PHP for Business systems?

Question

Hi all,

I Currently work within the IT industry in a hardware/software/desktop support role, but wish to move my career direction into software development/solution design/etc..

I have built a few application in the PHP framework language CodeIgniter(that I have noticed a lot of you like!)

My question is: (and I can answer it for myself, but am looking for confirmation/views)

Is PHP a language I should continue you concentrate on if im looking at developing such things as payrole, ERP, etc. applications, or should I refocus on such things at .Net(C#) / Java? (and also concentrate my DB knowledge onto MSSql)

Or are there actually more PHP business applications out there then I thought there was?

Many Thanks!

Tom Kirby.

Answer 1

I'm not sure about the total count on PHP vs .Net business apps but I think both frameworks are capable platforms for building business applications. It depends more on the type of employer and clients you will be coding for. If you are a one man show I would recommend PHP but if you plan to be a developer for a large firm I would focus on .NET. From my experience large enterprise customers tend to like the warm fuzzy feeling of dealing with Microsoft shops and therefor lean towards .NET solutions. If your planning on creating your own consulting/software company then the open source and agile nature of PHP development may suit your needs better.

If you stay with PHP then learn MySQL but fortunately SQL knowledge learned with MySQL translates well to other relational DBMS.

Answer 2

Your question seems to be concerned with how well you can make a living with using PHP vs ASP.NET.

Regardless of your preferences regarding one platform or another, in your position I would first examine your local area and find out which one is more prevalent amongst the independents, then go that way, unless you have reason to believe that things are changing to more favor the other way.

As to a comparison between the two, do a search on comparisons, and keep in mind that some PHP types are incredibly biased against ASP.NET and may not know very much about it, and also keep in mind that the reverse is very much the case also. Here's some cases in point (with a commentary by me on how inaccurate the PHP-booster is -- I can't speak to the other, because I don't know enough about PHP).

PHP is used by many highly visible open-source users (Wikipedia, Wordpress and others), and I have found the many products which use it to be excellent. This includes a number of forums, and other kinds of social networking sites. The same can be said for ASP.NET, however. StackOverlow itself is ASP.NET (with a SQL Server backend). Here are some side-by-side comparisons, some of which are actually evenhanded:

http://www.bizfive.com/articles/web-design/comparing-php-and-asp.net/

This article is tipped in favor of PHP and asserts a few things about ASP.NET that are arguably false. A couple are: PHP is free and open source and there are lots of experts you can consult about it, as opposed to ASP.NET, which is closed source and you have to go to Microsoft to get support. Wrong. ASP.NET itself is proprietary, of course, but the run-time engine comes with Windows, and there are free Microsoft-supplied development tools that you can use to build sites. There are huge numbers of developers online in various social networking sites who love providing support, such as www.asp.net, as well as this one (SO).

http://www.soopertutorials.com/technology/programming/2475-aspnet-php.html

This one tips toward ASP.NET, I think a bit more honestly than the first one. But then, I'm not a PHP programmer!

Answer 3

Personal preferences aside, I think since PHP was good enough for Facebook, then in the right hands it should be good enough for any web application.

But I don't think the capabilities of PHP are the real issue here. You mentioned specific business applications like ERPs and payroll. Smaller shops are likely to buy off the shelf software to cover their needs, and I think they would probably avoid web based solutions unless they were fully managed by the vendor. Bigger companies would probably go with enterprise solutions from one of the big boys like Oracle or SAP.

I think you would be aiming for businesses between these two ends of the spectrum. If that is indeed the case, then the existing IT infrastructure of those clients would probably be the determining factor. An IT department in a shop running a Microsoft software stack will probably prefer a solution that runs on ASP.NET and MS SQL to one that runs on Apache and MySQL, for instance.

So, if your target is smaller mom and pop operations, then it's desktop applications all the way, for which PHP is not suitable. For bigger shops, the dominant IT culture for businesses in your area should determine your choice.

Answer 4

I Agree, SaaS Is growing, and small to medium sized company's(and some large) are changing how they view solutions they currently have. as an example, the company I am employed at, (as well as Land Rover) have moved their e-mail systems over to Google-Apps.

but I do agree, if I am to move from one side of the industry(Hardware) into a different size(application development) and pretty much re-start the climb up the ladder again, i need to follow trends...

I did what was recommended, and researched into what language saturates the industry (primarily the industry i'm trying to get into) and that is .net when it comes to ERP, Buisness applications..(in fact i struggled to find anything other than E-commerce, Job sites, and CMS that required a PHP Dev)

Although I am a firm believer in taking advantage of opensource software, i think am going to have to agree that in the interests of "slipping into a job position" .NET is what i must focus on..

last thing i want to be know as is the "snotty 23yo who come in, and changed all our systems" lol