What is ASP and resources.... - Tech Support Forums

eagle1 · September 7th, 2005, 04:48 PM

Hello people.

I have been out of the loop for a while.
I can't even remember C++ well.
I have been working for a company which offers engineering services
(I studied Computer Sciences) and have not really applied or practiced my programming skills.
Now, I will try to find another job and it seems that everyone asks about ASP, .NET, etc.

What is ASP?
What can you do with it?
Is this in the .NET Package? (Explain . NET if you can also.)
Should I learn ASP and C#?
and most importantly, can you recommend good books
that are introductions to these but also get more difficult as you go on
(such as textbooks)?

I know these are a bunch of questions but if I'm going to start programming again, I need to get up to date.

Also, if you can, can you reccomend books for MySQL and PHP good for beginners and intermediate users?

Thanks again.

jkrohn · September 7th, 2005, 04:52 PM

ASP stands for active server pages. You can program ASP pages in any of I think 7 languages.

ASP is just like PHP, perl, etc in web pages. It allows you to build dynamic web pages just like any other backend scripting language.
.Net is like the java runtime. It is a runtime environment. It allows you to program in a variety of languages which are compiled down to .Net runtime code.
Should you learn it? Depends what you are looking to do.

Agent_Embryo · September 7th, 2005, 04:53 PM

ASP = Active Server Pages = Microsoft Server-Side script using VBScript (Visual Basic Script) mostly. Used together with HTML to make dynamic content webpages, mostly.

That's about what I can think of right now.

eagle1 · September 7th, 2005, 05:17 PM

Thanks so ASP is used in web pages in a similar way
to php, etc. (I forgot the little I knew of PHP ... maybe if I start seeing it again
I'll remember)

Now, I'm not planning to do anything especifically yet but I want to learn.
I've been out of the loop for quite some time.

Any good books out there you can recommend (for everything listed)?

I plan to keep working in the same place for a while longer
but I want to practice at home.

eagle1 · September 9th, 2005, 04:18 PM

Well, since no one has posted any resources, these are the alternatives
I'm looking at right now.

Programming ASP.NET (Paperback)
by Jesse Liberty, Dan Hurwitz

ASP.NET Cookbook (Paperback)
by Geoffrey T. LeBlond, Michael A. Kittel

Essential ASP.NET With Examples in C# (Paperback)
by Fritz Onion

Build Your Own ASP.NET Website Using C# & VB.NET (Build Your Own) (Paperback)
by Zak Ruvalcaba

Learning C# (Paperback)
by Jesse Liberty

Microsoft C# Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner (Series).) (Paperback)
by Andy Harris

Developing C# Windows Software: A Windows Forms Tutorial (Paperback)
by Jason Bell, Matthew Reynolds, Benny B Johansen, Thiru Thangarathinam

What do you think?

jkrohn · September 9th, 2005, 04:32 PM

Which book to get depends highly on your programming background and how well you understand programming and general programming concepts.

I would have to look through the books myself to offer any good opinion on them. When I wanted to learn C# and .Net I just bought the 1000 page reference manuals so I have no reccomendations other than those

Jkrohn

eagle1 · September 9th, 2005, 05:29 PM

Yeah I know that sometimes is difficult to offer suggestions
because not everyone is at every level.
I will buy introductory books though because it has been a while
since I've programmed properly. But I do have seen and understand some concepts
since I used to program in C, C++ and had used Perl+CGI, little Javascript, etc.

Creosote · September 10th, 2005, 06:33 PM

More clarification:

ASP is not the same as ASP.Net. The biggest thing they have in common is the word ASP.

ASP is programming dynamic web pages in a scripting type environment.

ASP.Net is using object-oriented progamming languages which can compile to Micrsoft MSIL code--.Net assembles. ASP.Net typically uses extra code files--the "code-behind" files that are additional source code files to the .aspx files.

What is .Net? In the context of programming, .Net is similar to Java in that it is a run-time environment which resides on a PC (the .Net runtime would reside on an IIS webserver in the case of ASP.Net). Programs are compiled not into machine language, but into MSIL in which the .Net runtime will compile into machine code at run time.

Many languages can be used to compile code into MSIL. The langues which come with MS Visual Studio.Net are Visual Basic, C#, C++ and J#.

If you are looking for jobs which require ASP or ASP.Net, then learning just one of those will not qualify you for both--they are that different.

eagle1 · September 12th, 2005, 01:36 PM

Thanks for the info.
I found a book (I didn't even know I had it) that is called
Introducing Microsoft .Net and I started to grasp the concept of what .Net is all
about.

Thanks for clarifying the differences between ASP and ASP.Net .

**Socalgal** · September 14th, 2005, 02:08 PM

Eagle1,

If you still need an ASP reference book, I still have this for sale:

ASP.NET. Step by Step 10.00
Includes CD
Microsoft.net, G. Andrew Duthie
ISBN 0-7356-1287-0

I never had the time to put forth the needed focus into developing ASP, unfortunately. The book and CD are in excellent condition.