PHP?

I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET
in these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP
to PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP.
Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
whatever it is where i can practice on it?
How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
easily as i can by Visual Studio?

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:23:24 -0700, mezzanine1974 wrote:

> I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET in
> these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP to
> PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP. Visual
> Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site by ASP.
> I wonder if there is such single software or platform or whatever it is
> where i can practice on it? How can i install and use PHP in such a way
> that i can do all as easily as i can by Visual Studio?

Visual Studio and .NET are two of the worst things to happen to
programming in history... an easy, user friendly, platform that anyone can
use to create bloated, buggy software that's highly dependent on the OS,
browser and patch level.

The only thing you need to develop applications in PHP is a text editor...
and technically you don't even need that.

http://www.php.net/

--
I told you this was going to happen.

On Aug 27, 2:23*pm, mezzanine1974 <savas_karadu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET
> in these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP
> to PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP.
> Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
> by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
> whatever it is where i can practice on it?
> How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
> easily as i can by Visual Studio?

I have not used ASP but last year I did some SQL SErver, Access and
Excel programming. I did VBA programming. I don't like it because it
is proprietary. Everything works really well together on a microsoft
system. SQL Server management studio is very nice program. The IDE
development environment is nice.
If you are in that world you need it. I would say it depends what
companies you want to work for.

mezzanine1974 wrote:
> I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET
> in these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP
> to PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP.
> Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
> by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
> whatever it is where i can practice on it?
> How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
> easily as i can by Visual Studio?

PHP should be able to do nearly everything you want -- it's not even
limited to web scripting. It may or may not be easier, it really comes
down to taste and/or job requirements when choosing.

If you want to make the transition easier, you could try Google'ing
for PHP IDEs. You can run PHP on IIS, if you want, as well. Do some
research on php.net if you want to know more about it.

--
Curtis

mezzanine1974 wrote:
> I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET
> in these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP
> to PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP.
> Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
> by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
> whatever it is where i can practice on it?
> How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
> easily as i can by Visual Studio?

If you want to install and practice PHP on your local machine you can use:
http://www.appservnetwork.com/

This will install a webserver with php and MySQL. I use it produce the
site locally then transfer to a public server when ready.

If you do choose this route, there is a great thread in the forums on
setting up Virtual Servers making it work on several projects at once.

I think you will find PHP much easier to learn considering it power.

Good Luck

Scotty

"mezzanine1974" <savas_karaduman@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2a9230e9-2e21-443e-9323-522b06a43b92@k7g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET
> in these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP
> to PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP.
> Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
> by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
> whatever it is where i can practice on it?
> How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
> easily as i can by Visual Studio?

If you want to try PHP programming there are several packages that will
install
alll that you need for it:
XAMPP
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
WAMP
http://www.wampserver.com/en/index.php

And there are several IDE options, but for beggining I suggest Notepad++:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm , it is free.

And if you want a robust solution, then Nusphere PhpEd is your choice:
http://www.nusphere.com/
or Zend Studio:
http://www.zend.com/en/ , but those are not free!

There are several others, but it is up to you, and Google can help you a
bit.

Zvonko

Message-ID:
<2a9230e9-2e21-443e-9323-522b06a43b92@k7g2000hsd.googlegroups.com> from
mezzanine1974 contained the following:

>Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
>by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
>whatever it is where i can practice on it?
>How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
>easily as i can by Visual Studio?

I've only had a brief look at Visual Studio but am I right in thinking
that you can rapidly develop applications in ASP.NET without knowing
much code? If so, there may be PHP frameworks that work in a similar
way but I haven't used any.

However well written I think a framework always has some restrictions
PHP, as usually discussed here, is the code itself. Since PHP authors
are writing code, the only limitations are the writer's ability.

A better comparison might be between .asp and .php In my view PHP is
the obvious choice here quite simply because it's not proprietary. You
view may vary on that.

--
Geoff Berrow 0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011
http://slipperyhill.co.uk - http://4theweb.co.uk

mezzanine1974 wrote:
> I am a freashman in Web design. I spend my time on studiying ASP.NET
> in these days. But whenever i check web for discussions comparing ASP
> to PHP, there are so many people who put positive comment on PHP.
> Visual Studio provides me almost all what i need to develop a web site
> by ASP. I wonder if there is such single software or platform or
> whatever it is where i can practice on it?
> How can i install and use PHP in such a way that i can do all as
> easily as i can by Visual Studio?
>

Beginners think tools like Visual Studio are great because they do so
much for you. But in truth, they are probably the worst thing you could
have. And the tool is not the language.

The tools are limited in what they can do. But as long as you stay
within those limitations, you can generate a lot of bloated and obtuse
code very quickly.

We teach several languages, including ASP and PHP. But we teach the
language - people use editors to create the programs and scripts. They
can use Visual Studio, but they use it as a text editor (and compiler
for those languages).

We also teach Visual Studio as a tool. But people are expected to know
the language they will be using before attending the Visual Studio class.

It's not bad to learn a tool like Visual Studio. But to be dependent on
the tool will severely limit your employment possibilities - to
basically nothing. Being able to write working code with Notepad - be
it ASP, PHP or XYZ - is marketable.

The ability to use tools along with the knowing the language(s) will add
some to your marketability to those companies who use the tools, but
won't help you with those companies which use different tools (or none
at all).

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

On Aug 28, 7:05 am, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:

> Beginners think tools like Visual Studio are great because they do so
> much for you. But in truth, they are probably the worst thing you could
> have. And the tool is not the language.
>
> The tools are limited in what they can do. But as long as you stay
> within those limitations, you can generate a lot of bloated and obtuse
> code very quickly.

Agree with Jerry... I'm teaching my son programming, and we're moving
beyond BASIC and I wanted a portable language that could teach a lot
of high level concepts... so I picked Java. We use a plain text
editor. We could use Netbeans or something, and having programmed in
Java for so long, I think it'd be fine for me... but it hides so much
of what's going on in the background that you miss a lot of
fundamentals. These languages aren't that hard... it behooves you to
know what's going on behind the scenes so you can understand why
something won't work.

For PHP I use "gedit," the standard Gnome Editor... it does syntax
highlighting for a variety of languages and has a lot of plug-ins that
can grow with you as you learn the language. I've got so many code
snippets that I can write a fully documented page that has database
operations and so forth in a matter of minutes... but I worked my way
up to it and the template code is what I've written, not what somebody
else decided was generically the best. You can trim down an IDE and
edit it's templates, but beginners don't seem to take that approach.

On Aug 28, 7:24 am, fred <fred.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 28, 7:05 am, Jerry Stuckle <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > Beginners think tools like Visual Studio are great because they do so
> > much for you. But in truth, they are probably the worst thing you could
> > have. And the tool is not the language.
>
> > The tools are limited in what they can do. But as long as you stay
> > within those limitations, you can generate a lot of bloated and obtuse
> > code very quickly.
>
> Agree with Jerry... I'm teaching my son programming, and we're moving
> beyond BASIC and I wanted a portable language that could teach a lot
> of high level concepts... so I picked Java. We use a plain text
> editor. We could use Netbeans or something, and having programmed in
> Java for so long, I think it'd be fine for me... but it hides so much
> of what's going on in the background that you miss a lot of
> fundamentals. These languages aren't that hard... it behooves you to
> know what's going on behind the scenes so you can understand why
> something won't work.
>
> For PHP I use "gedit," the standard Gnome Editor... it does syntax
> highlighting for a variety of languages and has a lot of plug-ins that
> can grow with you as you learn the language. I've got so many code
> snippets that I can write a fully documented page that has database
> operations and so forth in a matter of minutes... but I worked my way
> up to it and the template code is what I've written, not what somebody
> else decided was generically the best. You can trim down an IDE and
> edit it's templates, but beginners don't seem to take that approach.

I am a long time VB user and windows developer. Visual Studio and .Net
are great for windows applications. And that is what I have been doing
ever since Win 3.11 (DOS before that). Now I am transitioning to web
applications design and that is a whole new world. I did a lot of
study of ASP.Net vs open source and have concluded that open source is
the future of not only the web but of all application design. (How can
Microsoft hire enough programmers to compete with the thousands of
excellent programmers in the open source world, such as are found on
this fantastic forum).

Some issues I am grappling with are:
1. Web Apps are not Web Sites - so much of what you find is geared to
designing web sites whose purpose is to serve up info to the user. To
be an application implies a greater and varied set of objectives. So
issue one is how to achieve the same level of success for an
application using web technologies? Given high speed internet and ajax
and ever expanding tools from the open source community, I have
concluded that it is not only possible but advantageous to go the web
based approach.

2. Fractured Technologies - to the uninitiated, the choices of how to
proceed are almost overwhelming. PHP, ColdFusion, CGI, ASP.Net, *nix/
Windows, html, css, etc. But as you have discovered, the sign posts
are there. For me, the combo PHP, mySQL, Apache, *nix, javascript,
html, css...and you need to learn every one of these to create a
complete application.

3. Mind Set - in the Windows world, everything is in one domain. Now I
have to wrap my mind around what needs to be done client side with
javascriipt vs what has to be done server side with PHP and then wrap
that all in HTML/CSS. What was a simple button click event in Windows
is now a javascript ajax call to php with a call back function to
handle the response...etc.

4. Proprietary Lock Down - I also wanted to steer clear of .Net
because you are locked into using Windows hosting companies (my
experience with them has been very very bad). And then you are locked
into Microsoft's set of tools and functionality (ok, you can mix and
match, but why do that?) In my experience, MS seems to be one step
behind the open source community when it comes to new innovative ideas
(oh oh...I am going to get flamed over that, but it seems that way to
me).

So this has been a rambling stream of consciousness. Just some fuel
for thought...

John