Should I start learning ASP Classic or 'continue' learning ASP.NET?

Question

Some background info: A year ago I had to learn PHP in school, I already knew ActionScript3 so it wasn't that difficult, and together with a friend of mine we were the first 2 of our school to learn ourselves OOP in PHP. It wasn't required but we thought it was important.

Last year I started learning C# and ASP.NET, I really like C# btw. But I'm far from pro in C# and ASP.NET, I did do some projects for myself, just for educational purposes.

My question: Now a few days ago I started an internship (which should take 6 months) But the company still works with ASP Classic and thus VBScript.

Is it worth having learned ASP.NET and C# last year, start ASP Classic and VBScript now for 6 months and probably after that continue in ASP.NET and C#?

I thought maybe looking for another internship, where they do work woth ASP.NET and C# is a better idea. But I had a talk with my boss today about this, and he said that he thinks I could learn more from doing ASP Classic, because in ASP.NET more things are pre-made. And he said that if I start doing ASP Classic now and then continue with ASP.NET I should better at programming ASP.NET because as an ASP Classic programmer you are more aware of what's under the hood (not my words, but I do believe him I guess. It sounds credible.).

I would like some opinions about this, because I don't know whether I should stay and do ASP Classic, or go and look for another internship where I can do ASP.NET.

Thanks in advance.

---Update---

Thank you all for your speedy answers. Now that I've read all your opinions, I think I'll go and look for another internship where they do work with ASP.NET. I'll just stay at my current in the meanwhile, shouldn't take too long I guess. Thanks

Answer 1

I don't see a point in learning ASP classic unless you are getting paid to do it. In the case of an internship, the experience gained outweighs the time spent using an older technology.

I wouldn't try using ASP classic in any of my future projects, but you should be fine learning it for your internship.

Also, if you can get a job working in something newer that will help you even more in the future, I'd go with that. Sometimes that's not an option though and you're stuck working with something old.

I think your boss is wrong with what he said, and I don't know why they haven't tried to upgrade over the last decade. While this won't necessarily hurt your career, it definitely won't help it on any significant level (except for the experience).

VBScript will actually be moderately beneficial to know in the future since a lot of systems automation scripts are written in it. This will also help with automating tasks for Microsoft Office, etc.

Get the job, get the paycheck, and move on when you can.

Answer 2

Most ASP work is maintenance these days. If a company is doing active new development in ASP, they should have a pretty compelling reason.

Also, your boss's remark is nonsense.

I'd say you should should avoid it if you can, and continue with ASP.NET (or something else with a pulse). And I say this as someone who started his career in FoxPro for DOS.

Answer 3

If you have an option on an internship that better fits what you want to learn, take that instead.

That said, learning more is usually a good thing. Do it, especially if it's only six months. Don't permanently set down roots in ASP Classic, though, because that's going to go away at some point; don't latch on to a train that's already going downhill.

Answer 4

ASP Classic is a very old language. ASP.Net WebForms is much newer and in modern use at many companies. There is an even newer model (newer to the MS world) called ASP.NET MVC. This model shares some aspects in common with ASP Classic, but improves on that old paradigm in almost every way.

You never lose by learning something new, but I think you could get more bang for your buck sticking with newer technologies. Intern with someone using MVC (like StackOverflow) if you want to learn that model.

Answer 5

To some really small extent, your boss is right. Learning classic ASP will help you understand how ASP.NET manages web concepts such as your page's viewstate property for example ; also it will force you to create your own gridview from scratch.

However, the .NET framework is really huge and it can take a fair amount of time to get to know it. A lot of ASP.NET controls helps you save precious time to concentrate on more important aspects of your application. I would prefer to look for an ASP.NET internship and learn ASP on your own if you want to know how some things were down the "old way", i.e. more than 10 years ago (classic ASP was launched by Microsoft in 1996 if I remember correctly).

Answer 6

Avoid ASP classic. It will reinforce bad programming practices. ASP.NET is only as "pre-made" as you allow it to be. If you want to learn, do not use the drag-and-drop designer; write all your HTML by hand in the VS editor. This will make you a far more versatile web developer, and will also prevent VS from generating "bloat" in your pages. I would also encourage you to explore ASP.NET MVC, because the WebForms model has many complications that MVC avoids.

If you can, look for another internship. I politely, but firmly disagree with your boss.

Answer 7

I say it can't be a nuisance. ASP will teach you some older technologies, not to say philosophy of doing things that could perhaps bring you on some other interesting paws with your new development. As a matter of fact, having worked with ASP for 6 months will grant you some knowledge which others can only speculate about.

Besides learning or improving your skills in ASP, working in this project you're mentionning might bring you some other aspects that could be worth learning. Any new experience is a step forward to new possibilities.

Learning ASP could at least simply teach you why in ASP.NET and MVC, things are done the way they are, and you'll perhaps better understand the foundations of the most commonly used aspects of these architectures or approach.

Furthermore, when a company will require a candidate that has a minimum of knowledge in ASP to migrate a system in ASP.NET, then should you be the guy? =P

Always look at what a new experience positively can bring you. Almost any new project can teach you new aspects of your work.

I hope this helps! =)

Answer 8

If you know PHP, you already know ASP classic. Yeah, the languages are different, but the important thing (the page model, the lifecycle, what runs when) are the same. The rest is just details of how to call various things in the OS. Well, except that vbscript is kind of crippled.

Also, if they're doing work in ASP, that probably means they've got COM objects (most likely written in VB6) to either call or you'll have to write and deploy. That way lies PAIN.

If you're looking for a realistic work at most IT development jobs, this would actually sound reasonable - there's lots of shops stuck on old technologies. However, it's not going to be that useful on your resume.

He is right in a way - the ASP.NET WebForms model DOES create a huge abstraction over what's actually going on. But if you looked at ASP.NET MVC or another MVC framework like Monorail, you can get the raw HTTP story. But, again, you've done PHP so you've already seen it.

Answer 9

Don't be duped here's a fact: VBScript does not run on the CLR, ASP classic and old IIS are not running in the CLR with ASP.Net's code paths and handlers and huge stack of stuff that I was thoroughly confused by when I went from ASP3 to ASP.Net years ago.

Don't waste your time, what's under the covers in ASP.Net and it's entire design model is so thoroughly different from what's going on in classic ASP, you'll just confuse the whole issue.

In fact, screw all of this, learn wpf/silverlight/xaml and C#, if you can put two and two together with the xaml style of code behind you will have no trouble with asp.net when you need it (or classi asp for that matter), and you will be far more capable of keeping up with what's going on next, rather than starting the journey 10 years ago, it will take a long time for you to catch up to modern times that way.

Answer 10

There's two things I'd add to what's been said here already, though I won't repeat the well-made points in the other answers.

It's completely wrong to say that knowing ASP will give you information about what is under the hood when it comes to ASP.NET. At the level of the two frameworks, its much more likely for knowledge of ASP to misinform you about ASP.NET - some things that seem similar are actually different. At the level below that, you're better off forgetting about frameworks and languages and learning the details of HTTP (see RFC 2616) and then working out how it works in whatever framework you are using.

Also, the real meat in class ASP wasn't ASP itself (which really, is much simpler than ASP.NET) but in COM objects used with it (which can often get much more complicated than the .NET equivalent, esp. when factoring in having to deal with the much more complicated threading abstraction, lack of garbage collection and other things where .NET provides us with new or improved tools).