PHP vs. PERL vs. ASP

[UF Jspec]

Ok, I have several years of experience with ASP with my job. I am now undertaking a private website, but the cheap hosts do not offer ASP. I am looking into AddAction.net upon the advisement of Rossman. I guess another question I have is if there are any cheap ASP hosts out there? I have used Brinkster's free service before, but it is pretty pricy.

So what are the differences b/w PHP, PERL, and ASP. From my limited knowledge, PHP and PERL are old and harder to use. Any truth to this?

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[randal]

PHP is very similar to C++ ... it's a breeze to learn. Seriously, it's very very very easy if you have any programming experience, and unbelievably powerful once you get into it. The DB support is outstanding, and the built in Sessions are neato. It is awesome on *nix, and still really great on windows - as fast, if not faster than ASP. It's OO support blows, but 'eh, these are websites, remember?

Perl is uber-powerful but has a tougher learning curve ... it has the largest db support and the largest existing code base of any of them. it also wasn't initially designed for websites, so it's kind of a hack-job.

ASP sucks it through a straw, comparitively. It's nice because of COM/VB tie-ins and the very easy database use (which is so slow it hurts), and since it's native to windows, it's rather fast (much faster than perl, equal to PHP IMO). It is bad that it usually costs money to get anything useful out of it, for the most part (unless you're a great VB programmer). I used to dev in it all the time and know it inside out and backwards; the amount of speed tweaking and working around you have to do is not something I enjoyed.

I am a total PHP convert now, and use it whenever possible.

$.02
randal

 

[yllus]

PHP is rather new, but not quite as powerful and customizable as Perl is (not to be confused with CGI). Unless you're undertaking the creation of a website of the level of complexity/uniqueness of the IMDB (uses mod_perl), you might just want to go the PHP route - it's a lot more popular with webhosts than mod_perl is.

ASP is interesting but in the industry today, IMO, not worth using. Its ability to tie in natively with Windows elements and rapidly develop applications a la VB is nothing the aforementioned open source languages can't duplicate for free. Not to mention the required MS backend for everything (there are exceptions)...

 

[yllus]

Randal my good man. Yeah, I've moved over to PHP as well - may need a decent uber-configurable webhost for my existing mod_perl site one day though, is hpi.net your company? Think we can work something out?

 

[RossMAN]

This belongs in the software forum.

AddAction.net web hosting supports a lot more than just those scripts you listed. The scripts you listed are part of cPanel's auto install scripts.

I find 99% of my PHP scripts on Hotscripts.com (over 5,600 scripts listed).

If I ever find an affordable web host which supports ASP I think it will become quite popular

 

[randal]

I am currently the network admin @ HPI.net ... we do darn near everything - asp/perl/php/cfm, hosted on win2k boxes. The hosting is not that cheap -- not in the $4-6/month range that everybody wants. However, I am started up a new company as we speak, Weberstreet Networks ... it is (long term) a network consulting / ISP company, and in the short term it is the owner of EverLAN Gaming Center ... essentially a 24/7 LAN party (I hate the term "cybercafe") here in Colorado Springs that opens up August 8th ... The plan is to open up the LAN and then use those funds to make Weberstreet Networks go -- including web hosting.

EverLAN info can be had at http://www.everlan.net, and the Weberstreet Networks site is currently in development but available at http://www.weberstreet.net.

Cheers,
randal

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
This belongs in the software forum.

AddAction.net web hosting supports a lot more than just those scripts you listed. The scripts you listed are part of cPanel's auto install scripts.

I find 99% of my PHP scripts on Hotscripts.com (over 5,600 scripts listed).

If I ever find an affordable web host which supports ASP I think it will become quite popular

Endore.com supports ASP.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
If I ever find an affordable web host which supports ASP I think it will become quite popular

ReadyHosting.com

ASP.Net is what I'm focussing in now, up to 3x as fast as ASP, plenty of built in packages, etc. ASP was a great learning language, about the same as PHP, IMO. PL is great if you have the time and attention span to invest in learning it.