Well, this isn’t really a VS-blog-post, I just had a discovery while reading up on ASP.Net (Professional ASP.Net 2.0) and I see here that PHP has a way to go when it comes to make web development more productive.
Yes we have more control on our code and so on, but the .Net Framework and Visual Studio just makes things quite attractive for web developers.
I never really believed that I would ever write this in a blog post!
I mean, there are components for everything.
Want to create a login form? Drag it onto the canvas.
What about a tree of data? Drag it onto the canvas – change the settings and boom.
Want to create a portal? Use the .Net Portal Framework – which makes it possible for you to create something like Sharepoint! (well, that what it looked like in the book)
That is, is, is … awesome (Again, I never really believed that I would ever write this in a blog post)
There are of course cons related to .Net web application development.
Configuring the IIS-server isn’t quite understandable, and you cannot go to the IIS.conf file to see what has been done to it in order to make it work like it is. So I would give Apache the victory here!
I have been working/maintaining/fixing on some websites that has been depended on .dll-files. One we recently had to upgrade from 1.1 to 3.5, and making it work under 3.5 wasn’t all that understandable – well at least not for me – but then again, I am still a Noob when it comes to .Net Web Application Development.
Again, I’ll give PHP the advantage here as it is much easier to understand what has been done. the PHP.ini-file and such is easy to either go through or diff against the default PHP.ini to spot differences.
But for rapidness, especially when you start a project from scratch – ASP.Net gets one point.
This is where PHP must be heading. Yes it is easier to start with PHP. Or at least that is what used to be the best argument to start programming your dynamic web solution with PHP. But dragging, do some coding, and so on, will mean that .Net development will narrow the gap between PHP and ASP.Net.
According to websites PHP is still the most popular language to use when it comes to web development.
A search on PHP and asp on GoogleFight returns:
301.000.000 (301 million) results for PHP and 98.800.000 (98.8 million) results for asp
ASP.net returns 30.400.000 (30.4 million) hits.
TIOBE Programming Community Index for January 2010 tells us that PHP is on the rise. It’s on third place behind Java and C, but in front of C++. VB is in fifth while C# is on 6th place. I believe I would put those two together to get some ASP.Net figgures.
The two/three languages below:
3 5 PHP 10.071% +1.19% A
5 4 (Visual) Basic 7.354% -1.81% A
6 6 C# 5.767% +0.16% A
PHP is still my language of choice, but I will follow ASP.Net closely. .Net 2.0 is dated and so I need a book for 3.5… (and probably 4.0) to see what’s new.
