ASP, JSP, or PHP???

[Arpit]

Which one is best for making websites...that are easy to maintain (update at a regular basis), has support by most of the browsers out there and *ahem* ..user friendly too...I don't know any of the three languages, but am gonna begin learning them, so which one should I start off with??

[zivan56]

You just like to argue dont you? fine....

One Question: How many times have you compiled the apache source code?

I dont know, probably alot of times since 1999

A better question might be: How many times have you modified the source code and then compiled it?

Every few builds I remove ssi and other stuff like proxy support etc.

As for the linux comment, the average user doesn't recompile anything, because they don't need/want/have to. Only linux people are obsessed with recompiling apps.

Agreed, I dont recompile kernals because I dont like to mess around when something is working right.

As for the .NET statement. Microsoft, as well as some other companies, is directly responsibile for the advancement of the internet. Don't worry I won't say they "invented" it. They saw an opportunity and then they developed it and developed their products around it.

I dont really care what they did, its more of a question of price and money. anything can be achived with money.

Anyway, I thought all Canadian were educated, but apparently not.

what do you hope to achive by saying this remark? I did go to school in Canada my whole life just to let you know, and what would that matter in this subject? If some bum from the place you are from did know ****, would you say the same about your country? This remark is really low and very stupid.

[Gumboot]

I totally agree with you, it will also revolutionise the way you pay for it. You cant really argue against the two since PHP is completely free, and ASP is not, that may mean it is more developed or the opposite.

Actually, ASP.NET is free. You can get it here. Of course, you still need IIS (support for other web servers is "in the works").

[zivan56]

Your right Gumboot, but it would be nice if they made it run on 3rd party server, then i would try it.

[akaj23]

So basically you've been bashing ASP .NET for the whole thread, and now you're saying you'd be willing to try it? After you were so sure that you were right, that you didn't need research if you had your cold hard facts that ASP .NET was inferior?

Sounds pretty hypocritical to me.

[zivan56]

JaggedFlame

I would use it providing there are 3rd part sotware, or a seperate ide and a free ide, Borland Delphi is an excellent example, you can download the personal edition absolutely free. I am not a hypocrit, but that your own personal opinion, I think you are confused, that is my optionion. And i was not bashing ASP.NET at the start if you read up, rather a person getting SSI and ASP mixed up. And it would no way be faster than PHP, so those are the cold hard facts ;)

[Arpit]

Ugh!...this was never meant to turn into a freakin' debate!! I like the new information and stuff, but still!!...don't have to bash the two languages here!! I plan to learn BOTH ASP and PHP...I just wanted to know which one to start off with first, something which might give me an idea of what it's like, so something not too hard for a beginner, and giving a clear picture of what's it gonna be later on.

Personally, from what I've seen so far, is that:

Whatever one language can do, the other can as well...

Main difference is that

ASP is promoted for Windows, and PHP is promoted for *nix

ASP IS relatively easier to learn, and grasp the concept of, because (well, let's face it, it's MS), but then again, it's not open source. Agreed...however, I'm nowhere close to being a hardcore developer which means, open Source or closed, at this point, it doesn't make a difference to me...:o

At this point, I think I'm going to go with ASP FOR NOW...because it's easier to learn/understand which would prepare me well for PHP for the future...

Geez...I should've named this thread something like, 'Two languages to learn, which one to start off with first???' :right:

[Arpit]

...just another thing that I'd like to clear out..

The idea is LEARNING over here...not EFFICIENY at the moment...that comes later! ;)

[zivan56]

Well then I suggest PHP for easiness to learn took me 3 months to learn PHP to be in the middle somewhere, which is the shortest it took for me to learn a programming language (except Delphi). Btw, I also know ASP, it looks easy at the simple stage, but later it gets complicated and annoying sometimes.

[Arpit]

how about ASP.net?? i heard they had some nice new features there...

[akaj23]

It does. robinmthomas covered a lot of them. I would recommend looking on MSDN for everything you want to look up... for example, I wanted to upload data by POST through SOAP/XML, and I had no idea how; looking on MSDN gave me everything I needed (the constructors/objects for the WebClient class, etc.).

Oh yeah... ;)

[Gumboot]

Here are the main new features of ASP.NET:

1. .NET framework can be utilized (a huge collection of functionality, XML, Date/Time, IO, networking, etc).

2. Fully compiled for 3-5x speed increase. Disadvantage is that the page must be recompiled every time it is modified.

3. Supports 25+ languages (VB.NET, C#, and JScript.NET are immediately available).

4. Web controls (haven't tried these yet, but apparently will output an HTML calendar).

5. Flexible support for page caching (you can even cache parts of a page).

[akaj23]

Web controls are cool. You can do an XSLT transformation, without loading any external DLLs like in PHP, with the following line of code:

Lots more cool stuff too. :)

[Jessterw]

Originally posted by robinmthomas

... That's right. You can write ASP.NET (ver 4 of ASP) in C++, VB, C#, Java (some form, don't know for sure), and more languages are coming Colbal for one.

You write in the language you want and then it compiles it. Yes, you heard me correctly. ASP.NET is a complied language whereas, the others are scripts that get read at runtime....

... NOTE - Apache, mySQL, PHP are good tools, but the learning curve is much higher and so is the development time.

Just to clarify something, ASP and ASP.NET are actually two seperate languages. While there may be some similiarities, they are very different. As stated above, ASP is a scripting language, while ASP.NET is a compiled language.

One the second quote, about Apache, mySQL, and PHP being too hard, that's not really true. If you are familiar with Perl and other scripting languages, PHP is very easy to learn. Apache isn't all that hard to configure, no harder than IIS in fact, if you know what to do. mySQL is easy if you know anything about SQL. If you went with this implementation I would actually use PostgreSQL, as it is far more stable than mySQL.

[iUk]

The new features of ASP.Net are awesome! File Uploads, Email generation, on-the-fly image generation, and 1000's of other things previously limited to windows applications are now available to ASP.Net.

ASP and PHP may be on the same page, but ASP.Net can do so much more than any other system out there...

Also, ASP.NET is 100% free, except for the Windows server it needs to run on. :)

Well, that's primarily true. Everything except for the server is completely free. Download the .Net framework for ASP.Net, and develop it in Notepad or any other plain text editor. The only reason to have Visual Studio.Net is to make it easier for non-web/HTML developers to transition from Visual Basic application development over to ASP.Net web application development. VS.Net compiles the codes for you etc, but you can always download the compile program and do it your self. And the framework compiles the page the first time it is requested, so that you can create the pages as text files and have them compiled once at run time...

So other than a server (which soon the .Net ports will be available for other servers) everything is free! :)

iUk

[robinmthomas]

He is qouted as saying:

"...Apache isn't all that hard to configure, no harder than IIS..."

Come on? Do you really think that is true. IIS has a world-famous (or is it infamous :) ) GUI to configure with a nice help section, etc, etc.

The way you configure Apache is via conf file. Sorta like an INI.

Anyone can bumble through setting up IIS. I could install IIS without knowing anything and get it up and running in 5 minutes. However, I could not say the same about Apache. I wouldn't even know where to start. Probably searching the web and at that point I have already used more than 5 minutes.

You can argue almost anything else about apache, but ease of configuration is not one the highlights.

[Jessterw]

Originally posted by robinmthomas

He is qouted as saying:

"...Apache isn't all that hard to configure, no harder than IIS..."

Come on? Do you really think that is true. IIS has a world-famous (or is it infamous :) ) GUI to configure with a nice help section, etc, etc.

The way you configure Apache is via conf file. Sorta like an INI.

Anyone can bumble through setting up IIS. I could install IIS without knowing anything and get it up and running in 5 minutes. However, I could not say the same about Apache. I wouldn't even know where to start. Probably searching the web and at that point I have already used more than 5 minutes.

You can argue almost anything else about apache, but ease of configuration is not one the highlights.

I wasn't meaning that Apache was easy to install and setup for just anyone, I was meaning it is for those who have some understanding of the way Apache works.

I am a big fan of the IIS GUI, but just because it is easy to administer, that doesn't mean that a user would know what to do when using the GUI. Also bumbling through the installation and configuration of a web server is not exactly something one should do, especially on a system that is Internet accessible.

There are also some pretty good GUI's available for Apache, and althought they aren't as dumbed down as the IIS GUI, they make things alot easier. Maybe you can't setup Apache up in 5 minutes, but I would much rather have spent some time on a secure installation than an insecure one (which is why so many IIS installs are very insecure... the people who set them up just bumble throught the install in 5 minutes).

[zivan56]

IIS may be easy to install, but it is also easily exploited. Like the infamous Anonymous FTP that is made when installing IIS on 2k/NT. I agree it is easy to that IIS is faster to configure, but it is like having an on/off switch for your cars gas, there's no real control unless you tweak it manually. You also have to keep in mind that Apache is free and IIS is not.

[akaj23]

Originally posted by zivan56

You also have to keep in mind that Apache is free and IIS is not.

No, you don't. Syntax Error is running Windows. IIS is free for his OS.

[zivan56]

It is free I was talking about in General. Also if you dont have advanced server, it will only allow 20 or so connections.

[Arpit]

Question...since I'll be using ASP.net, I'm guessing I'll have to use MSSQL...is that a free thing that I can get, or do I have to buy it or something??...or is it included in one of the MS's softwares??

I have:

MS Visual Studio.net Enterprise Architect

MS Visio 2002 + Enterprise Network Tools

MS Office XP Developer

...any others?? :o

[Arpit]

Question #2: Do I need a specific web editing program which supports CSS as well, or is there something in VS.net for that?? And what programs are out there that have CSS editing and stuff??...does 1st Page 2000??

[robinmthomas]

zivan56 needs to start researching his facts before he makes the comment.

Windows 2000 Standard allows for the exact same amount of connections as Advanced Server......and that is unlimited. Now that is in terms of the OS, there are still the limitations of your hardware.

Windows Pro only allows a limited amount of connections, but Server, Adv Srv, Data Center allow unlimited.

Syntax Error : You can use whatever database you want. Oracle, Access, SQL Server, DB2.

As for CSS, I don't know if VS.NET supports it. I know it can understand it, but I don't know if it has an editor. I would recammend Dreamweaver for the "pretty stuff" and the VS.NET for the programming. Both should have no trouble ignoring what they don't understand and you can switch back and forth.

[Arpit]

Ooh...cool...I have Access, Oracle 8, and...maybe MS SQL Server..

By the way, what is the difference between Dreamweaver, and Dreamweaver Ultradev??

[Jessterw]

Originally posted by Syntax Error

Ooh...cool...I have Access, Oracle 8, and...maybe MS SQL Server..

By the way, what is the difference between Dreamweaver, and Dreamweaver Ultradev??

In simple terms, Dreamweaver UltraDev allows you to easily (ie, drag and drop) connect to databases, as with Dreamweaver you would have to manually add the needed code. Besides that their is not that many differences.

Also to answer your other question about MSSQL, that is Microsoft SQL Server, which does cost money... lots of it ;). However there is a slimmed down version of it that comes for free with Visual Studio (not sure about VS.NET, but I'm sure it does). You can use it to do everything (don't quote me on that) you can in the full blown server, and then easily transfer it over later on.

I wouldn't use Access for a production system unless you will have very few connections, as it has a limit (can't remember what right off hand). For an alternative to Access and MS SQL, I recommend Postgre SQL.

[Jessterw]

Originally posted by robinmthomas

... As for CSS, I don't know if VS.NET supports it. I know it can understand it, but I don't know if it has an editor. I would recammend Dreamweaver for the "pretty stuff" and the VS.NET for the programming. Both should have no trouble ignoring what they don't understand and you can switch back and forth.

VS.NET supports CSS, but I would still use Dreamweaver or an actual stylesheet editor if needed, although VS.NET is very useful if you already know what you want to put it.