.NET vs PHP: Demystifying the age old Saga

https://dev.to/ketanchavda/net-vs-php-demystifying-the-age-old-saga-lc

The debate between .NET and PHP is eternal, with developers from both the camps swearing by their preferred mode of development. In this article, we shall discuss both these popular web development frameworks and try to clear the confusion in your mind regarding which one works for you.

.NET is a server-side web development framework released by Microsoft. Using .NET, the developers can build web services, web applications, and other dynamic websites quickly.

PHP is a server-side programming language that has been specifically designed for developing web applications. The specialty of PHP is that the developers can easily embed the PHP code in HTML files, and the HTML code can be easily written in a PHP file.

Key Differences between .NET and PHP

Let us have a look at the various scenarios where the efficiency of .NET and PHP are compared with each other for a better insight.

Cost

In terms of value, PHP has a plus point; being open-source, it is free while Microsoft charges a license fee for .NET.

The licensing costs of .NET can turn out of control if you need to run the site on many servers simultaneously. Another thing is that if you require various features like server clustering, hot standby, or load balancing, then you will need to shell out extra money in .NET.

Popularity amongst Developers

Being free, PHP is eventually more popular than .NET. This fact is ascertained by web technology survey firm W3tech. According to W3tech, while PHP is used by almost 79% of websites, only 11% of websites use .NET.

Scalability

The scalability of your application does not depend upon whether you use PHP or .NET. Factors like the experience of the programmer, the programming practices used, and whether the programmer has followed programming guidelines and standards or not have an overbearing effect on the scalability of your application.

Speed and Performance

Many people believe that the speed and performance of your web app depends upon whether you choose .NET or PHP, which is not entirely accurate, there is a negligible difference in the performance of a website powered by PHP and a website powered by .NET.

Routine processes like finding images, displaying pages, and accessing various file systems, run equally well in both .NET and PHP. Instead, the speed of the website relies more on factors like database server, bandwidth, and the computer hardware used by the end-user.

Support of Developers

If you decide to build your website using PHP, then you will get the assistance of a large pool of developers as PHP is an open-source language. However, .NET also has a sizable pool of the .Net developers who regularly contribute to forums related to .NET development.

A supporting developer community is essential as when your development team gets stuck, this community can pitch in and help them. A lot also depends on the type of your query.

Although, as the number of contributors in PHP are more, you can expect a faster response to your query in PHP as compared to .NET forums.

Compatibility with Various Platforms

PHP is compatible with the LAMP stack model, which includes multiple software bundles like Linux, MySQL, PHP, and Apache. The LAMP stack is an open-source platform, and hence it gains from a large support community.

.NET, on the other hand, works only on platforms compatible with the .NET framework. It limits the level of compatibility of .NET with the platforms. This will be a neck-to-neck competition since both PHP and .Net support a wide range of platforms.

The debate between .NET and PHP is eternal, with developers from both the camps swearing by their pre…