i am relatively new to web design and had recently started trying my hand at some ASP but i am finding a lot of people are prefering PHP, is this only because its free or is it a more stable methos of programming.

Which is your favorite and why?

mainly 'cos PHP hosting is much cheaper and "developers" can get it for free

personally I prefer ASP because the "designed by a committee" syntax of PHP really gets on my wires

PHP isn't more stable then ASP, they are both great languages and they both have strenghs and weaknesses.
PHP is popular mainly because it's free, and because of that hosting is cheaper and there is more open source code available.

I learned ASP first and loved it, but I do more PHP development now then anything. Personally, I prefer PHP. But not because it's better. It's just preference.

I'm with chrishirst. I've done a bit of dabbling in PHP, but I cut my teeth back in 2000 on ASP and wouldn't use anything else.

It's not a matter of "better" or "worse"...it's a matter of "better for me" or "worse for me". ASP is better for me since AFAIK it's the only programming language which will allow me to build websites with an Access database. I can see people in the back rolling their eyes at that, but there is a business reason: most of my clients, if they have a database program at all, have and are familiar with Access. So they like the idea of FTPing to a server, downloading a database, making changes, putting it back up, and seeing them live. I've got about 5 or 6 clients like that.

That's not the only reason I use ASP, but it's one of them. Other reasons:

I find it easier to read.

I don't have to make that much of a mental adjustment when people ask me to code database stuff in VB (got a couple of clients that do that).

I can't stand using MySQL.

I've written over 2500 lines of custom functions and subs that will allow me to pretty much do anything I want in about 1/10 of the time that it would take most people.

I love when idiots who have no idea what they're talking about claim that ASP isn't scalable and reliable because they downloaded some unoptimized script, attempted to mod it without knowing what they were doing, found it crashed once or twice.

I love it even more when idiots who have no idea what they're talking about claim that ASP off of an Access database can't be used on a site that is even remotely successful. While it isn't exactly a top-end figure, I've seen sites that get as many as 60,000 page views per month run off of an Access DB and not even flinch at the resource usage. This isn't to say that Access doesn't have limitations, because it certainly does. But for 99.99% of sites, if coded properly, Access would be fine, just fine.

And if Access isn't fine, just fine, then there's always SQL Server, which is a pretty hardcore database to play with.

So there are my reasons. It really depends, though, on what you're doing.

For me its PHP.

Been a NIX man I am instantly drawn to free stuff. Its a tried and tested language who's recent upgrade to V5 has allowed me to practice my almost long forgotton OO skills once more making my apps even more scalable and reusable.

Coming from a C C++ background this makes absolute sense as the PHP API is quite C in its syntax making it almost another addition to my tool set without having to find references to certain methods (as they follow for the best part their C oppo's).

Still I am not stuck in a tunnel and have played with other languages like ASP (which i must admit did nothing for me). I also played with C# and have my own server running here under mono. But i dont use it much and never in the real world.

I follow ADAMS point wherin I have knocked up a range of classes that peform specific tasks for me (acting like my own components in .NET which always get thrown at me in these arguments).

At days end though if your starting out then I dont know what to say apart from it takes a while to learn any langauge (never mind the concepts behind software engineering) your in for a slug.

ASP is tried and tested though just as is PHP neither is going anywhere and neithjer is going to steal the others market (even if asp is dead long live asp.NET).

Days end I dont see the point of chasing langauges around just to keep up with that market when in my market my language is PHP always has been always will be.

Ibbo

I agree with the above comments - a lot of people use PHP cos it's free, and also somewhat because of the Microsoft-hating fashion that's rife.

If you're starting out you might want to take a look at ASP.NET instead of ASP. (ASP is old and the only reason I know of for someone to start learning it now is to maintain existing code. If you'll be developing from scratch, go .NET)

The thing to understand when deciding PHP / ASP for a server platform is that you're really not just choosing a scripting language - your're choosing almost everything else that works along side it.

The black and grey way most people think about it is :

ASP = Microsoft
PHP = Almost any server OS - including Microsoft

But - there are ports for everything now-a-days - you can run cross platform if you really wanted to --- there's a way. Like all the other posters here said - it's going to come down to preference in the long run - you just need to fiddle with both to see which is to your liking.

PHP is easy to get into because like everyone said - it comes free.

I think ibbos post hit the nail on the head. His last two paragraphs speak wonders about the subject.

I love PHP. It's simple and makes your work easy.

BTW, I also love C# (which I am coding for almost 2 years).

ASP.... should we still talk about this hodgepodge VB sibling?
It's time to move on. ASP is gonna be dead like Coldfusion within few years.

This kind of ASP Vs PHP threads belong to year 2000-2002. Not now.

Days end I dont see the point of chasing langauges around just to keep up with that market when in my market my language is PHP always has been always will be.

Well said. I agree.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

It's not a matter of "better" or "worse"...it's a matter of "better for me" or "worse for me". ASP is better for me since AFAIK it's the only programming language which will allow me to build websites with an Access database. I can see people in the back rolling their eyes at that, but there is a business reason: most of my clients, if they have a database program at all, have and are familiar with Access. So they like the idea of FTPing to a server, downloading a database, making changes, putting it back up, and seeing them live. I've got about 5 or 6 clients like that.

I was thinking that php could connect to Access, php is supposed to be the most db friendly language around.

If it can, I haven't seen it yet. It may well be possible...I don't know. I just haven't seen it.

I would go with PHP. It is the open source alternative to ASP that runs on multiple operating systems including Linux, Windows solaris and others OS.

MS Access can be accessed via ODBC (for sure) wether another access.so/dll module is available I dont know. BUT you can definately hook up via ODBC.

Ibbo