Posted by Paul Bramscher on 03/07/06 23:23

DJ Majestik wrote:
> I am Microsoft Certified in ASP.NET and C#,=.NET, and used PHP for
> about 5 years. In my opinion, if money is any issue, use PHP and MySQL.
> They are very easy to pick up and free to use. Very easy language in my
> opinion and with PHP 5 is true OOP.

I've coded professionally in PHP in a reasonably large-scale environment
for 5 years. Prior to that I coded in ASP for 2. I wouldn't hang PHP's
usefuless on its OO aspects. In fact, I'd probably recommend C++ or
Java if its OO that you really need.

PHP's bonuses:
* Simplicity -- if you're worried about complex inheritance issues,
polymorphism, interfaces/multithreading, etc. you probably want C++/Java.
* Speed.
* Large and open support community with an extraordinary website:
www.php.net. There you have a formal description of the function
combined both with real-world examples and user-contributed comments.
It just doesn't get much better than this. No hidden knowledgebase with
better information to those who can better afford it, or information
deliberately hidden for business/trade secret reasons.
* Cost: $0.
* Future. Planned obsolescence to further the corporate income stream
on a periodic basis is simply not part of the model.

> Otherwise, use .NET, especially if you are familiar with it. Form
> validation, amongst other things, is easier and the IDE is far superior
> to anything I have used for PHP (Dreamweaver).

Form validation is something you can program to work however you want --
it's not really a language limit these days.

Also, an IDE should not be inseparable from a language. Dreamweaver is
simply not an IDE to the extent that Zend Studio
(http://www.zend.com/products/zend_studio) is a bona fide PHP IDE.

For my own part, I get along fine with Eclipse and the PHP language
plugin. When that's too slow, I go with Emacs or even KDE's Kate for
small changes (both have PHP syntax highighting capability).

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