What is ASP.NET?
This article is about ASP.NET, but to introduce it better we should be familiar with .NET first. .NET is actually a developer platform which is developed for building different variety of applications using tools, programming languages, and libraries. It includes C#, F#, and Visual Basic programming languages. It also have different editor and tools for different operating systems like Windows, Linux, etc. There are also some additional frameworks in .NET that has components which are specifically used in building specific types of apps, an example of this is ASP.NET which extends .NET. ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework which is specifically designed for web development. This framework was created by Microsoft to aide the programmers in developing dynamic websites, applications, and services. It was first released in the Month of January, year 2002 alongside the 1.0 version of the .NET framework and it was the replacement for Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is created on the Common Language Runtime (CLR) which is the virtual machine component of the .NET framework that manages the execution of the programs in the .NET framework. For more information about ASP.NET, ASP.NET also has a successor which is the ASP.NET Core which is a re-implementation of ASP.NET but it is now a modular web framework which comes with other Frameworks like Entity Framework. This new framework uses a new open source called .NET Compiler Platform also known as the codename “Roslyn” and it is cross platform.
Why is ASP.NET so popular?
To give you an idea just how popular ASP.NET is, it is stated in a survey report that Microsoft, the company that developed ASP.NET, is occupying 40% of the Web application market. Also, there are already more than 2 million websites that are being powered by ASP.NET Core. Its’ popularity is not really that surprising knowing that it always provides you with a wide range of capabilities at varying levels of sophistication. From basic and quick web pages to high-performance REST-based APIs for prominent businesses, they've got you covered. ASP.NET became popular because of having a variety of tools, it is also able to support different platforms (e.g., Windows, Linux, etc.) and it can also support different programming languages. Aside from the mentioned features, there are still more features that ASP.NET provides which makes it better to use than other frameworks and it is also cost efficient and very fast.
Is ASP.NET easy to learn?
According to different people from the internet, ASP.NET itself is not actually that hard to learn. However, you will also have to learn the other programming languages or Markup Languages that you will need in order to be able to apply the utilization of ASP.NET. But given that, some wtill say that even if you have no knowledge at all in programming languages and the different .NET frameworks, ASP.NET is still easy to learn as long as you are willing to spend time on it because you will still have to learn the basics of the programming languages, the .NET Framework before you can study the APS.NET framework itself. Some of the things that you are required to learn in order to use APS.NET are HTML, CSS, jQuery, Node.js and JavaScript. These will be essential for ASP.NET since these are the languages commonly used in creating a website.
Which is better ASP.NET or PHP?
ASP.NET and PHP are both beneficial in web app development and it is obvious because both of them are actually already gained special recognition from a lot of different web developers which is why they are still in the web application market even though they have been introduced a long time ago. Actually, this question is really hard to answer but there has been a dominant answer to this question which is “it depends”. To explain it further, I will give an example through a simple comparison. For security, it is known that the APS.NET provides better security than the PHP, but it depends on how much data is being dealt by your project since ASP.NET is not entirely free unlike PHP where there will be no additional fees to access all of its’ contents. If your project is big, and it deals with a lot of data, then it is worth to invest in APS.NET for more security in your project but if it is not that big and the number of data your project is dealing with is not that many then PHP will be enough. There are still other areas to consider and you might want to look that up.
Should I learn .NET Core or ASP Net?
In most cases, it is better to learn the .NET Core framework than the ASP.NET because technically, it is the newer version of ASP.NET which means that Microsoft have made upgrades to make the framework better. Also, in this manner, the team is in sync with official Microsoft’s upgrades and may benefit from constant developments. Even though the ASP.NET framework is still good these days if ever you will migrate from using ASP.NET to .NET Core it will be a long-term investment.