Why is ASP more used in Ireland than PHP?

ChRoMe

Graham wrote: »

and Linux admins work for free?

I think the argument is that if its something like a little PHP site, you don't need an admin.

Graham

I just want to be sure we're comparing like with like.

I don't think there's a huge difference in Admin resources required between ASP/.net and PHP.

stevenmu

smcelhinney wrote: »

Would you agree though, it's horses for courses (ooh, horses, topicallll!) I agree with you on some of your points, but Microsoft infrastructure and software are geared more towards a mid-level to corporate IT development strategy. The average joe-soap SME starting out, trying to get a web presence quickly, wont want to get wrapped up in the pitfalls of software licensing (multi-user access, single use, distributed etc).

Very much so. I think the cost and complexity of licensing Microsoft software is often over-blown, but there are definitely going to be situations where it would be a critical factor. Your SME startup example is a good one, if they're doing self-hosting or VPS hosting, licensing could be a big cost for them, and could get in the way of them rolling out servers quickly to meet demand. There's ways of minimising the costs and hassles but it's easy to see a company/individual wanting to bypass them altogether.

With respect to support costs, was recently involved in an RFQ process where a company quoted €500 per day for IIS 7.0 support, a single resource. Having had pretty good exposure to all of the aforementioned technologies for the past 15 odd years, unless it's changed radically in the last 2-3 years, there's no escaping the fact that MS hardware and software is significantly more expensive to host and support, than open-source, community-supported.

Would an Apache support resource cost much less when compared like for like? (keeping in mind that both IIS and Apache support is more specialised than .Net/PHP development, solo contractors are typically cheaper than companies etc).

ChRoMe

Graham wrote: »

I don't think there's a huge difference in Admin resources required between ASP/.net and PHP.

Um.... yeah I think there is tbf.

smcelhinney

stevenmu wrote: »

Would an Apache support resource cost much less when compared like for like? (keeping in mind that both IIS and Apache support is more specialised than .Net/PHP development, solo contractors are typically cheaper than companies etc).

I see your point. In my experience, yes, they are significantly cheaper (approx 60% of the cost). Also, Linux admins probably dont have the luxury of being THAT specialist, for example, they should be able to support multiple flavours of Linux (RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, etc) on a variety of architectures, with vastly different configurations.

However, I may have shot myself in the foot there. The beauty of Windows (and by extension Server and IIS) based systems is that they tend to be quite specialised, meaning that someone can build up a very specific knowledgebase in a short period of time, and be very competent in it.

We're back to the original argument of "fit-for-purpose", which I'm glad we seem to agree on.

Graham

Again, I don't think we're comparing like-with-like. The fact that you may be able to get a Linux admin in for €300/day is not comparable with a company responding to an RFQ at €500/day.

The company has offices, infrastructure, equipment, employee costs, training costs etc etc etc etc etc. If you're doing a comparison, compare contract rates for both disciplines.

smcelhinney

In terms of salary, mid level Linux Admins (5-6yrs) seem to be earning 40-50k according to irishjobs.ie, Windows Server Engineers around 45-55k, so negligibly more. No contract rates there to see, Im just going on what I've seen in the past.

Or you could do what one company has done (on irishjobs.ie, not sure if I can link to it, so I wont!) and just lump the two of them together (windows admin, linux admin) and pay them 25k.. :rolleyes:

Ethan.Saaris

Well, PHP/MySQL is gaining ground everywhere, and even some public institution in some countries started moving towards open-source technologies.

I'm not a big fan of frameworks, such as CakePHP or CodeIgniter, but I agree it depends a lot on what the client needs.

I like these posts, too. I never used any Microsoft technologies such as .Net or IIS, but I have a quite strong understanding of they work, being a programmer.

Also, small companies start with PHP and they continue to use it, depending on their IT department or development agency.

awec

smcelhinney wrote: »

Arent we forgetting something fundamental here? Licensing & support costs.

Smaller companies migrate to PHP because of
a) free open source scripting language running on
b) free web server platform with
c) an abundance of community supported applications

as opposed to the licensing and support costs associated with IIS and ASP.NET including the exorbitant cost of some of their so-called "Visual" development software.

You can get the licenses through bizspark if you are a startup, I'm pretty sure that means you pay a vastly reduced fee. Or maybe you get it free, I can't remember.

Graham

I think bizspark gives start-ups a pile of stuff for free, licenses and free azure (MS Cloud) services.