[AccessD] Learning .Net -- PHP Instead?

Hi Arthur:

A very good reference site to get you started... and you do not have to be a
Class expert... to use the code... at least not right away. Fortunately for
me when ever I dabble in the language my son-in-law, who is a true guru in
the language, can resolve a problem which may take two today's to resolve on
my own, with one or two comments. (He works with the language 60 hours a
week and has been at it for years.)

ASP.Net is not anymore difficult, it is just that there is very few
passionate mentors out there, willing to spend their time freely, answering
the 'dumb' questions of a newbie, (I need another son-in-law mastering and
working in ASP.Net.) not like PHP which seems to have a very active
community willing to help. (JAVA is another such community...)

As ASP.Net matures I am sure a similar active community will evolve... but
it is not there yet. Microsoft has been doing its best to spread the word
with such cooperative sites as CodePlex, an open source community but it has
limited resources and is in business to make money.

Steering programmers into a brave new world is nearly as difficult as
getting rid of the ridiculous qwerty keyboard. 

So here I sit wondering why a simple password and new member sign-up module,
in ASP.Net is not working as planned... ;-)     

Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:48 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Learning .Net -- PHP Instead?

Anyone interested in following Ken's lead here is invited to visit
www.artfulsoftware.com and investigate our chapters on PHP and TheUsual().
Arthur

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Kenneth Ismert <kismert at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you are interested in Web programming, I would suggest PHP. Per unit of
> effort, I think most VBA programmers would get further with PHP than with
> ASPX, especially if you are starting out from scratch.
>
> I'm developing a SOAP-based web service that will be used by Access
clients
> running the COM-based SOAP Library 3.0. The server backend is being
written
> in PHP, currently running under a local IIS7 development server. It is
> stupid-simple to implement a SOAP server using PHP's built-in library. It
> was lots harder getting the VBA side to work than the PHP side. (The real
> challenge was getting a WSDL specification that both sides could agree on,
> but that is a separate topic.)
>
> PHP Plusses:
>
> * Of all open-source languages, PHP is the closest to VBA in it's feel and
> philosophy -- a pragmatic language that lets you get results fast
> * PHP 5.2+ works very well with Windows -- it installs with little fuss
> under IIS7, and has native drivers for SQL Server
> * The upcoming release, 5.3, offers some very nice language enhancements,
> like namespaces, late static binding, and closures. It even adds goto!
> These
> features bring it up to rough parity with scripting languages like Python
> or
> Ruby, and make it a much more expressive language than VBA.
> * There is an enormous ecosystem of open-source libraries, IDEs, CMS
> sytems,
> and MVC frameworks to choose from.
> * Projects developed under Windows/IIS should work with little or no
> changes
> under Linux/Apache.
>
> PHP Drawbacks:
>
> * PHP is a web-specific language. If you want something general-purpose,
> use
> something else.
> * PHP's libraries are extensive and rapidly improving, but it doesn't have
> the monolithic library integration that .NET enjoys with the CLR.
> * Comprehensive, transparent support for Unicode is still lacking, as it
is
> with most scripting languages. PHP 6 will rectify this.
>
> -Ken
> aseadvisors.com <http://www.databaseadvisors.com>
>
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