Why Php is popular language ?

[luayessa]

During a discussion with my manager, he told me that the PHP is a popular language mainly because its FREE and its hosting cost is low.

He said also that PHP functionality is weaker than other languages such as ASP.NET. The PHP developer needs at least 3 days to build a web service, while the ASP.NET developer needs at most 3 hours !!.


My Question: is that true? Why PHP is so popular ? Is ASP.NET Better than PHP ?

[kyberfabrikken]

During a discussion with my manager, he told me that the PHP is a popular language mainly because its FREE and its hosting cost is low.

That's somewhat true, but add to that, the huge community which PHP has. This makes it easy to find (free) software, and get help. PHP also has a very low barrier-to-entry - Eg. you don't need to know a lot about computer science to start using PHP.

He said also that PHP functionality is weaker than other languages such as ASP.NET.

PHP is infamous for it's huge arsenal of libraries for all sorts of things. If that's not enough, you can install extensions. Further, there's a vast collection of open source libraries written in PHP, which are available more or less for free.

The PHP developer needs at least 3 days to build a web service, while the ASP.NET developer needs at most 3 hours !!.

That's nonsense. PHP is a very fast language, suitable for building prototypes.

ASP.NET comes with an integrated development framework, which automates certain tasks, that you have to implement yourself. PHP have plenty of frameworks available, which can be used on top of PHP, that add these capabilities. They are just not part of the core language, the way that it is with ASP.NET.

[logic_earth]

To actually compare PHP to ASP.NET you need to factor in a Framework which there are tons for PHP that might be a good or bad thing depending how you look at it.

[I87]

PHP's a popular language because it's multi-platform (unlike asp.net)
it's an easy language to learn
it's free
and there's lots of online tutorials to learn it.


as for it being slower to build applications than in asp.net, it all depends on the coder/if you use a framework. I personally code php applications faster than asp.net applications.. but this is mainly because I've been coding in PHP since I was 12 (I'm 16 now) but I only started with ASP last year

[alexvgtb]

Well, it's easy to learn...

There are many tutorials... Many php forums where you can find help.

It's installed on almost every host.

I love PHP !

[mrwooster]

I think that PHP appeals to many people because of the very very small cost of setting up a website written in PHP and also the ease of learning PHP. Take this forum as an example, I am guessing that is a lot more activity on the PHP forum than on the ASP.net forum.

[luayessa]

For all, I would like to say "Thank you very much".

I may conclude from your posts, that ASP.NET is better than PHP for lazy programmers ( They like "drag and drop" and run wizards ) or they are too busy.

[ceeb]

With regard to web services using SOAP, neither ASP.NET or PHP is quicker - both require similar amount of code. However, VisualStudio.NET creates a web service template for you which makes it much easier. That's great, but remember a web service doesn't actually need SOAP/WSDL. I can write a simple one in 2 lines of PHP quicker than it takes to launch VS.NET!

When it comes to building a standards-based website though, ASP.NET and VS.NET can become cumbersome. Many of the standard controls use shockingly bad markup. You effectively need to write your own controls and that takes time.

If anything, I'd say that PHP contains much more functionality than the .NET framework. It's been around longer, and is not MS-centric. But, C# is far more elegant than PHP and most other OOP languages.