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Firstly PHP is just a web scripting language and can only be used on a web server for web development, that’s it. You cannot use PHP to develop Windows apps or Linux UI or Mac OS X UI apps. If you want to implement any of the classes you will have to most probably rewrite that code, which is not that great. Compare this to Python or C# and you wont have to rewrite your code, just create a class library (with C#) and re-use, re-use, re-use, re-use… Code reuse within a PHP environment is thus seemingly limited to a web environment.

The second reason why I will not use PHP is because there are better dynamic languages available, such as Python and Ruby.

The third reason I wont develop websites using PHP is because PHP devs seem to think that because the develop a site in PHP they are already building an SEO friendly website. What utter crap. There seems to be this aura around PHP that makes it look like you automatically get website awesomeness packed in. Lets not forget that the art of development on most platforms require the same disciplined processes. Whether you write unit tests for .NET or PHP – you still need to write unit tests. Whether you test websites written using PHP or ASP.NET you still have to test them in browsers – you dont get cross-browser compatibility out of the box.

The fourth reason I wont use PHP for development is because .NET offers programming features such as LINQ and Generics.

WordPress runs on PHP, and PHP runs on Apache, this blog uses PHP and Apache to serve up content, and .NET doesn’t. So whats the point then? Well, for all intents and purposes I have a technology that can be used to develop and maintain large commercial websites without having to change to a .NET hosting provider. The point being that while I love .NET I cannot really develop commercially websites with it unless I pay for extra hosting and in these lean economic times I cannot see myself paying more money for hosting. That means that I have to rely on technologies such as PHP.

I have been reluctant to use PHP simply because the software tools available cost money, such as Zend Studio, but I did find PHP Development Tools as part of Eclipse and today I started doing some basic PHP stuff, and its amazing to see how easy it is to adapt to PHP if you have used C#. The syntax is very similar. One of the biggest differences between PHP and .NET is the way pages are handled. .NET uses postbacks, and all the .NET code is compiled, not interpreted. PHP on the other hand interprets its code and the way it basically works is that Apache passes a request over to PHP if it detects any PHP. The PHP interpreter then executes the PHP. As far as syntax goes PHP is similar to most programming languages. Features such as assignment operators and conditional statements are similar.

So I have this peculiar solution that I want to develop using PHP and MySQL, and since I do not have ASP.NET running on this hosting package PHP and MySQL are the obvious options at this stage. The first step in creating a solution is to define it. You define a solution by describing what it is you want to achieve, and in so-doing determine all the variables and objects that might exist within your solution. Once you have described the solution you can start analysing it and start breaking it down into small usable pieces. I follow a practice whereby I develop small pieces of code at a time and test them as I go along (with your desired goal in mind).

I want to develop a breadcrumb navigation system for my website. That is the solution I want. How do I go about defining it? What is the purpose behind building a breadcrumb navigation system?

I downloaded the LiveValidation script recently and I realised after implementing it on a webpage I did not understand how it interacts with a PHP or ASP.NET application and it got me thinking that maybe I need to just try and understand how server-side and client-side code interacts with JavaScript.

What is AJAX? I know it’s an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, but what does it really mean and how does it work. Client- and Server-side scripting is easy to understand on their own and its easy to understand how both technologies are used, but where it becomes tricky for myself is when the server-side and client-side code need to interact with each other. Developing web applications with ASP.NET does not always expose a developer to the inner workings of that specific technology. AJAX is not unique to PHP or ASP.NET. Both ASP.NET and PHP are server side scripting languages. The first thing to understand is that AJAX is not a technology on its own, nor is it something that has not been there before, because it uses existing technologies (JavaScript, XML) to do what it does. AJAX uses a combination of programming tools to create web-based applications that react more like software applications – this means that the web-based application responds much smoother and nicer and the page does not reload to retrieve new content.

I still have not defined what AJAX looks like or what it exactly does. AJAX is based on open standards such as HTML, CSS, XML and JavaScript. AJAX uses XML and HTTP Requests to communicate with a web server. Another important thing to note is that with AJAX web applications do not re-submit a web page every time a user makes a request. If for example a user enters data on a form and submits the information to a web server, the web server will traditionally create a new page after the submit has occurred, but AJAX communicates with the web server in such a way that updates to the page only happen to the sections of the page that are affected.