Help me convince the ASP guy about PHP usage.

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Heavy
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Post by Heavy »

Last Memorial Day, nearly 400,000 people descended on Indianpolis, Indiana, to witness one of the world's best-known sporting events: the Indianapolis 500. An even larger number of people followed the event -- one of the oldest and most prestigious automobile races in the world -- over the Web. During the entire month of May, the Indianapolis 500 Web site received nearly 2.5 million page views a day.
Quite a number of visitors. It makes an average hit frequency of 29 hits per second.
But an average value is practically misindicating the load. Anyone with knowledge in statistics would stick their thumbs in my eyes if I claimed that there were never more than 30 visitors per second on that website.

I could not find any link to the webmaster of the site (quickly enough), so maybe I'll ask Zend for some contact information. Maybe I can get that webmaster over here, to join this community.

I have delayed the meeting with the ASP guy, so I have some more time to use you guys!

I am VERY thankful for the response so far.
Heck, even I am more convinced about the qualities of Open Source Software!
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infolock
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Post by infolock »

nice! 2.5million ??!? all hail the power of php :D
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Heavy
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Post by Heavy »

OK, here are my points:
Comparison is made with ASP3 - VBScript as counterpart.

Fundamental properties of PHP:
* PHP is a more flexible language with a higher degree of abstraction, making dynamics more easily implemented.
PHP Performance:
* PHP is available in cached compiled versions, making overhead times very short.
PHP capabilities:
* PHP can be integrated with other parts of any system
* PHP has extensions for Image creation and manipulation
* PHP has extensions for PDF-generation
* PHP can send email
PHP security:
* PHP driven sites are harder to hack into (reference: infolock see quote below)
PHP development speed:
* PHP comes out in new versions more often
* PHP requires less coding and can be used to produce advanced loops with just a few characters
Non-technical advantages:
* PHP is supported by willing people
* PHP is free, memberships in its communities are free

infolock wrote:hmm, lemme tell you what. give me a site that has anything to do with asp, and i'll post you their code that's inside their asp file that does their crunching.
Please, make replies using this text, remove what is wrong and add new inspiration where you think I've missed something significant.

Thanks
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volka
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Post by volka »

ok, let me take the .NET position - some has to be the oposition :twisted:
  • Fundamental properties of .NET:
  • .NET includes many languages; higher abstraction is provided by more advanced component design and integrated services. SOAP as well as other standard mechanisms guarantee intersystem communication and seamless integration of other services
  • .NET Performance:
  • .NET components are shipped and used as precompiled modules (intermediate code)
  • .NET capabilities:
  • .NET already is integrated in other parts of the system ([web-]services), CLR and MSIL specs are available, unix version already under development (mono)
  • .NET provides extensions for image creation and manipulation as well
  • PDF-library used by PHP by default requires license fee for commercial use
  • .NET can send email as well
  • PHP security:
  • asp hacking lacks proof ;)
  • .NET development speed:
  • PHP comes out in new versions more often, which means there is still alot to do, many interfaces are subject to change
  • .NET can make use of all advanced features the supported languages have, including vb.net foreach loops
  • Non-technical advantages:
  • .NET communities are wide-spread, even MS itself hosts some mailing lists and forums
  • .NET runtime is redistributable and free as well as many communities (i.e. http://www.codeguru.com)
Last edited by volka on Fri Oct 18, 2002 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Heavy
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Post by Heavy »

And what about dollars?
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volka
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Post by volka »

investments ;)
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Heavy
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Post by Heavy »

So, PHP is a language, according to yourself.
.NET is a framework.

Money:

Sell two systems with the same functionality. The first uses PHP and the other uses .NET.

Its price is $10 000.

How many would say that licensing costs stops there for the Microsoft solution?

The one that buys the .NET built package needs to pay Microsoft something, usually a noticeable amound of money.
For a middle-range sized system, there is no need for having all the capabilities .NET provides. PHP does the job as good, and costs less.
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Post by Heavy »

Did I just win or what?
BEAT ME! :twisted:
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volka
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Post by volka »

I'm trying neither to beat you nor to convience you of .NET's superiority.
You have been kind of successful when your project is done in PHP.
But anyway, if you want I will stay your opponent ;)

Development tools are a once-only investment. Microsoft offers packages with licenses for development issues including all products for a considerably low fee via MSDN membership.
Customers maintaining their own systems do not have to pay for those tools and win32 infrastructures are wide spread.
The acceptance of .NET is growing (sorry, only german link found that quick) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hos-11.10.02-000/ , so a market for this platform is supposed to be existent.

PHP's feature set may be sufficient, may be not. If wanted the project could be done in assembler. Services offered by .NET may shorten the development time and enable integration in existent projects or extensions that haven't been thought of by now.
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Post by sweahe »

Come on... drop it! :D
There is nothing you can't do in PHP, that you can do in ASP... and chanses are very high the pricetag for you will be much higher in the end, going the ASP way. PHP is known for beeing easy and have every features you want... for free! You can't say that for ASP. ...and if you miss some (doubtfully) functionality in PHP, what is stopping you from implementing it yourself in C++ or if you're that kind of guy... assembler!

.NET ...well, what stops you using that from PHP? (If you really need it!??)

Since when did MS development tools become a one time investment?
Do I get a for ever, lifetime upgrade for free now? :wink:

The bottom line is, do you want to pay for it or don't you?
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Post by Heavy »

I would say that neither ASP nor PHP is comparable with .NET.

But I really do agree that costs doubtfully stop after that "one-time" investment.

What might you need later on? Maybe a database that .NET likes? I'm sure that .NET integrates best with Microsofts own SQL-server. Today MS SQL-Server 2000 costs $20 000! Our (me and the company I work for) experience so far is that costs just carry away up into the MS-coloured sky.

My opinion is, if the system is built with PHP, it can be sold to small organisations with less rate of use, with their budget still allowing them to run this on their own (unix) server.

Any project relying on MS software has to be big to be profitable.
We are a small company, with three employees. We don't like unneccesary expences unless they are enabling greater income in a significant way. In this case, I don't see why MS could make our middle-range sized system be more attractive to the customer.

How is it today?
The open source community usually come slightly AFTER MS when it comes to comparable software. But it is never far behind! I'd say that one can rely on OSS since it lives on by its own nature. It arose from no-greed circumstances. It still lives. Why should it die and disappear because of the develompent MS has?

I would consider myself safe using software that comes out of perfection instead of greed.
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Post by Heavy »

Now, the team involved in designing the structure and goal of the system are all convinced that we're going the multiplatform way. That is, we are going to do this using PHP.

The ASP guy is still not comfortable with PHP. He says:

- PHP is for 15 year old nerds playing server with their low end desktop computers.

I don't agree. DO YOU?

BUT, he is still open minded, I'd say.
I downloaded Mandrake Linux 9.0 last week. My CD-Writer seems malfunctioning, so he let me burn those three CD's on his machine. And when I had showed him some of my old Linux Mandrake installation, he wanted to try too. So, we burned three more CD's for his own usage. And if he gets some spare time, he might just go install some Mandrake Linux 9.0 on his box!
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Post by volka »

http://www.zend.com/zend/cs/indy.php
didn't know that there are only 15-years-old nerds at the indy500-staff.
Might be, I don't know much about car racing ;)

Recently I showed my father the knoppix-live-cd (by accident; I crashed a partition on my notebook's hd and had no other tools at hand). He always though linux is a toy but ...[skipping long story]...my mother told me yesterday he ORDERED a CD for teaching purpose
His students probably (also) will have to learn unix/linux from the next semester on :D
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infolock
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Post by infolock »

Heavy says
The ASP guy is still not comfortable with PHP. He says:

- PHP is for 15 year old nerds playing server with their low end desktop computers.

I don't agree. DO YOU?
that's a very unfair statemet indeedy hehe. When I was 15, I was learning VB and breaking network structures down. To put it bluntly, I don't think a 15 year old could just sit up and start fooling around with php before having any other type of gui-based languages to fool around with first ( ie, vb, delphi, c , etc.. ), and secondly, they would have to have an understanding of html design, network administration and implimentation.

Don't get me wrong, I know a few 15 year olds who could probably step up to this statement, but again, that is few and far between. ASP has just as much of a chance of having 15 year old coders as php does is what I'm trying to say.

I don't think he's just trying to make it out as it's going to be sorry, as he's trying to let you know "look, I don't know php. I know asp, and to put it bluntly, I don't wanna learn php as I already have declared myself an ASP guy, NOT a php guy" heh. I went through the same phase when I was only a delphi/c coder. However, I let my arm get twisted by a few friends and now, well, let's just say PHP is the only way for me now ;)

Just tell your bud, say "hey, look, I know you don't know the language yet. That's no biggie. But you already know asp and vb, so you understand the general idea of coding. You can pick it up quick, don't worry. it's really easy to use, learn, and become advanced in. There are too many scripts, lessons, and tuturials out there that do most of your work for you, to even worry about that. Not to mention, the php manual in itself will bring you up to par with the vast majority of it's current ancient coders " heh.

that's just what i would say tho...
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Post by jason »

To throw my 2 cents in:

First, this:

http://php.weblogs.com/discuss/msgReader$1895

A Note About PHP Speed:

What is interesting to note is that ASP.NET isn't really so much compiled as it is cached. Their is a slight difference, but if you look at using cached PHP (through something like PHP Accelerator), you will find that PHP will indeed be faster than ASP.NET.
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