Is it really worthwhile to learn ASP when it is used so little? I have some time on my hands so I wondering if it would benefit me to learn it. Any comments?
Like with any skill, it depends on what your intentions are. Example, you want to contract your sevices direct to customers creating dynamic websites, the M$ keyword can sell to untrained. If you want to create websites for your own use, I would think you focus on low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), and PHP/MySQL can give you that better than ASP. So, what are your intentions? tom
I'm just wondering if, instead of learning ASP I should learn C/C++ or one of the others. No real purpose yet other than expanding my knowledge.
No problem with learning ASP now. I also started with ASP, once you have some basics, learning other languages such as PHP would be much simpler.
Why learn Classic stuff? Try ASP.NET 2.0. I use it everyday and I love the new 80% code reduction it has gave me. I mostly use the new Data Controls and Membership API. Really nice MS has done the hard stuff for us.
I find it very funny people still use Classic ASP. Besides budget factors I think people would love the .NET Platform vs. some odd Vbscript'ed ASP site With .NET 2.0 being the standard for Windows Vista development now's the time to jump on board using .NET 2.0 using the Express versions of Visual Studio then when your ready to have a full blowen IDE buy the professional versions or get an MSDN Account.
while ASP classic is busy dying a slow death, in some countries it's still used for some reason. Probably because it's so easy to install and operate. Despite it's slow commerical death, I still use classic ASP for the tools I develop for personal use.
ASP is not at all dead. Its still the most used scripting language. the problem is its used by huge portals and dot com companies and not by small scale webmasters. considering the fact about window's market share of the server market, php has a long way to go. linux is taking over slowly but cannot say what MS will come up with. they have this reputation of striking when its most vital. so learn ASP if you are looking to work with those BIG websites, or learn php so as to create urself websites.
Well I'll admit Classic ASP is not totaly dead. Even MS uses some Classic ASP still but however .NET is the way to go for developing new stuff. I hate PHP for the sake of it being so buggy on Windows. I do not develop for Linux users as Microsoft's marketshare is sky high for both Desktop users vs. Linux. I hope the Mono project kicks off because I am lately interested in cross-platform apps.
If you're going to invest any time to learn I would lean towards ASP.net and C#. You can leverage those skills to write desktop apps as well.
Very correct mrspeed, I myself come from a Visual Basic 6 background so I have sticked with VB.NET although I am learning/studying C#. You may ask me why when there pretty much the same thing? Well because a lot of people just don't know that VB.NET is pretty much up to par as far as power goes. Lots I mean lots of people think C# is better. Anyways VB.NET and C# is the best way to go for ASP.NET or maybe even the new XAML platform hehe.
They both compile to MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) so in theory they should be the same performance wise. C# reminds me a little bit of PHP. They comment the same way and statements end with a ; I don't have to think as much about how to comment lines when switching languages. (I suppose the similarity ends there) When I do classic ASP I can't tell you how mant times I type in a ;
I'd replace php with Java... Exactly right on the MSIL front. I program in c# because I also do Java (easier to remember the ; etc). In the end go with what you're comfortable with.
If you're also interested in C/C++ I'd go with C# over VB.NET simply because the concepts and syntax in C# are more closely related to C/C++ than the quirky VB.NET is. So the overlap will help quite a bit if you later want to learn C++.
Lol, I have a similar problem, but reversed. My first languages was VB 6 and thus ASP. As I'm teaching myself PHP now, I keep forgetting to put in a ;
It may not be as popular, but it's anything but dead. I'm a web developer and never had any desire to be a "programmer". With a background in VB, ASP made the most sense and not everything has to be cutting edge. For many applications, ASP 3.0 is more than enough to get the job done. I don't have any desire to learn .net and I don't have any reason to do so.
That's true. However, MS is now pushing for .net all the way, so I feel ASP will fade into the background, esp with new web developers/programmers. It will soon be dead as a main-stream thing, but it'll always have it's die-hard suporters
it really how you see it: in my firm we still use asp for our programs but if we have to make new programs then we do it in asp.net.