Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously we have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash, and S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions.

In this article we chat to Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP and web application framework ASP.NET, used to build dynamic Web sites, applications and Web services.

Why was ASP created and what problem/s was it trying to solve?

Active Server Pages (ASP) was initially created to address the challenge of building dynamic Web sites and Web-based business solutions. It was first released with IIS 3.0 (Internet Information Server) in 1996.

Creating and updating static Web sites was a very time consuming task that was prone to human error. In order to avoid mistakes, every page would require careful attention during changes. Furthermore, the potential use of Web sites was very limited using HTML exclusively. There needed to be an efficient way to change content quickly, in real time. ASP enabled the easy integration of databases as well as more advanced business and application logic that the Web is known for today.

Explain the early development of ASP.NET. Who was involved, and what difficult decisions had to be made?

Scott Guthrie is one of the original creators of Microsoft's ASP.NET and, today, is the Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Developer Division. The early development of ASP.NET focused on developer productivity and enabling powerful, Web-based solutions. The key goal was to help make it easier for traditional developers who had never done Web development before to be successful in embracing this new development paradigm.

ASP.NET was a breakthrough technology that fundamentally changed the way developers approached and delivered Web sites - bringing it more in line with traditional software development.

Building a brand new Web application framework was a difficult decision to make, especially since many customers had already adopted ASP. We felt it was the best approach, since it provided customers with one robust and consistent development platform to build software solutions. A Web developer could now reuse his existing skill set to build desktop or mobile applications.

When we released ASP.NET, we did not want to force customers to upgrade. As a result, we ensured that ASP would work in each subsequent release of IIS. Today, we still continue to support the ASP runtime, which was included as part of IIS7 in Windows Server 2008.

What is the difference between ASP and ASP.NET and why would developers choose one over the other?

ASP and ASP.NET are both server-side technologies and the similarities basically stop there. If a developer is interested in writing less code, we would recommend ASP.NET. There are a myriad of other reasons too, including: