Jason Tucker's Blog

Speed: weak
Efficiency: weak

With nothing to back this up apart from observations about how ASP.NET works. Very professional.

This article is not a fair comparison and is complete BS as far as I'm concerned. It's just a bunch of generalizations with no hard data or research to back up any of the author's claims. The author says that PHP is faster because it has "less code to run through". Where are the numbers to back this up?

It's a typical "I use PHP and don't really know anything about the other technology I'm comparing it to" article. My language of choice is PHP, preferrably with a MySQL backend. However, even I can admit that this article is obviously written from a Pro-PHP stance. Thanks to Tucker, I have seen the ASP.NET light and this article left me yearning for some concrete statistics as well...primarily so I could back up PHP's superiority and rub it in his face...but until someone who knows enough about both can put together a semi decent comparison...I will continue to live in harmony with .NET people.

But then again, i'm a DBA what the heck do I know about development?

PHP vs ASP.NET vulnerabilities
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/stefandemetz/archive/2004/03/31/10465.aspx

I hear where you're coming from dwayne. I have 2 years professional experience in PHP (4) and over a year professional experience with ASP.NET. I think the author of the article downplayed ASP.NET's greatest strength, Robustness. ASP.NET is much more robust than just its pure OOP syntax. The .NET framework along with the HTTP pipleine, make it much easier and more efficient to develop and maintain.

Don't get me wrong though, ASP.NET does have its weaknesses. One of these is deployment. The only viable deployment option (which I've seen) is the Web Setup Project, which does it easier than simply copying projects across servers, still needs some work in the way of automation in replicated servers.

PHP does have its strengths too, and again the author touched on a few but left the big ones out. How about low learning curve? PHP is extremely easy to learn, I would argue, much easier than ASP.NET. To truly learn ASP.NET you have to gain a good working knowledge of C# or VB.NET, the .NET Framework, and (in my opinion) Design Patterns.

My main complaint with PHP is actually the thing that many people argue is a strength. I think open source platforms are a mistake and leads to hacks and bugs. Often times open source systems start out as hacks (which PHP did), and evolve over time into what is known in industry as (for lack of a better term) a cluster fuck. ;) Not to say that all open source is bad, some are great, just that the ones that are bad... are really bad.

This is a typical Oracle “propaganda” article. They always downplay any product or technology that is not part of their master plan and everyone knows that their master plan usually is the exact opposite of the direction of Microsoft.

This is a typical Oracle “propaganda” article. They always downplay any product or technology that is not part of their master plan and everyone knows that their master plan usually is the exact opposite of the direction of Microsoft.

That's why I develop websites in Cobol. Saves time and money.