PHP?

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transio
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PHP?

Post by transio »

What is the benefit of using PHP versus, say, .NET? I'm a Microsoft Developer, and have recently been learning PHP, and I have to say (I know I'm going to get nailed for this) that I'm not impressed with it at all. Personally, I'm going to stick with C# on SQL Server 2000, and pay my $1500 a year to keep my MSDN membership!

Steve :)
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nielsene
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Post by nielsene »

.NET is an application framework, not a language so you're comparing apples and oranges.

To my knowledge the only other application framework to compare .NET to is J2EE.

C# is an application languange, PHP is a scripting languange. While these become closer to comparable objects, they address different needs and are useable for different tasks.

Perhaps if you told us why you aren't impressed we could see if its due to a miscommunication/mis-understanding or if its one of the places where a scripting languange in general is inappropriate.
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twigletmac
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Post by twigletmac »

Just as a 'pre-emptive strike'... I would like to warn anybody replying that flaming is unacceptable and anything I consider to be inappropriate will be deleted.

Mac
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twigletmac
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Post by twigletmac »

I agree with nielsene, I'm sort of interested to know what you were trying to use PHP for and what exactly caused you to be unimpressed. Making a statement like that without much information looks a bit like trolling. There are of course applications for which PHP would not be the best language to use.

Mac
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volka
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Post by volka »

.NET with C# and ASP.NET is a complete framework, php isn't.
It's more reasonable to compare .NET to J2EE or similar (including apache ant and cocoon).
The web representation of .NET code easily creates a huge bandwidth usage but programming it is fun especially if you're used to one of the supported languages ;)

You may get responses like "M$ is crap", "where do you wanna be nuked today", .... But not from me, not here ;)
I (usually) don't care a pap for it wether someone has to worry about MS-security or SUN-security or Apache-security or ... or ...

edit: omg, I'm slow today. When I started my post no replies have been there 8O
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nielsene
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Post by nielsene »

The one biggest advantage I can think of, however, is platform independance of your server-side application.

The .NET server-side framework, to my knowledge, has only been implmented on WinTel platforms. Of course users don't care about what runs on the server side. But if you are making a product for use outside your company, a more portable server-side package may be of value to you.

PHP can be run on a variety of platforms(*nix, Windows, *BSD, Mac, etc) and with a variety of web servers(Apache, AOLServer, I think IIS, but I've never tried it). PHP can connect to practically any database, but I would assume the .NET framework provides the same capability to its "member" languanges, so that's neither a positive or a negative.
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volka
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Post by volka »

there is mono, "an effort to create an open source implementation of the .NET Development Framework."
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nielsene
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Post by nielsene »

Last I heard mono was being crippled by parts of the "open" standard, not being open, but I haven't been following it closely so its probably been resolved/reverse engineered by now. But mono is still under development and has a long way to go before it is a true portable implementation of .NET.

If they are successful it will be one of the best things to happen to application frameworks -- .NET becomes more portable, which will encourage J2EE to address some of their shortcomings as they would no longer be the only *nix-friendly framework.
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Post by Coco »

well for poor people like me that just want to learn web development and make interesting websites it has to be something like php...
it open source, which menas that virtually everythign you need to get started costs you nothing (if you look there are free php hosts with/without sql support) and from there all i need is to go buy/borrow a simple book and whammo
anything more complicated you have a full manual and communities like this that make learning not only easy, but free

cant beat that
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llimllib
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Post by llimllib »

Not to mention that apache rocks, and runs 70% of the world's web servers (ok, i didn't check the statistic, it's somewhere around there), of which many have PHP installed. It's a very portable solution.

And apache rocks.
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