Perl vs ASP vs .NET vs PHP

Not quite sure where to start here with my $0.02...

SUMMARY: The best technology for the job...

Tegwin wrote:   I just hate it when people sl*g off Microsoft for no good reason. If Linux was anywhere near as good as Windows it would have been the OS of choice of Businesses and individuals world wide!!!!

Agreed about the hating it when people sl*g MS for being successful.

HOWEVER, not on the second point.

Linux could have come out in 1991 a billion times better than anything and still lost. MS wins because they have good marketing and they work well with developers. (Their search functionality sucks on microsoft.com, but that is besides the point.)

MS will always be a better company than any other out there because they understand their customers and they know how to appeal to them. Apple sucks because they can't market their way out of a wet $100 bill. IBM sucks because they can't relate to people, only to massive companies. Sun sucks for all of the reasons mentioned above and more. Sun is worse than IBM when it comes to relating to people, and worse than Apple when it comes to dropping the ball on a good idea.  That's all about marketing, not technical issues.

As far as the OS goes, Windows 2000+ is ROCK SOLID. The software inside is not. 

Like Dpyers said, the right thing for the right job. However, "Unix" is the wrong word to actually use. Windows NT+ (NT4, 2000, XP, etc.) IS UNIX!  Fact.

A Unix operating system meets POSIX compliance standards. Windows does that. (9x and Me are irrelevant pieces of garbage, like Mac OS 9 and under)

BSD, AIX, AS-400, HP-UX, Solaris, etc., will continue to be the OSes of preference for serious major applications because they outperform Windows. Linux will likely never reach the same level.

However, Windows will continue to dominate at the low end because it has a much cheaper cost to market. .NET has taken that to the next level.

The traditional 'Unix' family of OSes (BSD, HP-UX, Solaris, etc.) will continue to lose market share because they require too much knowledge compared to MS products. VB is successful because it is "understandable" compared to many other languages. (Historical note: VB was basically raped from Apple because MS understood it better than Apple did.)

The only possible contender against MS in the non-"super mission critical 100,000 user" application area is Apple, but they are notorious for screwing the pooch whenever they actually have a chance to do anything. Apple will fail because they cannot relate to developers (woo developers) like MS can. And they will never overcome this if their history is any indication. IBM, Sun, and HP also fail because they cannot relate to developers like MS can. e.g. The MSDE is FREE and that is a well known fact. What about DB2? Or Informix? Or whatever? Oracle is massive overkill for most things. But for the enterprise on a large scale, Oracle vs. MS SQL Server 2000 is a no-brainer.

Web applications (to date) are not seriously major pieces of software. That isn't to say that they aren't serious, but when it comes down to it, the web isn't a serious place for commerce yet. ALL serious commerce happens offline. This will change, but the web still lacks confidence at the enterprise level. When that happens, the web will change. We are seeing some changes now, but it will be a slow process. The people to look at are the ones using BSD and HP-UX (etc.). 

As for viruses and security on different platforms... Check CERT. The traditional 'unix' family of OSes have MORE exploits than Windows. Windows is a target as has already been pointed out.

I use and will continue to use Windows as my primary development platform because:

1) I don't need the security level offered by SecureBSD
2) I don't need the performace offered by AS-400 or AIX
3) I need fast and quick development
4) I need a platform where I can get tough answers quickly

For #4, e.g. I was developing an application in .NET. I reported a bug to MS on a newsgroup (as had another person) and within a very short time the SDK was released again with the fix. I don't have that level of confidence in other companies.

(True - MS does drop the ball on occasion, but it is easier to get an answer or work-around for it.)

Like Dpyers said:

dpyers wrote: I'd note that I'm a big advocate of the right tool for the right job.

Hi,

I currently run everything in ASP, and am looking into moving over to the .NET world.

Buuuuuut, I just began learning PHP (so that I can do minimal stuff on nix boxes for friends) and there's a lot of stuff in there that I reall like (mainly the functions for image manips, etc).

So, my question is, does anyone out there utilizes ASP (v3 or.net) and PHP ?

I was thinking about this, and it seems possible, just wanted to know if there's anything I'm not thinking properly about...

one last thing, can you execute an ASP page with a PHP include file?

. necronom .

I love asp, but i think php kinda rocks, it has a lot of cool features, like it has a relly cool control over images, adding watermarks in images, and the email feature is inbuilt in php, php requres very less components as compared to asp, like uploading.

php is preety easyer, i dont know php, but i have seen its applications, and i think all the spiders and web crawlers are built in php, probably it can't be built in asp