PHP vs. ASP.NET: Nothing Is Hidden

I just did some work on the code behind obtainium.org.

Strange, the differences between coding in PHP and in ASP.NET, which I’m working on for another project.

PHP is all manual — I use BBEdit (“It doesn’t suck”) for editing, and I edit code in place. When I make a change it just works. With ASP.NET I’m using Visual Studio, and I have to compile and test locally; once it tests okay, I have to FTP it up to the actual website.

But the main difference seems to be that in PHP nothing is hidden — what I write is what I get. ASP does a bunch of translation before things get to screen, so “view source” shows me all sorts of junk that I haven’t written.

Actually the biggest difference is probably that PHP lacks my underlying deep resentment of all things Microsoft.