<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>PHP and other languages</title>
</head>
<body><div class="manualnavbar" style="text-align: center;">
<div class="prev" style="text-align: left; float: left;"><a href="faq.com.html">PHP and COM</a></div>
<div class="next" style="text-align: right; float: right;"><a href="faq.migration5.html">Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5</a></div>
<div class="up"><a href="faq.html">FAQ</a></div>
<div class="home"><a href="index.html">PHP Manual</a></div>
</div><hr /><div id="faq.languages" class="chapter">
<h1>PHP and other languages</h1>
<p class="para">
PHP is the best language for web programming,
but what about other languages?
</p>
<div class="qandaset"><ol class="qandaset_questions"><li><a href="#faq.languages.asp">
PHP vs. ASP?
</a></li><li><a href="#faq.languages.coldfusion">
PHP vs. ColdFusion?
</a></li><li><a href="#faq.languages.perl">
PHP vs. Perl?
</a></li></ol></div>
<dl class="qandaentry" id="faq.languages.asp">
<dt><strong>
PHP vs. ASP?
</strong></dt>
<dd class="answer">
<p class="para">
ASP is not really a language in itself, but an acronym for Active
Server Pages; the actual languages used to program ASP include
Visual Basic Script, JScript, and C#, among others. The biggest
drawback of ASP is that it's a proprietary system that is natively
used only on the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) platform.
This limits its availability to Win32 based servers. There are a
couple of projects in the works that allow ASP to function with
other environments and webservers:
<a href="http://www.stryon.com/products.asp?s=1" class="link external">» InstantASP</a>
from <a href="http://www.halcyonsoft.com/" class="link external">» Halcyon</a> (commercial),
Chili!Soft ASP from
<a href="http://www.chilisoft.com/" class="link external">» Chili!Soft</a> (commercial), and
<a href="http://www.mono-project.com/" class="link external">» Mono</a> (open-source).
ASP is said to be a slower and more cumbersome language than PHP, with
less overall stability. One of the pro's of ASP is that, since it
primarily uses VBScript, it's relatively easy to pick up the language
if you're already proficient in Visual Basic. ASP support is also
enabled by default in IIS, making it easy to get up and running.
However, the components built in ASP are really limited, so if you
need to use "advanced" features (like interacting with FTP servers),
you'll need to buy additional components.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<dl class="qandaentry" id="faq.languages.coldfusion">
<dt><strong>
PHP vs. ColdFusion?
</strong></dt>
<dd class="answer">
<p class="para">
PHP is commonly said to be faster and more efficient for complex
programming tasks and trying out new ideas, and is considered by many
to be more stable and less resource-intensive as well. While ColdFusion
once had better error handling, database abstraction, and date parsing,
the database abstraction shortfalls were addressed in PHP 4. A
particular quality that is listed as one of ColdFusion's strengths
is its excellent search engine, but many strong arguments suggest that
a search engine is not something that should be included in a web
scripting language. Further, PHP runs on nearly every modern platform
in existence, while Cold Fusion is only available on Windows, Solaris,
Linux, MacOS, and AIX. Cold Fusion has a good IDE and is generally
quicker for new programmers to achieve results for very simple
applications, whereas PHP initially requires more programming
knowledge. Cold Fusion is designed with non-programmers in mind, while
PHP is focused on programmers.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<dl class="qandaentry" id="faq.languages.perl">
<dt><strong>
PHP vs. Perl?
</strong></dt>
<dd class="answer">
<p class="para">
The biggest advantage of PHP over Perl is that PHP was designed for
scripting for the web, while Perl was designed to do a lot more.
Because of this, Perl can get very complicated. The flexibility /
complexity of Perl can make it difficult for developers of varying
skill levels to collaborate. PHP has a less-confusing and stricter
format without losing flexibility. PHP is also easier to integrate into
existing HTML than Perl. In large part, PHP has all the 'good'
functionality of Perl - constructs, syntax, et cetera - without making
it as complicated as Perl can be. Yet PHP's command-line interpreter
(CLI) is powerful enough to perform high-level tasks much in the same
way Perl has been traditionally employed. Perl is a very tried and
true language, and has stood its ground since the 1980's, but PHP has
matured and evolved quickly, and continues to make fantastic progress.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<hr /><div class="manualnavbar" style="text-align: center;">
<div class="prev" style="text-align: left; float: left;"><a href="faq.com.html">PHP and COM</a></div>
<div class="next" style="text-align: right; float: right;"><a href="faq.migration5.html">Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5</a></div>
<div class="up"><a href="faq.html">FAQ</a></div>
<div class="home"><a href="index.html">PHP Manual</a></div>
</div></body></html>
