burj Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 I would like to get some web development skills and was wondering which route to follow the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP or the ASP.net with SQL Server route ? Is one easier than the other? thanks for any input Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Tanoru Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 What skills do you currently have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 burj Posted February 21, 2010 Author Share Posted February 21, 2010 What skills do you currently have? on the web development side - a bit of HTML and CSS I did some time ago, but I'm sure that a lot has changed on the web since then such as use of AJAX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Hot Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 It really depends on your goals. If you want to freelance, go with PHP. It is undoubtedly the better platform. Free, pleasure to code in, ten-fold the online support resources. If you want to find a job, however, consider ASP.NET because as the less popular platform, professionals are fewer in between and as such in higher demand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sbauer Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 It really depends on your goals. If you want to freelance, go with PHP. It is undoubtedly the better platform. Free, pleasure to code in, ten-fold the online support resources. If you want to find a job, however, consider ASP.NET because as the less popular platform, professionals are fewer in between and as such in higher demand. Sadly, there's very little fact in this post. I think there's a lot of doubt that PHP is the better platform. Pleasure to code in is an opinion that many people will disagree with. Yes, there are a lot of online tutorials, but the majority are awful. If the OP is going to freelance, he/she should figure out which language they like and experiment. The truth is that there are just more jobs available for .NET developers than PHP developers. Some companies tend to stick with Microsoft (and other commercial) technologies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 +virtorio MVC Posted February 21, 2010 MVC Share Posted February 21, 2010 I'd say set up both environments and get experience with the two. In no way is PHP a better language/platform, they're both different and both get the job done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 markwolfe Veteran Posted February 21, 2010 Veteran Share Posted February 21, 2010 PHP's big advantage: cross-platform. (Y) LAMP servers are easy enough to set up. And they are free. As said above: There is nothing wrong with learning both. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Kudos Veteran Posted February 21, 2010 Veteran Share Posted February 21, 2010 ... The truth is that there are just more jobs available for .NET developers than PHP developers. Some companies tend to stick with Microsoft (and other commercial) technologies. This is not a simple truth (if a truth at all) by any stretch. When I was job hunting here in Ireland, I found there to be a roughly equal number of opportunities in ASP.NET and PHP. The OP should take a look at a local job website and compare availability. Somewhere like Germany has massively more opportunities (3:1) for PHP developers judging by a cursory search on monster.de. Monster US also favours PHP. In addition, because the entry level for PHP is so easy (and because a lot of advanced developers simply loath PHP), good PHP developers can be difficult to find with the market saturated in bad to poor developers (who all still think they are great). As a result the pay scale (at least here) rises dramatically. PHP programmers often start out as hobbyists whereas ASP.NET programmers are usually graduates who are on the career path whether they like it or not. Good PHP programmers as a result are usually more passionate about developing versus their ASP.NET counterparts. This is by my experience at least. So, back on topic, if you want to just get your feet wet with some programming (which I suspect you do), I recommend PHP. You can set it up a development environment on any operating system relatively easily with one-click installers like WAMP or MAMP, or a linux package manager and a quick google. PHP has some of the best docs available (PHP has a lot of quirks, these docs almost make up for it) and you'll have your "Hello World" up in no time. When it comes time to put your site live, the cheapest and most prevalent option will always be a PHP+Apache web host, but even if you wanted to use a Windows Server, PHP is be available on that too. That said, there's no reason not too look deeper into both and judge for yourself if you are really interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sbauer Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 This is not a simple truth (if a truth at all) by any stretch. When I was job hunting here in Ireland, I found there to be a roughly equal number of opportunities in ASP.NET and PHP. The OP should take a look at a local job website and compare availability. Somewhere like Germany has massively more opportunities (3:1) for PHP developers judging by a cursory search on monster.de. Monster US also favours PHP. Yes, it depends on your area. PHP programmers often start out as hobbyists whereas ASP.NET programmers are usually graduates who are on the career path whether they like it or not. Good PHP programmers as a result are usually more passionate about developing versus their ASP.NET counterparts. This is by my experience at least. And the good ASP.NET developers are good because of college, not because they're passionate? Most ASP.NET developers are not good. They're your typical 9-5 developers that get as far as the Microsoft training will take them. However, the good ones are really good and you can spot them easily. They're passionate; they're speakers; they work on open source applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Kudos Veteran Posted February 21, 2010 Veteran Share Posted February 21, 2010 (edited) And the good ASP.NET developers are good because of college, not because they're passionate? Most ASP.NET developers are not good. They're your typical 9-5 developers that get as far as the Microsoft training will take them. However, the good ones are really good and you can spot them easily. They're passionate; they're speakers; they work on open source applications. As far as I can tell, they exist in far fewer numbers, and that's only by direct comparison to PHP, taking the entirely unscientific method of asking google http://www.google.co...NET+open+source http://www.google.co...PHP+open+source In addition, Sourceforge.net and Github both rank PHP orders of magnitude above ASP.NET Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sbauer Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 As far as I can tell, they exist in far fewer numbers, and that's only by direct comparison to PHP, taking the entirely unscientific method of asking google http://www.google.co...NET+open+source http://www.google.co...PHP+open+source In addition, Sourceforge.net and Github both rank PHP orders of magnitude above ASP.NET I never said they were more. There are more PHP developers in general so it would make sense that there are more PHP projects. I mean, how many open source PHP forums exist? 65? You also have to include the numbers for C#, and VB.NET. CodePlex.com hosts many .NET projects as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Affinity Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 I'm going to go out on a limb here and say.... Why not Tomcat and Java? :D I'm in a rotational program at work currently, and in my most recent office their expert developers were steadfast Java advocates, so I was forced to learn it. I picked it up pretty quick and produce a major product in 9 months. I developed in Java using Eclipse Tomcat/Google Web Toolkit/Maven/Hibernate for my web service and Oracle for my DB. Everything but Oracle is free, but Hibernate (the Database handling framework) can handle MySQL as well. I absolutely love it for enterprise-level products. Realistically STARTING with Java for the purposes of web development is not practical. Everything is about using very large frameworks that have steep learning curves, but I wanted to mention it because no one seems to consider it, despite most of it being open source with a large community. I started with PHP/MySQL myself, and I started with this before college. I found it easy to pick up and it was more hobby than anything. Now and I have no specific preference for any single language, and it often depends on what I'm doing. So I'd recommend going with LAMP. Once you learn the best practices of web and database development learning other languages is pretty simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 PhillAholic Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 Without going into the PHP vs. .NET argument, I'd vote for LAMP because I have a degree in IT Networking and a Degree in IT Security and much prefer Linux over Windows as a server. LAMP is also completely free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 burj Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Thanks for all the replies people - this is alot of helpful advice, like some of you have said it needs more looking into. I have used a Microsoft development tool before which was Visual basic Express edition and it has built in help features which I like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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burj
I would like to get some web development skills and was wondering which route to follow the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP or the ASP.net with SQL Server route ?
Is one easier than the other?
thanks for any input
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