When to choose LAMP over ASP.NET?

Question

A friend wants to start a dating website, she wants me to help her. We still haven't discussed on what platform it'll be developed, but I'm thinking she'll suggest LAMP to save a buck (which is one reason already to chose over ASP.NET already). If the dating website does well, it'll potentially hold a large amount of data (I'm not sure if this would be another reason to consider either ASP.NET or LAMP).

Anyway, I ask this from an ASP.NET developer point of view. I have very little, almost null experience with LAMP, and I don't like it very much either, so if she decides to go with PHP odds are I won't help her. So what would be some good points to bring up when deciding which platform to develop on?

Please be objective, I don't want this to be argumentative or anything, try to stick to facts, not opinions alone.

Thanks!

Answer 1

What generally matter in that kind of choice is :

• How much time will it require ?
• How much money will it cost
  • Which is often linked to the time ^^

If you have a lot of experience with .NET and none with Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL, choosing LAMP will mean that you'll need much more time : a whole lot of new stuff to learn.

It'll also mean that your code will probably not be as good as it would be with what you know.

After, the question is : do a couple of week "cost" more than a few licences ?

Only you and her can decide, there ;-)

Answer 2

If LAMP makes you queasy, you can try ASP.NET over Mono.

IMO the only good reason to move away from a programming environment that you are already experienced with is the one you already mentioned: cost.

You would use LAMP specifically to build appliances. If you're not building appliances, the software cost for ONE server is marginal, and is not worth the tradeoff for moving to a totally different development environment, IMO.