Spoiled by .NET, the pain of using PHP

This is not a PHP vs ASP.NET post, don't worry!

My problem is not PHP, it's the fact I have to relearn a whole load of stuff that I have already learned once (or twice!) in my normal languages and the tools are just not as nice. It is so easy to just do stuff in your "mother tongue" language. I think in BASIC having started playing with it when I was 9 (CBM Vic20). To use another language means I have to work out what I want to do and translate into the target platform, often with a large portion of Googling and reference books. Life is so much easier when you have freedom of platform and tools.

It is easy to forget other platforms and languages do not have the richness of development environment of Visual Studio and SQL Enterprise Manager. Dreamweaver is pretty crap as a programmers tool even though it does the best job I have seen for PHP developers. PHPMyAdmin is just a joke, don't get me started. I hear there are GUI alternatives which I am going to have to take a look at when I get chance.

The nice thing, and OS saving grace, is the community support that is out there for PHP. I remember back when I used Perl how great the support was too. I don't think ASP.NET community, lovely, clever, whitty as it is, is quite as comprehensive.

Anyway, whine over ...Back to the books ;O)

1 Comment

  • I feel your pain. I too am beginning the journey to tackle PHP for a side project. Their web host runs Linux (trying to get them to switch to an asp.net host, hehe) and I found out the hard way that Chilisoft ASP (uses VBScript 3.1) really stinks. I've been developing in ASP.NET/C# for a few years now, and I too have been spoiled.



    But I am eager to learn PHP considering all the hype around it. I'm especially interested in OOP coding in PHP. :)

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