php VS .NET
One of the most confusing decisions that IT policy makers of companies come across is which way to go .NET or PHP. Both have their merits and limitations. Deciding one is entirely dependant upon your budget, technical skills, requirements and your overall corporate methodology.
PHP is the most popular open source programming language used to build web-sites that rely upon dynamic content. PHP is free and so are almost all of its supporting tools, platforms, databases and even OS. Being Open Source it got good support, code snippets and helps at various on-line open source forums. It even got Zend optimizer which compiles the code and makes code much faster and hence making it almost equivalent to other compiled web programming options. It is fairly easy to get a PHP programmer and many of the times if you have budget constraints, you can get freelancers with excellent skills in PHP.
.NET is really a framework, that consist of a framework with support of various programming languages e.g. C#, ASP.NET, VB.NET etc. Like many good things except air, water, sun nothing is free in the world and so is .NET However it does come up with excellent support from Microsoft, provides excellent help documentation, has excellent professionals (though none of them are cheap - Sure you know one of the resource is outsourcing it to us:)) to sort out any issues. Also since it is a complete framework it is used for things way above than building simple web-sites.
So, in summary if you have limited IT budget and your requirement is to build a site or some other similar web based applications, then PHP may be a better choice. However if you have some budget and your requirement goes further beyond a simple web-site, and you are looking for some great dedicated support and dependency upon more solid programmers, .NET is the way to go.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Choosing between PHP and .NET is simple: Choose PHP
- if you need scalability use pure PHP
- if you need high performance use PHP and some OpCode cache (APC, zend, …)
- if you need SUPERB performance use PHP with custom modules written in C or C++
- if you need developer productivity use PHP with a FrameWork (Drupal!)
- if you need a running site in 10 minutes use PHP and some ready made software (phpBB, MediaWiki, WordPress, …)
October 19th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
You stated that “Like many good things except air, water, sun nothing is free in the world and so is .NET.” This is simply not true. Of course if you mean that you have to pay for it buy buying Windows, which most PCs come with, then it’s not free. The .NET framework is a part of every Windows based PC that has been sold for years.
If however you are talking about development tools, Microsoft has offered free versions for the past two years with it’s express editions. This does include an express edition of MSSQL Server, which is an excellent database and will work for most small websites.
This isn’t to say that PHP is a bad way to go as it is great for quick and dirty web sites. I used it for about 7 years before switching to mostly .NET programming as I feel that .NET has more to offer. In fact, I would have to disagree with SomeWebDevGuy about the comments on PHP.
phpBB is one of the least secure web projects that has ever been developed and I would never consider it for getting a site up in 10 minutes as he suggests. And as far as scalability goes, PHP has nowhere near the scalability as .NET has.