php-doc-en/faq/languages.xml

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 <chapter xml:id="faq.languages" xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <title>PHP and other languages</title>
  <titleabbrev>PHP and other languages</titleabbrev>

  <para>
   PHP is the best language for web programing,
   but what about other languages?
  </para>

  <qandaset>
   <qandaentry xml:id="faq.languages.asp">
    <question>
     <para>PHP vs. ASP?</para>
    </question>
    <answer>
     <para>
      ASP is not really a language in itself, but an acronym for Active
      Server Pages; the actual languages used to program ASP include
      Visual Basic Script, JScript, and C#, among others. The biggest
      drawback of ASP is that it's a proprietary system that is natively
      used only on the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) platform.
      This limits its availability to Win32 based servers. There are a
      couple of projects in the works that allows ASP to function with
      other environments and webservers:
      <link xlink:href="&url.instantasp;">InstantASP</link>
      from <link xlink:href="&url.halcyon;">Halcyon</link> (commercial),
      Chili!Soft ASP from 
      <link xlink:href="&url.chilisoft;">Chili!Soft</link> (commercial), and
      <link xlink:href="&url.mono;">Mono</link> (open-source).
      ASP is said to be a slower and more cumbersome language than PHP, with
      less overall stability. One of the pro's of ASP is that, since it
      primarily uses VBScript, it's relatively easy to pick up the language
      if you're already proficient in Visual Basic. ASP support is also
      enabled by default in IIS, making it easy to get up and running.
      However, the components built in ASP are really limited, so if you
      need to use "advanced" features (like interacting with FTP servers),
      you'll need to buy additional components.
     </para>
    </answer>
   </qandaentry>

   <qandaentry xml:id="faq.languages.coldfusion">
    <question>
     <para>PHP vs. ColdFusion?</para>
    </question>
    <answer>
     <para>
      PHP is commonly said to be faster and more efficient for complex
      programming tasks and trying out new ideas, and is considered by many
      to be more stable and less resource-intensive as well. While ColdFusion
      once had better error handling, database abstraction, and date parsing,
      the database abstraction shortfalls were addressed in PHP 4. A
      particular quality that is listed as one of ColdFusion's strengths
      is its excellent search engine, but many strong arguments suggest that
      a search engine is not something that should be included in a web
      scripting language. Further, PHP runs on nearly every modern platform
      in existence, while Cold Fusion is only available on Windows, Solaris,
      Linux, MacOS, and AIX. Cold Fusion has a good IDE and is generally
      quicker for new programmers to achieve results for very simple
      applications, whereas PHP initially requires more programming
      knowledge. Cold Fusion is designed with non-programmers in mind, while
      PHP is focused on programmers.
     </para>
    </answer>
   </qandaentry>

   <qandaentry xml:id="faq.languages.perl">
    <question>
     <para>PHP vs. Perl?</para>
    </question>
    <answer>
     <para>
      The biggest advantage of PHP over Perl is that PHP was designed for
      scripting for the web, while Perl was designed to do a lot more.
      Because of this, Perl can get very complicated. The flexibility /
      complexity of Perl can make it difficult for developers of varying
      skill levels to collaborate. PHP has a less-confusing and stricter
      format without losing flexibility. PHP is also easier to integrate into
      existing HTML than Perl. In large part, PHP has all the 'good'
      functionality of Perl - constructs, syntax, et cetera - without making
      it as complicated as Perl can be. Yet PHP's command-line interpreter
      (CLI) is powerful enough to perform high-level tasks much in the same
      way Perl has been traditionally employed. Perl is a very tried and
      true language, and has stood its ground since the 1980's, but PHP has
      matured and evolved quickly, and continues to make fantastic progress.
     </para>
    </answer>
   </qandaentry>

  </qandaset>
 </chapter>

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