RE: PHP VS other scripting language

PREAMBLE --- I am expressing opinion. Opinion, like feelings are never wrong even though they might be different from yours. Please keep the flames to a minimum. /PREAMBLE -------------------- Hi JD, I don't have a web page but I can offer some points to consider from numerous years of working with the tools mentioned. 1) Cross platform capability. At some point you may find that for one reason or another you "must" switch to another platform. This has caused me to have to re-write entire applications because I've changed (Webservers in my first case) or Operating Systems. PHP and Perl win on this one. ASP and Cold Fusion are moving into the Unix world slowly but both PHP and Perl have solid implementations on both Windows and Unix. 2) Speed of Coding. Generally all of them are pretty reasonable on this point but Perl really wasn't made to do web work like people are making it do so you pay a bit of a price in speed as a result (like using print statements to output everything, it works fine but if 75% of what I'm doing is printing ... There must be a better way ... enter the other 3 languages!). 3) Speed of Modifications/Re-writes. Of these four I find Perl the hardest to read 3 months after I've written code. This can be solved but at the expense of 2 above or 4 below. It's smaller and more compact and it even has a few more tools available (not in quality maybe but quantity for sure!). If it's hard to read then it's harder to change. 4) Speed of Execution. I would probably have to go with Cold Fusion on this one but PHP has an optimizer available as an "add-on" that is supposed to speed it up another 50-100% but having not worked with it I can't verify the truth of that. Next I would put either Perl or PHP depending on application. Presumably with the PHP optimizer it would go Cold Fusion, PHP, Perl, ASP. I haven't done speed tests so don't flame me if someone else thinks I'm wrong, just give test results. 5) Available Resources. ASP was more widely available to teenagers learning to write code (especially using databases like Access) so you will probably find a few more of these coders around than for any of the other languages. Perl and PHP have a pretty solid following as does Cold Fusion but I have seen more people in need of Cold Fusion programmers so it would tend to suggest you would pay a bit of a premium for Cold Fusion. 6) Stability. Perl is a rock. It hasn't changed tonnes in the last while so you don't have to worry about the tools working with the version of Perl you've got. ASP changes every time Bill Gates goes to the bathroom. Cold Fusion is pretty stable even though they are coming out with new versions pretty regularly, but because it's commercial, the software tool makers know people wont upgrade immediately so they support older versions. PHP has just moved up to a new version (4.0.x) and isn't completely solid yet although most would say it's fine. In another 4 - 8 months PHP will be fine for a production environment with version 4 but many things will work under version 3.0.x just fine so it depends what you're doing. Overall my choices in order would be PHP, Cold Fusion, Perl, ASP (although my skills would suggest PHP, ASP, Perl, Cold Fusion because I didn't like Cold Fusion 1.x so I stayed away from it!) Hope that helps. Bob Horton. ******************************************* * Bob Horton - PneumaSoft Inc * Custom Software Development Services * * Ph: (306) 949-5610 Fax: (306) 924-5326 * bhorton@pneumasoft.com ICQ: 32058710 ******************************************* > -----Original Message----- > From: Joey [mailto:jduguay@nbnet.nb.ca] > Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2000 8:23 AM > To: php-general@lists.php.net > Subject: PHP VS other scripting language > > > Hello, > > I was wondering if anyone here might have a web site that clearly > defines the pros and cons and some of the different scripting > languages. We > are trying to decide what to use and there are many > possibilities. IE : ASP, > PHP, Perl, Cold Fusion ... > > I hope someone can help. > Thanks > JD > > >