Hello All -

Welcome to a survey and discussion thread on the best web programming language(s) to learn.

With what language should you program your website? Where should you focus in order to develop marketable programming skills? Not in ASP. Let's see why...

ASP interest waining

Look at the Google Trends chart above showing search interest in ASP compared with PHP, since they offer similar capabilities for creating dynamically generated web pages. Interest in both are trending down, though PHP commands a consistent lead by thousands of searches.

Next take a look at the offerings, by programming category at HotScripts.com:

Again, ASP's hold in this marketplace is about 22% of that which PHP holds. And, even though JavaScript performs quite differently, it offers around 83% the number of scripts that ASP does at HotScripts.com, with some overlapping categories (compare Javascript calendars to ASP calendars, for example).

Now consider this chart from Tiobe Software -- the Tiobe Programming Community Index -- and note that ASP does not even make the top 10 list of popular programming languages for Dec. 2007:

Note that Python, Ruby, C#, and JavaScript are all on the rise.

Finally, let's take a look at Google Trends for PHP versus ASP... in India. What are the outsourcing competition interested in these days:

Well... Indian interest in ASP is going way down with PHP crossing its path way back in 2005, which coincides with the last big activity in ASP (ASP.NET version 2.0 was released on November 7, 2005).

Conclusions? ASP is not the best language for future work assignments. PHP remains a good choice, though it seems to be leveling off in terms of demand. Ruby, Python, and JavaScript (probably because of the AJAX revolution) are good "up and coming" bets in which to beef up your skills.

What say you?

Yours -
Scott

ASP/ASP.NET aren't programming languages; they're runtime frameworks. Visual Basic, C#, J#, C++ with managed extensions, and even Visual Lisp are languages that can target these frameworks. In the .net world, all of them are compiled to intermediate language - a lot like java byte code - which can be identical even from different languages. Adding more flexibility or confusion, you can easily write a single web page with server-side components written in several languages.

It's true, as noted, that .net 2.0 was introduced in late 2005, but it's also true version 3.5 is current.

Javascript doesn't compete with server side languages - at least in a good design, it doesn't - it complements them. It's an add-on whether you're using cgi, php, or aspx.

Originally Posted by OSWebMaster

With what language should you program your website? Where should you focus in order to develop marketable programming skills? Not in ASP. Let's see why...

My experience has been markedly different. When .net 2 was released, along with sql server 2005, I was working for a telecoms building intranet applications. When I left the database held about 250 million records, and having skimped on the hardware budget, these lived on a single server. I partitioned the data vertically, into several tables, all with a quarter billion records, to be joined as needed by different queries. The applications ran like hot buttered lightning. In my experience, php doesn't scale up as well.

More importantly, at least in the necks of the woods I've ventured to, demand and compensation for Microsoft technology developers has been very competitive. Demographics might have something to do with that - I've been doing full time, salaried corporate work.

Now ... part of this could be that in the past few years, Microsoft has been doing a much better job with developer relations. I'm about equally likely to go to msdn as Google with an issue, and a lot of offline colleagues have said things along the same lines.

Hi Forrest -

Thanks for the clarifications. I understand that most ASP projects are actually programmed with VBScript, but know that other languages may be used.

Based on your comments, I believe the best amendment might be that the ASP framework in general, along with some of its component languages (see graphs below) are trending down, although well paying jobs still are out there since there are a number of large installations based on them in corporate land.


Here... interest in PHP, and component languages for ASP are shown in decline.


While in India, interest in PHP continues its rise, even above C++.

- Scott

How does the trend look for C#?

It should be noted that ASP.NET is the successor to ASP. As such, use for ASP would indeed be dying as people switch to ASP.NET. In fact, if you do a Google Trends search for PHP vs. ASP.NET in India, ASP.NET is actually higher.

I do know that the two most common languages in ASP.NET are C# and VB.NET. I think it would be hard to tell the true popularity level of ASP.NET via Google Trends because it can be composed of several different languages, and those different languages are commonly used for application programming as well.

While it's usually a general consensus that PHP is currently the most popular in web development, I am fairly certain that ASP/ASP.NET is second (or third behind a dying CGI/Perl.) I think PHP is most common in the freelance world, and ASP.NET is most common in the corporate world. For example, at the company I worked at last year, there were at least 5 or 6 different ASP.NET development teams, and I worked on the only PHP development team. Also, a Monster job search for "PHP" gives 2203 results, and Monster job search for "ASP.NET" shows 3735 results.

Being from the open-source side of things, I think php is on the rise for certain things, along with asp. In a recent blog post I discuss the differences between the two. It's not a bent article one way or the other, but rather how I've seen each used as a developer in my experiences .

Enjoy, if you read it.

Here's how I look at the situation: ASP was the only good server-side programming language back in 2000 when I started web design/development. There was CGI, Perl, and maybe a few others and I was too young and stupid to understand them. I was able to grasp ASP and do what I wanted to do with it.

By the time PHP rolled out and became used widely, I had already written a great deal of the same functions/subs/etc. myself. As of right now, I have over 3000 lines' worth of the same custom subs and functions that work far better for me than any other language's functions/subs ever could. So I have no need to switch from ASP to PHP, or any other language for that matter. There's no pressure for me to do it, and I can do things so much faster that it's not funny.

But I'm also a realist, and I do realize that sooner or later (likely within the next 2-3 Windows server releases) ASP will no longer be supported and .NET will be its replacement in the great Microsoft pecking order.

I haven't switched to .NET yet because I tried it about 5 years ago and didn't like certain aspects of it; specifically, that declaring a variable in an include file meant that it could only be used within that include file and no other file...this is not the case in ASP, and there's good reason for that. I haven't tried it since then, so I don't know if the logic has changed, but again there's no real pressure or need for me to do so. I'll change it if/when I have to, or I'll change it if/when I anticipate having to (right now, again, there's no need.)

The problem with ASP always was that it was set up such that there's a right way to code with it, and a wrong way...and the wrong way is the way we're shown at first. It usually takes a lot of reading and experimentation to find the right way.

PHP is fairly easy to figure out, but again...I have no desire to learn it, and I absolutely despise working with MySQL (I don't care what anyone says...working with Access or SQL Server is infinitely better).

If/when I have to learn a replacement, I'm with frost: I'm going the .NET route.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

But I'm also a realist, and I do realize that sooner or later (likely within the next 2-3 Windows server releases) ASP will no longer be supported and .NET will be its replacement in the great Microsoft pecking order.

Probably sooner. I'll report back on Windows Server 2008 in the next month or two. But it's already less supported in modern integrated development environments and test servers.

I have to say, what's available in asp.net is incredibly rich. There are things I do every day in aspx to pay for trips to bring my camera on that can't be done in asp with any custom libraries I've ever seen. I've had the type of corporate, high-scale jobs that not knowing this stuff would put me at a competitive disadvantage. Sometimes that's annoying; I don't see much real value in sharepoint, for example ... but it works out in my advantage overall.

What you want to do with the global variables is pretty easy. But include files are frowned on. There are a number of more modern ways to handle this style of coding ... the ideal is to take your pre-existing code library and compile one or more dll(s) and use the code inside the binary/ies. Being precompiled means your code is much faster to execute. Solutions in 2.0+ use a shared repository of app code. Static classes work very well, but have a slight performance hit.

Here's a question for a bright coder, though: I have far too much legacy code for asp 3.0, and vba/sql targeting Access. Some of the vba is pretty tricked out. But subs and functions have always felt too sloppily thrown together, with a lot of not so clearly defined relationships and dependencies between some of them. Deploying a particular module I've written always took more work than it was generally worth, and there was almost always some customization involved. How do you approach this? Object oriented development has worked a lot better for me. There's still a little in-breeding between some of the classes and interfaces, but having a lot of black boxes that each do a specific function independently, that I can pull together to do a particular task just seems much more natural to me.

By the way, with VS 2005 or 2008, Visio is built in. The ide can build diagrams from your code representing the classes, structs, interfaces, and other types you've created. I would imagine this works for asp 3, also, but I haven't used it in any new projects, so I can't say for sure.

And therein lies part of my dilemma, Forrest. I actually, in my ASP.net dabbling, read that include files were frowned upon...and that DLLs were the way to go. There are two things that bug/scare me about it (the latter usually means I get so pissed off that I end up figuring the thing out just out of spite):

1) I've never written or compiled a DLL file before or had anything to do with a DLL other than registering custom DLLs once in a while. As a result, I know very little about them. I don't know how to write code for one. I don't know what to use. Etc. and so on.

Could I figure it out? Yeah, probably. Do I have the time right now? Not really. Will I have to make the time? Yeah, probably.

2) I have a number of clients who have shared hosting plans that may or may not allow for custom DLL registration. On my server, that's fine; I have the access to all that good stuff. I'm not sure where Sectorlink stands on this anymore, since the last time I needed a custom DLL registered on a shared account through them was in 2003 for payment processing reasons.

That was basically why I stopped with it; I figured it was far too complex, with too many twists and turns, for me to want to take at the time. I just didn't have it in me when the language I was using and continue to use does what I need it to do and then some. There is nothing inherently wrong with classic ASP, other than that they gave up on it too soon. The built-in functions made sense (although a few of them did/do contain minor bugs), it was easy to work with, if you knew what you were doing it was dog-easy to build a site with some decent interactive elements without a great deal of effort, and it has always been the language I've found easiest to read (when written in the Queen's English.)

Hello Forrest & Adam -

Great dialog with some good points of value, I think. I know you don't like PHP Adam, but a lot is being developed with it.

I wonder if any of you have tried the free ASP to PHP converters out there, like this one from Design215? [sidenote: when I googled for that converter, I also found this link to a converter for HTML to PHP, HTML to JavaScript, and HTML to ASP. Interesting.]

Another "trend" is that (free?) open source programs are starting to be monetized (guess there really is "no free lunch"). This seems inevitable since programmers need to eat too. I think it also means that Open Source is here for the long run in competition with the Microsoft block of programming solutions.

Hey, JDFreelance... good article on PHP versus ASP. It seems like you have summed it up nicely recommending PHP for the Unix side and small - medium businesses for now, with ASP still "in there" at larger installations.

In your article, you write, "While Php is just as secure, Asp offers more levels of protection." I can't say I know enough to offer an answer, but my question is this: doesn't that mean that ASP is unnecessarily cumbersome? I have had the experience of working for Microsoft on a project, and also comparing their applications and OS to the competition, and "unnecessarily cumbersome" seems to be a good general description of their programming philosophy. Just compare the networking setup on a Mac to that in a Windows environment, for example.

Yours -
Scott

Hi Frost -

Good point about PHP versus ASP.net in India. Here is that chart, for those that didn't see it yet:


The search interest in ASP.net is indeed "higher" though interest in PHP seems to consistently pace it in activity. It is also interesting that ASP.net seems to have deeper "valleys" than does PHP. Not sure what that means, but it could point to the fickle and inconsistent nature of Microsoft's development cycle.

That CGI/Perle are dieing seems correct, too. And, I agree that Google Trends is not anywhere near the final analysis in exactly what is going on in programming. It is about search trends. Probably, studies like the Tiobe Programming Community Index have a better handle on the future for programming:


Here we can see that C# is indeed rising, as is Visual Basic. Anyone have an opinion on which of those two is better for ASP.net work? Usage of Visual Basic appears much higher than C# on this chart.

- Scott

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

1) I've never written or compiled a DLL file before or had anything to do with a DLL other than registering custom DLLs once in a while. As a result, I know very little about them. I don't know how to write code for one. I don't know what to use. Etc. and so on.

Exactly the same way you write any other code. There is no difference whatsoever in code that goes into an EXE, DLL, OCX, or even just a VB file that's parsed and interpreted and run on the fly (assuming no errors).

You know I have a great deal of respect for you, man. But acting like being forced to learn something in an industry that changes day over day is like getting a root canal isn't really fair to your customers.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

2) I have a number of clients who have shared hosting plans that may or may not allow for custom DLL registration. On my server, that's fine; I have the access to all that good stuff. I'm not sure where Sectorlink stands on this anymore, since the last time I needed a custom DLL registered on a shared account through them was in 2003 for payment processing reasons.

You don't need to register register the DLL files your ASP.NET assemblies are served up out of. You can if you want to, you can even put them in the GAC, but you don't have to. As long as they're in the file system, with the rest of of your web application, no configuration changes are necessary.

Any machine running Windows 95 or later is able to use .NET DLL files in this manner. That's true whether it's a shared host or whatever else. It sounds like you may have had a bad experience with a COM+ DLL file that turned you off to the technology that you saw one particular implementation of? But that's like saying because of some of the VB Script in some ASP applications, VB itself is an unsuitable language and ASP is an unsuitable framework.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

That was basically why I stopped with it; I figured it was far too complex, with too many twists and turns, for me to want to take at the time.

I think what you're seeing as complexity are added options (not requirements) that allow for better coding practices that weren't possible in ASP Classic.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

There is nothing inherently wrong with classic ASP, other than that they gave up on it too soon.

I beg to differ. Technically you're correct, but technically there's nothing wrong with rubbing two sticks for fire, either. In some industries it might make sense (how we made chocolate 100 years ago is probably how we make chocolate today) but I don't know of any company that actually wants dodgy, ancient, unmanageable code running slower than it needs to just because their developer isn't comfortable with modernity. Most of them don't understand that's what they're getting, but given the facts, I can't imagine any customer making an informed choice to have their systems limp along instead of sprinting comfortably.

That sounds harsh, and I'm not trying to insult anybody. I just can't for the life of me understand how there are Luddite computer programmers?

Originally Posted by OSWebMaster

I wonder if any of you have tried the free ASP to PHP converters out there

God, no! Why on earth would anybody want to?

Originally Posted by OSWebMaster

The search interest in ASP.net is indeed "higher" though interest in PHP seems to consistently pace it in activity. It is also interesting that ASP.net seems to have deeper "valleys" than does PHP. Not sure what that means, but it could point to the fickle and inconsistent nature of Microsoft's development cycle.

That last sentence shows that your analysis is an example of the Texas sharpshooter. This is a man who shoots a rifle into the side of a barn, then draws a bullseye around the bullet holes. This comes up a lot in cancer research, where a particular neighborhood has 17,000 % more cancer than a different neighborhood, but the borders of what the survey considered to be part of each were drawn after the data was gathered and analyzed. In other words, you've decided that PHP is superior to ASP, and now you're looking for data to support this conclusion. It's supposed to work the other way - a conclusion should rest on the data careful study reveals.

So putting this "fickle and inconsistent nature of Microsoft's development cycle" aside, since this really is a much better description (fickle and inconsistent) of volunteer based software than one of the solid foundations of the modern industry scape. When were stored procedures introduced to MySQL? Not until version 5!!! How many people have a clue how to go about choosing a storage engine? A very small percent. Microsoft hasn't built a perfect framework (no one has), but it's not Balkanized the way Open Source is. It doesn't happen in fits and starts. And it's exceptionally well documented, backed up by a rich selection of tools, and most importantly, it's highly predictable.

Originally Posted by OSWebMaster

Here we can see that C# is indeed rising, as is Visual Basic. Anyone have an opinion on which of those two is better for ASP.net work? Usage of Visual Basic appears much higher than C# on this chart.

C# is as better than VB as a jet airliner is to a donkey for long distance travel.

Alot has been said in terms of which is better in .NET out of C# or VB.NET - and throughout all Ive read it seems that C# is fractionally better than VB.NET but nothing really to comment on.

The actual languages are so similar to write that its not hard to learn either if you already have the knowledge of one already.

The languages themselves are a bit different, but they share the same class library. Raising custom events within your own classes or subscribing to others takes a different approach between VB and C#; the second forces you to understand how they're implemented in the framework.

But in either, if you want to use a MemoryStream, Cryptography, a SqlConnection, spawn a thread, generate a pseudo-random number, or sniff out the browser, you use the same methods or properties on the same objects. The main difference is that C# forces complete type safety. VB lets you use a kinda-sorta type safe dev style, where it'll only implicitly convert similar types - long and int, but not string and double - or just wing it. C# forces you to cast everything, which forces you to be aware of type conversions going on behind the scenes. Type casting is very expensive, and carries the risk of an exception; this is generally caught at compile time instead of run time.

Both languages compile to intermediate language. A lot of lazy coding practices that VB allows and C# doesn't will bloat that IL; doing code reviews I've seen as much as 30 % extra, unnecessary bloat. That's really the fault of the developer and not the language, though.

'A donkey vs an airbus' is a wild exaggeration comparing the two languages. For me, there are two main differences: which is easier to have a well-paying job in, and how do I deal with the syntax in each? VB has an English-like style, where C# is more terse ... you don't code much more than is necessary to communicate with the compiler. It can seem more alien, or, if you're familiar with the syntax, you can accomplish more with a little bit less code.

Exactly the same way you write any other code. There is no difference whatsoever in code that goes into an EXE, DLL, OCX, or even just a VB file that's parsed and interpreted and run on the fly (assuming no errors).

You know I have a great deal of respect for you, man. But acting like being forced to learn something in an industry that changes day over day is like getting a root canal isn't really fair to your customers.

I think you missed my deeper point here, and to be totally fair I didn't make it 100% clear.

Let's say I'm new to ASP.net (which I clearly am, so that's not much of a statement). I've never compiled a DLL or an EXE or done anything of that sort in my life (the closest I've personally come is written a VBS file).

Where do I go to get reliable information on the topic that isn't just recycled crap that everyone else is saying and is largely incorrect?
Who do I ask that I can trust that will get me at least enough information to let me discover the rest on my own? I don't want my hand held or anything; I just want to know that when I have one or two questions, I'll get sufficient guidance to figure the rest out.
What tool(s) do I use/should I get to try and write the code and compile the DLL? This is a huge one, since right now I, as most web geeks, use a plain ol' text editor to do stuff which does the job.
Where are there reliable code samples/snippets to start from (which is an extension of your very correct Open Source line of thought?)

Right now, I just don't see any of that. It's a lot like CSS/tableless layouts. The amount of real, true, accurate, and reliable information out there is relatively low compared to the recycled "do this, do that" logic, and as a result most people don't bother.

The other issue, and this does pertain to my clients, is the notion of switching. As Forrest pointed out earlier, preexisting code for ASP does become a factor, and I'd have to lose 3000 lines of good stuff, step back, lose at least some of that in concept (if not all of it), turn around, learn something new, and maybe find myself taking a step forward. At the very least, I have to take a step back first, and in the short run that's not a good move. In the long run it may be, but I can't really evaluate it fairly yet.

By the way, John, don't worry about the respect thing. It's a mutual admiration society between you and I. You know that. Big up yaself.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I've never compiled a DLL or an EXE or done anything of that sort in my life (the closest I've personally come is written a VBS file).

Really? You've never compiled an EXE? I thought you were big into the VB 6 thing? I know Hirst is, I guess I just assumed you two had a similar background.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Where do I go to get reliable information on the topic that isn't just recycled crap that everyone else is saying and is largely incorrect?

1. Ask your friends, who would be happy to take extra time in your case to help you figure whatever you need out.
2. MSDN
3. The help files.

Those last two are available at 3 am, and they're much higher quality than I would have believed from some of Microsoft's old programming tools. MSDN online and in the help files has every class, method, and property fully documented. They can be a little off putting at first, but it's like riding a bike, learning to scan them for what you need and ignore the rest. Glean that bit of info and mix it up with the rest, throw in the SUPERB debugging tools and IDE, and you will be shocked at how much easier .NET programming is to do right than anything that came before it.

Do you use IntelliSense now?

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Who do I ask that I can trust that will get me at least enough information to let me discover the rest on my own? I don't want my hand held or anything; I just want to know that when I have one or two questions, I'll get sufficient guidance to figure the rest out.

With your deductive reasoning skills and the wonderful tools in the IDE that aren't a part of Notepad, you'll hit the ground running. But you can ask me any time.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

What tool(s) do I use/should I get to try and write the code and compile the DLL? This is a huge one, since right now I, as most web geeks, use a plain ol' text editor to do stuff which does the job.

I'm curious what tool you use to write your VBS files? This free tool will allow you to create and debug web projects. It's the limited version of the best integrated development environment there is. You can make ASP.NET in Visual Basic or C# (or J# or C++) with it. Those web apps you write can be run directly from the code, from DLL files, or a mixture of the two. This free tool will let you make EXE files also known as Windows Desktop Applications, or it will let you compile your code (subs, functions, classes, enums) into a DLL file and make use of them later.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Where are there reliable code samples/snippets to start from (which is an extension of your very correct Open Source line of thought?)

You'd be shocked at how much complete source code is available for .NET. A while ago in the General Forum on this very site, I posted a link to something like WordPress - an open source blogging platform for ASP.NET. Microsoft publishes a lot of "starter kits" which are complete applications with full code - one is a database of your music and movie library, that talks to Amazon's web service to get more info about each item. Others do all kinds of things. Then when you dig down into MSDN Magazine Online, you can copy and paste code samples that aren't complete applications, but go into depth about a specific issue. This is how I learned most of what I know about multi threaded programming.

The debug tools are the cat's behind. Only way I know to do it in ASP Classic is you use a Response.Write statement, and maybe end the code after. With the debugger built into the free tools, you set a breakpoint at whatever line, and the app pauses there. You hover the mouse over a variable in your code, and if it's a simple (string, int) type you get a tool tip like alt text, but if it's a complex type, you get this thing with expanding menus to show you the result of all its method calls and properties. You can walk the code through one line at a time, or over a whole method call, and see how things run. This is all in the free IDE! The one that you can build a DLL from just by hitting F6, and then incorporate that DLL (Dynamically Linked Library) to reuse all your code.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

and maybe find myself taking a step forward.

I don't see any way 10 years of advancement in a web server platform could be anything but a step forward? A huge one, at that.

How do you cache big lists of things without a HashTable? I know you're going to say in an array, but even if you were running machine code out of binaries instead of letting the web server interpret that code in memory, searing an array instead of a HashTable is like running through molasses. How do you log the information about a page generation without a ThreadPool, or at least threading in general? You make your visitors wait for it to happen serially. How do you implement MVC?

You mentioned working on a 200,000 visitors per month web site, but you could get double that amount of throughput with mediocre code, just on the decade of advances in the framework running your code. Add in somebody who values doing things the right way, and (1) you could quadruple the amount of visitors your site can handle, or (2) you confuse people who wonder at building houses out of straw when the big bad wolf has been this way.

ASP Old School is a scripting language. ASP.NET is a programming language. That's huge. Instead of writing script that delegates to a script host to execute its commands, you're taking control of a computer that's being used to serve web pages. As such, you have access to whatever resources in that machine can help you accomplish your needs. We're talking about web applications, not a bunch of Dreamweaver files - not being able to see how resources like a ThreadPool can help an application server is a sign of being in 1999's web.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

The applications ran like hot buttered lightning.

Skilled simile usage. I'll be reusing that.

John, that is exactly the type of answer I was looking for. Thank you. I will not (freaking apostrophe key) be able to use it for a few weeks, but I will be doing so with one particular project I have a world of time on.

Merci.