[thelist] PHP? ASPNet?

[Jay Blanchard]

[snip]
> I'm a self taught web designer and, so far, have been able to
> accommodate all of my clients requests with ASP or PERL.  I see PHP
> mentioned a lot on this list.  What advantages does PHP have over
> ASP or PERL or is it something completely different?

Start at http://www.php.net and http://www.phpbuilder.com, get a
book and start mucking about, if you're interested in finding out :-)
I'll leave others (Jay?) to suggest which books you could start out
with.
[/snip]

PHP is very robust and has tons of built-in functions, not to mention an
exhaustive array of extensions that can be added to it. It is open source (a
very good thing IMHO) and continues to improve in speed in functionality.
PHP has native functions for many databases directly and ODBC as well. It
goes hand-in-hand with MySQL, the world's leading open source database.
There are distributions of PHP for most of the known server platforms and
OS's. An example of PHP's completeness/robustness is a built-in file upload
function. You can write a function like this in ASP (there is no native
function for it) or you can purchase a .dll.

All that and it is free!

ASP (which is not really a language, it's a server) is used with VBScript (a
sub set of Visual Basic) usually by default, but can use JScript,
PerlScript, and others. You can run ASP on a *nix server (ChiliSOFT ASP),
but it is native to Windows. ASP.net actually made some what could be
considered non-standard changes to programming languages...sort of a dumbing
down, if you will. (Arrays now start at 1 instead of 0, and other things
such as that.) IIMO that ASP.net will travel the market much as JAVA
has...lots of promise and not much else (and please JAVA junkies and/or
ASP.net gurus, don't flame me for this opinion. It is not necessarily the
technology that is causing the problem...more of the blame can be laid at
the feet of the corporations who quibble over these things every day).

PHP Books...
<watch wraps!>
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=15GVH4F0T
4&isbn=0672317842
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=15GVH4F0T
4&isbn=0596000413
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=15GVH4F0T
4&isbn=1861002963
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130893986/qid=1023367472/sr=1-23/ref
=sr_1_23/002-1406742-3769634
</wraps!>

BTW, I am not anti-ASP. I have written many lines of code in VBScript and
PHP over the past couple of years, sometimes switching from one to the other
and back again in the same day depending on the application. If I am allowed
the choice though, I am pro-PHP.

HTH!

Jay