Tell that to all of the professionals working at my company on a successful large-scale PHP software package.

Uh oh, somebody better contact Yahoo and let them know that PHP is only for small individual projects! ;)

Internet giant Yahoo has picked PHP over alternatives like Java, ASP.Net and Perl for its server-side programming

Ok, interesting to see where this discussion went :) And by the way, there is a way to run asp on Apache on Linux. I dont think that program is open-source though.

Might you be talking about mod_mono ?

I didn't say there was NO professional using PHP. There ARE many companies specifically geared to the deployment of PHP.

On a general level most companies, at the moment, believe that ASP is the professional way of doing things. That is what I have seen from my interaction with many companies.

Martus what company do you work for and what are they currently developing?

The webmaster for the website of a major RAGE sponsor chose to use ASP, IIS, and Frontpage over other web technologies. His reason for using the aforesaid technologies is they--the technologies--are backed by a major software company, the integration between HTML and script is excellent, and website deployment is incredibly easy.. some companies think ASP is the "professional" way of doing things, not necessarily the most efficient, or the most cost effective way. You should understand the politics involved in any company wide decision. Companies use ASP over other languages for the same reason they use an oracle database over MySQL, or a $500 wireless access point over a $200 one: thats just the way things are.

Please note, however, that my comparisons do not reflect which languages/technologies I think are better. I still believe personal preference should factor into language choices...

Those are basically some of the reason's why I BELIEVE in ASP. But like I said most of my personal projects are done in PHP, so I prefer PHP.

Exactly. I was trying to make the point that even though it isn't the most efficient language it is still an important language to many people.

Again note that I never said anything of efficiency or power :p

I work for Chimes, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Computer Horizons Corporation.

marketing blurb: Chimes, Inc. provides workforce procurement and vendor management services to Global 1000 companies. Through scaleable, web-based software, Chimes administers the entire hiring cycle to identify, leverage and manage the enterprise-wide spend on human capital. More is on the website, if you are really interested.

NOTE: Both sites listed above were created by CHC's marketing department, and the design/technology used on it is in no way related to our actual product or the technology used in it. :) I don't want to hear anything about the CFM & Flash not being the PHP I was talking about above...

PHP and ASP.net are both good.

Simply speaking, PHP is easier to learn (IMO because of the absolutely MASSIVE number of free scripts available, as well as the easy to access, complete documentation).

ASP.net is no more "professional" or "industrial-strength" than PHP. The computer language you choose to write in is mostly a personal preference. Its like eating with either a soup spoon or a tablespoon. They are both spoons and they both get the job done. :D

Personally, I think ASP.net has won the MARKETING war, but not so much the technology side of things. PHP and ASP.net are both equally suited for serious corporate use, insofar as they both allow you to create large, complex, "enterprise-ready" applications. (Which brings up the question of what exactly constitutes "enterprise-ready". Neither language has any real advantage over each other, as they both have rather large featuresets.)

So in the end, I'd just look at cost/benefit, and pick PHP. :D And even better is that so many people use PHP that its almost impossible not to find someone to ask questions to when you get conused.

A couple of things about ASP .NET. One is that it is still pretty new compared to PHP. So we'll see in the long run. Also ASP .NET is not a language but an under laying system. If you want to program using ASP .NET you have a choice of languages. In fact you can create a class in one language (say VB .NET) and use it to write a program in C++ or C# or J# or one of I think 15 other languages. So comparing it to PHP is not quite apples and apples.

Also the company that makes ASP .NET is a big sponsor of FIRST. It seems to me there was a Microsoft logo on display at every FIRST event. So they can't be all bad can they?

Microsoft's logo was on every banner on the screens at GLR, Pittsburgh, and Houston.

M$ is all in it for the money, and has continous updated on XP Home (which is good and bad).

I still say PHP is better....espicially if you know C++.

Microsoft is not all "in it" what ever that means for the money. I know a lot of Microsoft people, including some of the ones responsible for FIRST getting money, and being in it for the money is not why Microsoft contributes to FIRST. Or does a lot of other things either.

Did you know that Microsoft is the largest corporate contributer to charity in the country? Did you know that Microsoft employees contribute 25% of all the blood donated in the Puget Sound area? And there is more.

You think you know Microsoft because of what people who hate Microsoft tell you and they're often wrong. It's a good company with a lot of good people working there.

i think this has it just about right as far as why ASP seems like a good choice

personally i would use php over asp (although i know niether much) but if i had a choice i would use perl over anything anyday unless the application specifically required a lot of computationaly intensive tasks that did not deal with text but then web stuff isnt supposed to be cpu intensive... and just in case one can always embed perl in c/c++ and the other way around (perl has dynamic loader of compiled C (and other languages) objects which is very usefull)

the reason for choosing php over asp is the whole opensource thing.. i'm sure microsoft has put quite a bit of work into this whole asp/.net business and that it works very well but it feels nice knowing that if i need help with php, i can seek it from thousands of excellent php users that know everything that there might be there to know and probably encoutered the problems i am facing on their own... these people use the language and want to improve the language... it is as if i'm trying to say that there is sort of a "community" or culture among the open source / free software that proprietary technolgies just dont create

Actually there is quite a community around Microsoft products. You should visit the Microsoft.public news groups or sites like www.gotdotnet.com. There are all sorts of people there willing to hep people with problems. One advantage of a commercial program is that if there are bugs found someone one will be paid to fix them. With open source one either has to be knowledgeable and have time enough to fix a bug or hope that someone else will.

just to clear up any misconception ASP and ASP.NET are two COMPLETELY different things....the fact that they interact with server components and a similar style of language (assuming u don't use C#). ASP is a scripting language(much like PHP), but the ASP.NET technology is a completely object oriented language.

Comunities? wow ok.... www.codeproject.com www.aspalliance.com www.gotdotnet.com I could keep going but i have other things I need to be doing.....I have tried PHP (successfully I might add) and ASP along with the new .NET technologies....you're pages load faster due to precompiled code, controls have the ability to autopostback to the same page seemlessly, etc etc....there are so many advantages to .NET i can only begin to name them....With Server 2003 it is disgusting how powerful .NET is.

For you ppl that like C++....is php better? hahaha that's funny because Microsoft has released both Visual C++.NET and C#.....now what is easier for a c++ developer staying in the existing language or having to learn a derivative like Pearl....?

P.S. for all you M$ haters out there is the mono project to bring the .NET Framework to Linux (so someone in that community seems to believe in it...)