Someone please, please, please, for the love of Pete, prove me wrong!
I’ve said this a few times before. And time and time again (against my own hopes) I seem to be coming across more and more of these people. Considering how many programmers there are in the world, I guess there is still some comfort in knowing there are few of us out there who don’t pull competence (and talent, in some cases) out of thin air.
Let the record stand that I have never detailed my own programming and web design expertise on this blog before or any other site. I.E. I have never presented my education, how many years I’ve been working and in which specific companies.
I have never claimed superior knowledge than my peers, and I have never charged anyone or presented any information on this blog for self promotion. I have never advertised or solicited work on this blog or my own site and have never received any funds through this blog or my own site. I have, however, poked fun at my own field and peers for what I believe is a ridiculous sense of self preservation at the cost of quality work. You can find a few posts about that on my About page.
Whenever I witness a case of intellectual dishonesty on this scale, I have to respond. As much as it stings to do this, since I actually have to read this stuff before posting here, let the grind begin.
Enter Joanna Gadel…
Joanna, if you ever come across this post or someone else finds it for you, let it be known that I’m officially acusing you of being a charlatan. You are using half-truths, false logic and a flood of other misinformation in public articles to present yourself as someone who knows what she’s talking about. In fact you, madam, are pulling a “Princess Caraboo” in the web design world. Even though the articles are posted as “free” information, they are rubbish! And they artificially inflate your capabilities which is fraud, if you intent to use your new found prowess for financial gain.
People who have hired you in good faith, should be getting their money back (if they’ve paid you) for being so thoroughly cheated. And if any of your many articles are a hint (as you’ve obviously used them to promote yourself) they have been most definitely cheated.
Joanna is part of SEO Sydney, a company “experienced” in search engine optimization, yet is somehow confined to using a table based layout that adds tons of cruft that many search engines will ignore. A lot of search engines ignore the content on a page after a specific number of bytes. You are better off avoiding excessive markup to make sure your sites are properly indexed. SEO Sydney “experts” seemed to have overlooked this. But let’s move on…
Joanna has her misinformation posted on Articlebase, EzineArticles, GoArticles, and the king of all shameless plugs, Promotion World. And I’m sure there are many more places she has flooded the net with this rubbish. Feel free to browse all the sites. With the exception of a few good hints in some articles, it’s the same junk.
I’m going to forego a detailed debunking of all her articles as I can’t do it all in one post. But let’s get to a few nuggets of gold… Besides, anyone within the web design community and programming community can see this nonsense for what it is. Indeed anyone with an ounce of common sense would.
Why specialized custom development is needed for any business.
Note the “needed” part. What development would that be Joanna? The variety you offer?
Of course the “Custom development” keyphrase is linked to Vision & Solutions, another company affiliated with her. For a site that purports to support accessibility, why is it built with tables? Why don’t any of the links have titles or access keys? Why does the site fail the accessibility tests?
I couldn’t check out their contact page for the <fieldset> tags or any form accessibility since that page is down at the time of this post.
The entire article is a pandering session to plug her company. There’s no validity to the claim that custom development is “required for any business” since many businesses function very well to exceptionally well with off-the-shelf products (both Open and Closed source). “Custom” development is required only for specialzed services where no other solution will suffice.
But let’s move on…
Fundamentals of ASP.Net programming vs. PHP programming
Ah… One of my most favorite comparisons, since they inevitably end up being a completely subjective (and, more often than not, inaccurate) bullet list.
Since I’m not a PHP programmer, though I have built sites with it, I will be sticking to what I know best. And since Joanna claims to have “10 years experience” in the web design field, I will not be claiming any of the inaccuracies are “myths”. I will be calling them “lies” instead since, as an “expert”, she must know the reality of the situation at this point. BTW… She starts comparing ASP.Net to PHP, but from time to time, the sugar high starts to wear off and she compares ASP to PHP instead. But let’s get on with it…
- “To run ASP.Net programs first need to install[sic] IIS on a Windows server platform”
Outright lie!
I’m running ASP.Net “programs” (note, it’s not ‘sites’ or ‘projects’ according to her) right now on Debian and Apache using mod_mono. - “Even the database connectivity is expensive for ASP, because it require[sic] MS-SQL product…”
Outright lie!
Applications have been developed for the ASP.Net platform that successfully use MS-SQL, Firebird, and MySQL. I have used Sqlite in one occasion on a production site and I am currently using Npgsql, to interface with PosgtreSQL for a project. In fact, any database that can be extrapolated with a data tier can be successfully used with ASP.Net. You can even write your own persistence framework in any of the .Net languages much the same way you can write one in C, Java or C++ for PHP. In this regard it has the same exact flexibility that PHP has. - “PHP codes itself are[sic] very light in weight, a contract programmer who begins his career into PHP, does not felt any pressure to look the[sic] source code to understand. Whereas In ASP codes are not so easy to quick understand.”
Um… What? Let’s set aside the fact, she just switched to “ASP” from “ASP.Net”; She has linked the “contract programmer” keywords to a programming contract site she is affiliated with. In other words, this “coding” thing is “magic” therefore you must not know how it works or make sure you submit to her completely arbitrary assessment on ease of use. - “ASP has a similar like[sic] Visual Basic type of syntax that also linked[sic] to Microsoft products as well. On the other hand PHP codes[sic] are based on generally C++ language and the syntax, which is used in PHP, is[sic] quite similar to C/C++ syntax”
Outright lie!
Once again, she switches to ASP as a comparison. And PHP Is not C/C++. The “similar syntax” argument falls flat on anyone who has tried their hand on one platform coming from another. “similar syntax” makes the code familiar but that’s it. At the time of this post, I have written web applications in VB.Net, C#, Managed C++ as well as a couple of experiments in J#. There are people writing web apps in any of the available CLR languages. In fact, there are people writing apps in Python for .NET as well.
ASP.Net, and indeed, the entire .Net framework is just that… A “framework”. You are not limited to one language. - “PHP has inbuilt[sic] attributes like ftp, encryption methods, even email also[sic] from a web page but in ASP such attributes are not obtainable and for this reason only some more features are required which are not free that[sic] increase the total cost as well”
Outright lie!
You can use pre-written code available free from countless developer sites for those methods or, better yet, write, those methods for virtually any platform for which .Net is available to suite your own needs. In fact, the Mono people have done an excellent job at making many methods from ASP.Net work seamlessly with zero modifications in your projects. You can use UNIX mail, ftp etc… functions from within ASP.Net using wrappers. No fees required! - “PHP generally being extremely flexible as it uses MySQL for database connectivity, which is freely accessible. Same time on the other hand Database compatibility is expensive for ASP, because it require[sic] MS-SQL product[sic] of Microsoft that needs to be acquired.”
So according to her, PHP is tied to MySQL as ASP[sic] is tied to MS-SQL. Forget the fact that this, once again, is an outright lie, but how is being tied to one database a good thing? PHP is compatible with dozens of databases or, if necessary, you can write your own in persistence framework as I said before. The same goes to ASP.Net using any of the CLR languages. - “PHP codes can run on different platforms like UNIX, Solaris, Linux, and Windows whereas ASP codes are mostly linked with Windows platforms. Though, ASP programs can run on a Linux platform with the help of ASP-Apache installed on the server.”
She got it halfway right. Once again it’s ASP she’s comparing to PHP. And Apache::ASP is a product with no future as far as I can see, since ASP itself is on the wane while ASP.Net adoption is blazing ahead. As I’ve said before, I’m using Debian, Apache and Mono. All three of which are free and OpenSource. - “Organizations like government firms normally don’t have much stipulated[sic] commercial budgets and looking for required security, they[sic] really helpful[sic] ASP.net.”
… I don’t even know where to begin with this one. I’ll let you examine the sheer breath and depth of stupidity for yourself. But it’s nice that she finally returned to the topic which is ASP.Net vs PHP. - “At the end, we can make a conclusion that both programming languages have their advantages and disadvantages specific to user requirement.”
You just spent the the whole article comparing the invented shortfalls of ASP.Net (or ASP depending on the severity of ADHD) to PHP’s invented superiority you idiot!! All this when both languages have legitimate strong and weak points that could have been discussed instead of wasting time on this nonsense. - “PHP cannot provide e-commerce application development, only for them[sic] ASP.net will be the best choice.”
???
!!!
!?!?!?
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I… Have… No… Words…
I must cut off the debunking here, as I’m ready to explode and need to go to a corner and meditate or something, before I throw my computer out the window. I’ll let you read the rest of the articles to see how this “Expert” manages to evade logic, create false premises, and weave a seemingly knowledgeable persona.
P.S. After fighting a hard, lifelong, battle against poor spelling and grammar in my own writings, I feel I must thank Joanna for making me feel better about myself in that arena.
Update 9:30am
Their contact page is up and, surprise! It’s not coded for accessibility.
No <fieldset> tags.
No <label> tags.
No access keys.
No “skip navigation” or “skip to content” links
No HTML alternatives for JavaScript only form functions.
This page intentionally left ugly 
If I ever read “PHP codes”, I immediately stop reading.
#10 had me in stitches. Holy carp on a shtick.
To blatantly rip off the artwork of a fellow computer science major at my university, a good rule of thumb when dealing with these high-and-mighty programming folks is that ego and talent tend to share an inverse relationship. Case in point, Joanna.
Sadly true.
As they say, the unsung heroes of computer science.
Every once in a while there’s a truly talented programmer who has an ego to match, but most often the brilliant ones are rarely heard from.