dlls into /bin, then compiling.

apg1985:

I came across this schema called VS.PHP for Visual Studio. But i only have Visual Web Developer (the free one) but VS.PHP doesnt work with it, it only works with the paid one.

Has anyone got any ideas how i could write PHP in visual web developer, is there any software out there or plugins which i can connect to VWD???

You don't want to use VWD (or anything MS) with PHP. You could, but why? PHP is an open-source product, not MS one. There is no benefit in it, aside from text highlighting, and that you could find in a majority of free text editors.

Here is how to set-up PHP in 30 mins:

-  Download XAMPP (PHP, APache, MySQL)

-  Download Crimson (or Nodepad++, or JEdit) or any other free text editor, you could even use Notepad

you are good to go. 

apg1985:

Has anyone got any ideas how i could write PHP in visual web developer, is there any software out there or plugins which i can connect to VWD???

Take a look at Phalanger. It's a PHP compiler that targets the .net runtime, giving you the best of both worlds. You can also get a PHP editor that runs in the free Visual Studio shell. Think of it as a kind of Visual PHP Express Edition.

CosmicGirl:

I find PHP a lot more clear, no frills and dll hell, assemblies, and all that other .NET jazz. No dataview controls that have their own flavour of html....ASP.net certainly has introduced a lot of bloat and complexity to web dev.

I use both and personally, I agree with CosmicGirl.  I feel that ASP.net has a lot of added things that aren't necissary.  I feel that PHP is a lot easier to learn especially since the syntax its so close to so many other languages.  I personally think that PHP is alot more flexible and easier to adapt to the situation that you need it for.  I use ASP.net at work and I use PHP for my personal site and I like PHP.  My process of learning has gone from ASP Classic(which I liked as well), to PHP, to ASP.net.

I have been with ASP.NEt since its 1.0 days. Created a lot of websites with it. But now I am thinking of migrating to PHP. The following are some of my reasons

1. Most important reason --- ASP.NET hosting is more expensive than PHP hosting

2. SQL Server 2005 hosting is more expensive than MySQL . I know you can use MySQl with ASP.NET. But since MSSQL is so well integrated with VS , you really don't feel like using other databases.

3. PHP has a much more larger community than ASP.NET. You have PHP scripts to do almost anything

4. You can't have multiple websites with a single shared hosting account. For example with a single Deluxe hosting account in GoDAddy you can host upto 25 websites with 25 different domain names in PHP. Each domain name can point to a folder in your account.  However if you use ASP.NET you will be able to host only a single website.

Because of the above reasons ASP.NET loses out to PHP very badly specially for hobby programmers and freelance web developers. The cost of hosting ASP.NET websites  is just way  too  expensive