Comments on: Is PHP the natural upgrade path for ASP 3.0 / VB 6?

By: srinfo

srinfo — Tue, 23 May 2006 02:16:06 +0000

hello, I recently switched over to an microsoft server at a host just to find that the ASP supported is asp 3.0, I had 1.1 and I’m in no hurry to upgrade to pay to learn something I really didn’t want to anyhowie microsoft (high language). I’ll stay with php for now.

By: SitePoint Blogs » Convert ASP to PHP with ASPA

SitePoint Blogs » Convert ASP to PHP with ASPA — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:35:29 +0000

[...] If you’ve been around PHP a little, you’ve probably run into asp2php before, an app which attempts to convert ASP 3.0 code (VBScript mainly) to PHP automatically. I’ve mentioned and joked about this stuff before but recently been playing with something that looks serious. [...]

By: Dangermouse

Dangermouse — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

This is just another ASP vs PHP no matter how you put it :p

By: Skunk

Skunk — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Dangermouse: I disagree. Classic ASP is no longer being developed, with all future Microsoft web platform work centered on ASP.NET. ASP.NET is a whole new paradigm, very different from classic ASP. PHP on the other hand is very similar to classic ASP in the way it does things. Harry is suggesting that classic ASP developers may find PHP a closer fit to what they know than the more complex ASP.NET.

Very insightful comments Harry.

By: Jeremy W.

Jeremy W. — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah. It's just another guy saying what is essentially the same thing. This time he has more authority, but at the end of the day most of the piece is opinion. Very good, and very valid opinion, but opinion nonetheless.

I'm not dismissing Joel at all, or dismissing the piece, but you can't make career or business decisions based on someone's opinion.

By: Jeremy W.

Jeremy W. — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Simon, ASP to PHP is a natural progression. But ASP to ASP.NET is also a natural progression because, fundamentally, you can use all of the same backend and development tools to do the same job.

The change from ASP to PHP is just as severe as from ASP to ASP.NET. The VBS to VB.NET change is mainly conceptual: objects. The ASP to PHP change is deeper than that as it's a new language.

I don't know about you, but I grasp concepts much more quickly than languages.

I'm not going to fault anyone for moving to PHP from ASP, I just don't see a big reason to 'choose' in that way. I'm not even a Developer anymore (by trade), but in the last week I programmed in VBS, KiXtart, VB.NET, C#, PHP, iHTML and Java.

The move from ASP to PHP makes sense, but the move from ASP to ASP.NET doesn't make any less sense just because of this article ;)

By: Jeremy W.

Jeremy W. — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry for spamming your blog post Harry, but I think some of the other comments you didn't talk about on Randy's blog are great:

" First, VB.NET and VB are not the same thing. VB.NET isn't "VB 7.0". If you want VB, then use VB 6. Second, every language in the .NET stable is the same way: VB to VB.NET, unmanaged C++ to managed C++, J++ to J#."

"IMO he failed to appreciate that doing nothing was not an option for MS. MS needed to move forward and provide a development platform that could compete with Java, which was making significant inroads into the Enterpise Development space. Whether or not you agree with Joel that memory management is the key to productivity improvements in virtual machine environments there does seem to be consensus that C#/Java is more productive than C++/COM for Enterprise class applications."

Also, Joel seems to fundamentally believe that Windows development will die, in favour of all web-based apps, which of course is foollish. There will always be entire backends devoted to the tools we love. The frontends, though, should be completely transferrable (which was actually the whole point of .NET, to make the creation of shared classes and easy maintenance of those classes incredibly easy).

Anyways, I'll back off now, since I do have my own blog I could write this all in ;-)

By: davidjmedlock

davidjmedlock — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I agree with Jeremy's last post. I personally love PHP, though I don't develop in it regularly. Any new projects I do on my own are generally done in PHP. I've always despised ASP.Old and always will.

The .Net concepts, though, just make since. If you're building a milti-tiered application, .Net is very conducive to isolating tiers. You can build an entire application with no front end whatsoever and then you can build 6 different front ends all using the same base code and in very little time. Anyone who has worked for a large corporation or on Enterprise level applications understands (or should) that the web is simply not always the right solution and many times it's an inefficient one.

As J said, ASP to PHP makes sense because the two languages share so much common ground in application framework. For that matter, ASP to ColdFusion makes sense, too. Coders with little or no OO experience will fair best with PHP or CF. Developers who have built more than just web apps, or will have to build more than just web apps, will definitely be more interested in migrating to a solution based in .Net, or Java if they totally hate MS...

Anyway, that's just my $0.02 USD. Good post, Harry.

By: Andrew-J2000

Andrew-J2000 — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the statements made above confuse me, I share Jeremy and Randy�s opinion, although this is a little over reaching as Randy put it. There is no natural progression from ASP to PHP, and that in itself is a little far reaching to state; the natural direction I would take would be Microsoft�s path rather than PHP as an ASP developer. I still don�t really see the correlation between ASP and PHP.

You can build an entire application with no front end whatsoever and then you can build 6 different front ends all using the same base code and in very little time.

I can do this in PHP + ASP[img=http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/images/smilies/confused.gif]

By: Markus Wolff

Markus Wolff — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I agree that PHP makes a very good migration path from ASP/VB6 applications - especially if you consider VB6 as a language that has always been strong in the area of rapid prototyping, which is, IMHO an area in which PHP absolutely excels.

I work at a company that develops individual software in both VB.NET and PHP. The reasons why customers choose a VB.NET application usually are because they don't like web applications for some reason. However, in every project I have seen so far customers had to pay more, sometimes a lot more for the VB.NET application because the task would have been way easier and quicker been achieved using PHP.

Personally, I'd always choose PHP for being more productive. Wherever I need a desktop application, I'd choose Java. In the past few months, I've learned to hate VB.NET :-)
For PHP developers it makes especially sense to consider Java as their second development environment because of the upcoming marriage between PHP and Java (PHP being the reference implementation for JSR 223), which I'm definitely looking forward to :-)