Introduction To Programming: Web Programming Languages — ASP
ASP is a server-side scrpting platform that is used by Windows servers. Like PHP, ASP is used to prepare web pages dynamically before sending them to the browser.
ASP was first distributed in 1997 as part of Microsoft’s Internet Information Server. Various versions of IIS have been subsequently shipped as part of Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP Pro.
To call ASP a programming language would be a misnomer. Rather, ASP is a platform that interprets scripting done in a number of different languages (by default VBScript, but also others such as JavaScript or JScript) at the server
In an ASP file, everything written between and <code>%> is executed at the server. A line at the start of the file like defines what scripting language the file is using.
ASP is far less popular than PHP, largely because it only runs on IIS, which, aside from being only usable on one OS, is a web platform notorious for being vulnerable to hacker attacks. Additionaly, a new server environment, ASP.NET, is now being distributed by Microsoft. ASP.NET is more efficient and powerful, capable of using more languages, such as C.