[ciapug] Zend / MS partnership

[Daniel.Juliano at wellsfargo.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: ciapug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:ciapug-bounces at cialug.org] On
Behalf Of Carl Olsen

> PHP is far better than ASP and Microsoft doesn't have 
> anything like it. Microsoft abandoned ASP and moved to 
> ASP.NET which is more like Java.  PHP is the easiest 
> web programming language to set up and use quickly.  
> I'm not surprised.  This might explain why ASP hasn't 
> been revised since version 3.
>
> Carl

Just a little zealotry there.

ASP.Net is the upgrade from ASP.  Microsoft intends for you to code
using their Visual Studio, which makes assembling web pages as easy as
using MS Access to build Access front ends, so from their point of view,
they've made life easier and there's no real 'abandonment' going on.

Back on a standard install of Win98, you had Personal Web Server (anyone
remember that?) and could code ASP out of notepad - absolutely free,
easy as pie to set up, no extra licensing required.  ASP.Net is a bear
to set up properly (IIS, install the right .Net framework, learn the
management mmc), while PHP one click installers have made open source
life a cakewalk.  So perhaps PHP is easier to setup and run nowadays.

-----Original Message-----
From: ciapug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:ciapug-bounces at cialug.org] On
Behalf Of Tony Bibbs

> I'm at the Zend conference as I write this and 
> they had quite a bit of coverage here about it.
> There is a set of patches for PHP that are going
> to be rolled into the codebase that alleviate
> some of that performance under windows/IIS.
>
> I agree with you, run it where it was made to
> be happy but from Zend's perspective PHP adoption
> will depend on their ability to run it under IIS
> for those companies that won't make the jump to *nix.
>
> --Tony

Imagine this scenario: company X (or where I happen to work) runs
Windows infrastructure only.  Employee "Bob" (or Dan) is hired, and
happens to know ASP.Net and PHP, and prefers PHP for small projects
because some of the libraries are superior.  If PHP is performant on IIS
and supportable by Windows admins (as dubious a title as that is), "Bob"
has a much greater chance of being able to write PHP.  Furthermore, down
the road, company X now has the opportunity to switch out the OS to
*nix.

So this announcement is a pretty good one, from my point of view.

=Dan