ASP.NET and PHP
For quite a while now, I have had a keen interest in ASP.NET. I’ve done a couple of really small sites as a way of getting to grips with it. First was a site that was mainly just static with a built in contact form to send an email, simple stuff. My next “learning project” was a really basic blog engine that was intended to be used on jason-mitchell.com but in the end, I felt there was too much learning involved alongside my work for university and the Imagine Cup. I decided to go ahead and set up a trust WordPress blog and put my ASP.NET blog engine on a back burner for the time being.
Having 6 years of PHP experience, I have to say I found some things in ASP.NET quite difficult to get my head around initially; the biggest thing being data access (which turned out to be incredibly simple). Despite the difficult transition between the languages, I have to say ASP.NET is probably my current language of choice even with my lack of experience with it. This is partly due to my love of all things C# but also it’s clear to me that once you figure out the basics of ASP.NET, development is significantly faster than with PHP.
It’s important to understand that I’m not shunning PHP or trying to knock it down. There are many things about it that make it stronger than ASP.NET. First off, is the vast widespread adoption of PHP. I’ve found that its a million times easier to find support online for PHP than it is for ASP.NET; occassionally I have found myself trawling through pages upon pages of useless information just to find out one small thing in ASP.NET. Secondly, is the sheer flexibility of PHP. There are times when that extra freedom in PHP can just make life that little bit easier (as long as you can keep the code tidy)!
In my opinion, the pros and cons of both languages pretty much even things out (bearing in mind my still evident lack of knowledge of ASP.NET). However, I’m sure the adoption of a language also largely depends on the programmers background; someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience with a .NET language or another object oriented language such as Java, might find it is easier to take up PHP.
At the end of the day, for general websites I will probably choose ASP.NET for the sake of having another “learning project” but also because I’m a bit of a nut for C# and Visual Studio!
