Why is ASP more expensive than PHP? | The Coffeehouse

giovanni
...

So, my company received a couple of estimates to remake our website (we really need to, the actual one has been done so poorly that we have serious SEO problems). The goal is to present the company, redo the catalog/e-store and plan to add a little social to it in the near future, all of it in two languages. Nothing extremely complex, but to do things well, it requires a little bit of work.

What surprised me is that all of the estimates we gathered from different contractors are much much cheaper when using PHP than ASP by a factor of 2 or more. Honestly from the little ASP and PHP I know, I don't understand what could justify such a sharp cost difference.

Is it because ASP is more complex or because it is associated with fancier development? Or maybe PHP has more widely available modules?

Kolin1

I'd say its probably down to supply and demand.

There seem to be a lot more PHP coders around.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to Kolin1

#Nov 6th @ 3:00 AM

ASP.Net is much harder to write and in many cases more time consuming too (although much easier to maintain). ASP.Net is designed for BIG complex web-sites with well developed infrastructure. PHP is one giant hack.

But PHP is effective.

Pace
In The Mix...

In reply to ManipUni

#Nov 6th @ 3:04 AM

ASP Supports mutliple languages, and is very very powerful. More powerful than a lot of asp developers realise. On the scripting side theres;

JScript
Perl
Python
VBScript

You can use multiple languages in the same page, so you can always use the best tool for the job.

i.e Pull some data from a database in JScript then pass it to a Perl function for some string manipulation and then use VBScript to pass the data to the web browser, all from within the same page.

On top of your scripting languages you have support for COM components. You've just added C++, VB, J++ (and probably a few others) to your toolkit of available languages at your disposal.

That said it can be argued that ASP is slower.

PHP is more widely used and is platform independent. They both have their strengths and weaknesses tbh, if you ever programmed C or Java then PHP should only take few days to pick up.

Pace
In The Mix...

doublePost()

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to Pace

#Nov 6th @ 3:06 AM

I assume he was talking about ASP.Net. Does anyone even use ASP classic?

figuerres
???

well a lot of folks got into LAMP due to the low cost of the server and the tools.

all they really had to pay for was the hardware.

but i would talk to the folks who will make the call about the idea of eating cheap hambuger and is that a good thing to do?

IE: buy cheap and you get cheap, live at a fast food joint and down the road yet get the real bill.

but there is also the need to know what the goals and needs are of the business, if they want a 1-5 page simple toss away site for a year or two then sure buy cheap and replace it in a year.

or if all they want is simple pages and have no plans to do other stuff...

giovanni
...

In reply to ManipUni

#Nov 6th @ 3:29 AM

Yes, I meant ASP.net.

Given how many large and complexe websites use PHP (Facebook to mention one of them), I don't really understand the argument that ASP(.NET) is for larger, more complex websites and PHP for simpler ones. I think they both are valid alternatives. I personally have a little more knowledge of ASP because of historic reasons and I don't remember it being very hard, but this is it.

Figurres: I understand your argument and I strongly support it, but we simply cannot afford the price for an ASP site as of now and it seems to me that PHP is as good for this specific purpose (if PHP estimates were 10, the ASP ones from the same company was 20).

The only thing I am strongly opposing on this project is the extensive use of Flash someone proposed. Since I have installed Windows 7, I had 11 crashes in IE and 11 of them were due to Flash!

I would like to use Seadragon to zoom in the product images in the catalog because it is simple to use, effective and does not require plug ins of any sort, but it is not very fashionable for the Mac/Flash loving crowd that I seem to have run into (this is a known common denominator for designers).

figuerres
???

In reply to giovanni

#Nov 6th @ 4:32 AM

If one shop is giving two prices i would tend to make sure you get other bids.

if for example my boss was asked to bid for both we would be the opposite - high cost for php lower for .net

why? we do .net every day. we would have to sub out the php work.

perhaps this is part of the price you saw?

Ray7

Strangely enough, I think there is a link between developer rates and hosting costs.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to giovanni

#Nov 6th @ 4:32 AM

By "complex" I mean in terms of code base size. PHP can certainly support a large number of users. But when PHP projects get very big it is very hard to maintain them and the true "hack" nature of PHP becomes your worst enemy.

ASP.net is very good at complex sites with well designed structures. PHP is good for an unstructured array of pages.

Flash for a shop site? Eww... At least if it isn't being directly used for images. If you're putting text into Flash then search engines will hate your site and skip right over it.

PS - I'm not actually a "ASP.Net fanboy." I actually really like PHP. I just know a hack when I see one.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

In reply to ManipUni

#Nov 6th @ 6:02 AM

Why are we doing this ASP.NET vs PHP argument again. PHP is analagous to Classic ASP.

giovanni
...

In reply to figuerres

#Nov 6th @ 5:27 AM

Most likely. However, I have asked a number of different agencies and they all seem to be interested more in PHP than ASP. Could this be a regional trend (I have talked to companis in norhtern Italy and southern France)?

For our small businesses the priority number one is finding someone who listens to us and who understands us. For now we are "stuck" in this position, but it seems they are good partners so I think we will keep them.

giovanni
...

In reply to ManipUni

#Nov 6th @ 6:02 AM

Maybe our site is small enought then. I have not put any constraints on the technologies used, I want it to work, and if it does not work, I will personally beat them with our own sticks: ice axes Smiley

I had a long argument with the developer the other day about indexing: apparently search engines like the meta tags you can append to Flash... The idea was to present products with pictures AND video and Flash was the candidate for video. Is silverlight more "indexable" for that matter?

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to giovanni

#Nov 6th @ 7:20 AM

You can use meta tags but in general search engines like content a lot more than they like meta tags. Look at YouTube. One of the biggest users of Flash on this here internet but yet almost all of their pages are traditional text and images with only the basics done in Flash.

Why?

- Some people don't have Flash

- Exclusively Flash is illegal in the UK because it doesn't support "ease of access" (disability laws)

- People cannot copy/paste Flash content to friends/family/etc

- URLs often break or don't point to the same content

- Spiders cannot follow flash links, cannot pickup flash text, and thus the entire page is blank from their point of view.

Your web-site will make or break your business. So I suggest you go copy Amazon or NewEgg. NewEgg in particular is famous *because* of how good their web-site is (e.g. filters, reviews, product pictures, etc). NewEgg's site is so good in fact that I use it to browse products and I don't even live in the US.

Bass
Channel 9, best used in moderation

dbl post \

(these forums should be rewritten in PHP) Big Smile

Bass
Channel 9, best used in moderation

PHP is typically the "P" in LAMP. Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. Despite Microsoft, Sun, and Oracle attempts to displace LAMP (or parts thereof), it is still probably the most popular set of software of build a website ontop of.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to Bass

#Nov 6th @ 8:18 AM

If you include WAMP too then is almost certainly is...

vesuvius
Das Glasperlenspiel

In reply to Bass

#Nov 6th @ 8:18 AM

ASP is more difficult, much more difficult than a scripting language like PHP. That's not to say that sites like Facebook and Wordpress aren't able to run popular websites with it, but in truth, these are just content management systems and ASP handles for much more complex scenarios.

An ASP.NET developer will have oodles more knowledge of C#/XML/XSLT/AJAX/SQL (server not minnows like MySQL)/CSS/XHTML/WCF/Gang of Four...and so on

SlackmasterK
I write my OWN blogging engines

Microsoft owns ASP, whereas the open-source hippies own PHP.

Bass
Channel 9, best used in moderation

In reply to SlackmasterK

#Nov 6th @ 11:24 AM

Yes and Seattle is the neo-conservative capital of the world. Got ya. Big Smile

May28th2018
May 28th, 2018

The answer is very simple. Unless you are using Zend application server, PHP is an interpreted language, and ASP.NET is a compiled one.
The only exception to that is the Caucho Resin PHP interpreter which has you put PHP files into a .war (web archive)

You can still swap out PHP files while Resin is running, but it is still a pain.

ASP used to be a server side only language where COM was infrequently used. Now they have copied the Java web beans architecture, and it is just as painful to code for as Tomcat.

They decided to do this back in the late 90s when Sun Microsystems sued them and told them they could not use Native Java extensions in with Windows UI in the MSJVM.

Anders Hejlsberg, co-author of MSJ++ and WFC set out to copy not only J2EE, but Java beans and the Tomcat architecture as well.

Where you have the Java Bean/Servlet (.NET assembly/Code behind) and the Java server Page(ASPX page)

Real time changes and XDebug are priceless to developers for RAD development and deployment. Simply redeploying a .NET application is painful compared to a VIM change on a PHP file. Also, most PHP functions are in the global namespace. Thus making looking up reference documentation obsolete in Eclipse PDT which shows you the function description and paramters automatically in a code detecting mechanism similar to what Microsoft calls intellisense.

Because of the package import segregation, it does not work that way with Java, and hence neither with the .NET clone.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to May28th2018

#Nov 7th @ 7:59 AM

Real time changes and XDebug are priceless to developers for RAD development and deployment. Simply redeploying a .NET application is painful compared to a VIM change on a PHP file.

ASP.NET's default model is actually one where you can edit the source live on the server (even using VIM if you like) and the app is automatically recompiled and restarted without any effort at all on the part of the user (or developer).

Your entire post is filled with nonsense. It reads like it was written by someone who has never used ASP.NET, just vaguely heard about it.

May28th2018
May 28th, 2018

In reply to Sven Groot

#Nov 7th @ 8:18 AM

"ASP.NET's default model is actually one where you can edit the source live"

I am talking about editing the beans/servlets(assemblies), not the Java Server Pages-.jsp(.aspx in clone jargon) that use the beans/servlets.

The .NET assemblies will not be updated in real time.

AFAIK, source files for web assemblies(originally called beans) are not even on a typical deployment server.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to May28th2018

#Nov 7th @ 8:28 AM

There's no such things as beans or servlets in ASP.NET. Stop trying to shoehorn a comparison to Java in there.

If you choose to put your code in separate assemblies, then yes, you'll have to recompile those locally (it's still not hard to update; just copy the assembly over to the bin directory on the web server and you're done; the site restarts automatically and now uses the new assembly. Even if you use the precompiled website model, deployment isn't actually complicated, you just xcopy the files and you're done). But again, this is your own choice. If live editing is of importance to you, then don't do that. You can even put the code inline in the .aspx files (as opposed to code behind), just like PHP and classic ASP, if you so desire.

Your argument is that PHP allows live editing. ASP.NET also allows live editing, but because it gives you the option to use a different model it's somehow worse. That doesn't make any sense.