Re: 10 Reasons Why PHP is Better than ASP

Ali Bobo wrote:

> 2. If you have a problem, someone will have already implemented a
> solution in PHP for you

Although PHP is one of my favourite programming languages, I do think that
some of these reasons are not so good, so feel I should "correct" some of
them, or at least further elaborate.

Regarding point #2, yes, that's often the case, but half the time their
solution is junk and needs extensive rewrites to remove obvious security
flaws. The reason there's so many free PHP scripts out there is because
there's millions of PHP scripters out there. It may come as a shock to
some of you, but not all of them are geniuses.

> 3. Syntax is better, closer to C, C++, and Java. Unlike VB where
> anything goes.

PHP's syntax is better because it's closer to C? If anything, similarity
to C's syntax should be classed as a disadvantage. C is a step up above
assembly, but that's all that can be said in its favour.

Of the C-like languages, C#, Java and Javascript are far more elegant in
syntax than PHP. But if you want to see a language with a truly nice
syntax, check out AppleScript.

Besides which, ASP.NET (the latest incarnation of ASP) is a container
format which supports the use of various different languages within it.
Sure, VB is common, but so is Javascript. Perl within ASP is not unheard
of. It's even possible to script PHP within ASP.

> 4. To run ASP you need IIS on windows, which is not free, for PHP
> however you need Linux and Apache which are FREE!!

You do not need either Linux or Apache for PHP. There are various other
operating systems and web servers that will run it. I happen to do a lot
of my testing on Apache for Max OS X. PHP will even run on IIS on Windows.

Whatsmore, there are various alternative implementations of ASP, some of
which are free. However, much like with C#, a lot of people rely on
specific quirks and extensions of Microsoft's implementation, so the
result will not run on the alternative implementations.

> 5. Great built in support for ftp, email, graphics package GD2 and
> also MySQL (also FREE).

MySQL is a pretty crummy database though.

> 6. PHP will run on Unix, Linux, Solaris and Windows. ASP is mainly
> only Windows associated but you can use it on linux with additional
> modules installed.

Contradicting point #4 yourself now.

> 7. PHP code is much faster, ASP is developed on the COM based
> architecture, this is an overhead for the server.

COM-based ASP is pretty old. ASP.NET pages can be pre-compiled, allowing
very fast execution.

PHP scripts can be cached in a compiled form if you use eAccelerator or
similar, but this functionality will not be included in PHP by default
until 6.0 is released.

> 8. mod_rewrite, need I say more.

mod_rewrite is written in C, not PHP.

> 9. Advanced Perl-compatible regular expression functions and loads
> of built in support for regular expressions on the whole.

VBScript as of version 5 (which is quite old now) supports regular
expressions, but they're pretty limited compared to Perl's regexs.
However, as I said earlier, ASP is not just limited to VBScript. Perl will
happily run within ASP, and Perl's regexs are certainly Perl-compatible!

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 17 days, 4:39.]

Gnocchi all'Amatriciana al Forno
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