CFML, PHP, or ASP, which?

I am starting to learn webprogramming, and have been working with Coldfusion for a little while now, A few web developers have told me to go with ASP, or PHP because CFML is on its way out. I don't know if I should believe this or not. I mean, I wouldn't ask an AMD person if the new Intel processor is good

What are each of the languages strong points/weaknesses? Any personal preferences?

Thanks,
Ben

I'm not gonna vote, but this you may find useful:

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/ ... rogramming

I would recommend learning both. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

ASP = Windows native
PHP = Linux/Unix native

PHP is good because it runs natively on both linux/unix AND windows.

ASP is good because your programs can call DLLs which are compiled and therefore run faster, but that isn't useful unless your scripts are doing something really complicated that requires a lot of server resources.

BTW, PHP can call DLLs too if your running on windows (i think)

ASP is a lot easier to learn, but PHP is easier to code once you know how.
PHP you can load extensions on windows.

ASP is easier to learn if you like using scummy visual basic code

About the DLL's, I was under the impression you can use compiled c binaries with PHP (on either platform). I may have just imagined seeing that somewhere though....

As far as I understand it you can load external modules in PHP on any platform.

My opinion is one-sided seeing as I only know ASP. But, ASP isn't difficult if you have knowledge in VBcript, Javascript, & HTML. In my opinion all ASP does is allow the three codes to work together. Maybe I'm over simplifying it.

One, interesting bonus of Php (which I'm planning on picking up in the near future) is PHP is easy to find free if you know where to look. At least give you something to play with while you decide.

Good luck, and may the code gods be with you.

Concerning the above languages, I've used ASP since 2.0 and was also .net beta tester. I have used ASP.NET pretty extensively and I think is a great server side language. I have used CFML for almost as long and can arguably say that it is "not on the way out", but I doubt that it will ever be as popular simply because of Microsoft's "house brand" reputation. If you are going to be working on IIS, definitely go with ASP.NET because it will be seamless, especially if you are going to be working with DLL's.

I have only dabbled with PHP so I can't really comment on it, however the server side technology that I use the most, JSP, is not even listed in the poll and I would like to know why. JSP, Servlets, JavaBeans, etc are excellent and FAST server side technologies with very solid architecture and minimal overhead. Java has been around for awhile now and most of the kinks have been worked out since the last couple of versions of the SDK. The portability is an added bonus as well.

I would recommend taking a look at Java technologies as they can be very beneficial to you and your applications in the long run.



Thanks,
JOhn

sup ppl

um, what?

ColdFusion... Ack. -->

PHP and ASP and JSP have their individual places depending on web server and OS (yes, I know it's possible to run them on, pretty much, every platform, but some run better on some platforms than others).

ColdFusion, however, requires a whole seperate peice of software. It's not even CGI on Win32 (as PHP is). It's a complete seperate service. That means, in addition to the normal resources an active IIS server needs, CF needs a bunch for itself as well. There are also inheirant security flaws in ColdFusion that can only be removed by disabling the many of the very features that make CF powerful...

I've done quite a bit of CF programming in my day, and while it VERY (very very very) easy to learn and very easy to extend (custom tags), I feel the drawbacks outweigh the simplicity in coding.

I actually rather like JSP. I know very little about it, except enough to hack the TeamSite CMS system I administer at work when needed. I perfer PHP overall, simply because I think it's more intuitively supported. The only thing I find cumbersom in PHP relative to ASP, is database connectivity. It requires many more lines of code in PHP to accomplish what can be done in ASP in only a couple. The inverse, however, is usually true.

These discussions come up all the time. It's like asking "What's Punk?" Everyone has their opinions. In the end, it depends on what will get the job done in the best way possible, both short term (time to complete) and long term (care and feeding). The more languages you're fluent in, the more flexible you can be.

.c

well, php has a lot of functions, for example, the pdflib, which allow create pdf's, jsp's allow use any of the classes you created with java, asp's use dll's and increment performance, etc, i think this 3 languages are the best bet for every webmaster

Whats youre preferred language?

Mine's PHP, coz its free and more coder friendly. Also, do you know anywhere I can get facts in what the most prevalant of the two languages is across the globe, not just the western world?

I thought it was PHP but that info was from http://www.php.net so Im assuming its biased.

absolutely definitely PHP, any day of the week......

much easier and more efficient in every way