ASP dotNET vs. PHP

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• Posted: January 21, 2009
• By: Tieson
• Tags: ASP, dotNET, PHP

I've been scripting my pages using PHP for a while now, and I've always thought it was pretty darn neat. And I still do. But... I may be crossing over to the dark side.

GASP!

Heh. Not really. But I did recently get a chance to build a web form in ASP.NET, and it was pretty f--ing cool, pardon my French. For the most part, the process to develop a page in ASP.NET is the same as in PHP, except Microsoft gives you a few tools you can use to build the web site, a-la Dreamweaver (without the f--ing insistence on tables...).

The part I thought was the most interesting was that I had to use ASP versions of the various HTML form controls. The neat thing is that ASP.NET controls save state. For you non-programmers, that means the controls remember whatever text was entered into them, or whether or not they are checked/selected. You can do the same thing with PHP, but you have to build the logic yourself. With ASP.NET, you get it for free...