The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - ASP to PHP compiler in two months?

ASP to PHP compiler in two months?

That's quite a feat for a summer intern....especially since he apparently didn't know the language before starting (have a hard time believe he truly started at ground zero though).

Anyway, where can I hire this guy? :)

Crimson
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

Doesn't an ASP to PHP converter missing the mark?

The two languages have very different programming styles and feature sets. I doubt the end result of such a conversion would be worth while.

Almost Anonymous
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

Almost Anonymous:

"The two languages have very different programming styles and feature sets. I doubt the end result of such a conversion would be worth while. "

Except in the case where it lets you port your (formerly) MS specific code to Unix, which was the case here. Though I guess this begs the question of the wisdom of the decision to build an app in a platform specific language when multi-platform support was needed, but that's a whole other topic. :)

Regardless, it's still a neat app.

Crimson
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

I just wonder how effective such a translater would be. You might be able to convert most of the ASP syntax to PHP syntax but what do you do about the API calls?

You could create ADO and CDO wrappers for PHP and then you ASP-converted code might look alright. But then you also have to convert all the SQL statements which will no doubt cause you other implementation details.

I suppose what I'm saying is there is little point in converting the syntax of ASP to PHP since there is so much other stuff you have to change.

Almost Anonymous
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

I guess they are speaking of a compiler and not of a converter.
So IMHO the ultimate goal is to have something in PHP that works as the ASP. Code readability is not in the spec.
That will be similar to Basic2C or Matlab2C stuff. It works but never attempt reading the cryptic C code :-)

FireMode
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

Forgot a word in my previous post. The second sentence should be "... should work as the ASP version".

Sorry.

FireMode
Wednesday, December 3, 2003

I suspect it was a converter that took fairly standardized ASP code and changed them to the equivalent PHP.

That is, it would work for the target project, but would not necessarily work with *any* asp application.

We also didn't get to hear how successfully it did the translation. Perhaps it's a glorified RegEx system that does substitutions on the code and fixes maybe 80%, leaving the remaining 20% for human fixup. Nothing wrong with that though - lots of people knock up scripts to do the donkey work, then finish the job manually. Although if this is the case, it hardly deserves the title "ASP to PHP compiler".

If it was that generic, I'd expect to see Joel making use of the investment by marketing what would be quite a useful toolkit.

Steve Jones (UK)
Thursday, December 4, 2003

I too am wondering why he is not out selling this "industrial-strength compiler".

I am sure there are a few companies out there that would be interested in it. Chilli ASP has never been the most robust platform.

Tapiwa
Thursday, December 4, 2003