PHP vs ASP : comparing apples to pears | Web Development

DING DING DING - ROUND 1

Imagine a scene if you will ... a group of colleges are down the pub after a long week. Naturally, their discusions turn to work - mainly because they are like minded people and they feel a long standing debate needed rapping up. The debate in question is, 'Which is better, ASP or PHP'. They decide that the question isn't going to come to a natural conclusion and they decide on a coin toss. 'Heads' is ASP and 'tails' is PHP. The coin is flipped and is rolling time after time as its makes its way through the air...

Now back to reality! It's difficult to compare both as fundamentally they are very different. ASP is a framework whilst PHP is a programming language.

ASP

This framework comes from Microsoft towers. Now before I go too much further, I would like to say that I'm not trying to bash Microsoft but when it comes to anything web its just far to easy, but in the balance that is a blog post I will try and keep personal opinions out of. ASP.Net has been around just under 10 years now and has seen a very early success with a lot of large scale businesses using it as a way of gaining a web presence.

ASP.Net is, in its own description, a hard framework to learn. Due to this high learning curve, ASP.Net effectively shot itself in the foot when other technologies came along such as PHP (more on this later). ASP.Net does have its advantages though. It uses 'code-behind model' which allows a far greater neatness to the code you are producing. As the functional code sits behind the graphical front end of the site this stops unreadable code that comes from mixing a server-side language and html which can often happen with PHP. The 2 programming languages used within ASP.net are Visual basic which is a very old and clunky language, and the more up-to-date C# which allows object-oriented programming.

In order to run an ASP.Net site you have to run it on a Microsoft based server which runs IIS. This can become quite costly in the long run. ASP.Net is also quite bloated which will mean that the servers will either have to be beefy or you will have to have a multiple servers to spread the load.

PHP

PHP is possibly the godfather of web development, it's seen a huge success and increase in populatrity in recent years. This has put it in front of ASP when it comes to ratings (http://www.nexen.net/images/stories/phpversion/200609/evolution.global.en.png) mainly due to it's  ease of use. PHP is based around C this in comparison to ASP makes it easier to understand and learn. Unlike ASP.Net, PHP doesn't run a code-behind model which means that PHP and HTML sit side-by-side.

PHP is open source which has lead to some great projects and a willingness to share knowledge with fellow developers on forums and chat rooms. Due to the open source nature of PHP it has been widely integrated into most hosting packages, making it easy for people to deploy web applications written in PHP.

Conclusion

And with a crash the coin lands on the table, everybody looking on with complete shock, the coin didn't land on tails nor did it land on heads. What are the odds on that!!! Looks like the debate continues.