Actually WP was already ported .NET by Phalcon as an example in Version 3.0 It runs about 300% faster.

I dont love or hate Microsoft or Amazon or PHP or WP. But I also dont stay blind to what's happening or opportunities thereof. MSIE or shall I say the Browser Object is in many ways worse that say Firefox or Chrome. But at the sametime the Object also sits in support of an operating system which the others do not.

I do know PHP, I cant say I am an expert at it. I am fare more versed in C#, C++ to be sure.

I dumped ASP.NET in version 2.0 of it while doing sites and extensions for With DotNetNuke.

Its was simply a bloated cow when it came to web apps. Now Microsoft has shifted gears from those old days. Now its all about tomorrow and not today as is the case with Adobe, Google, Amazon and others including Oracle. Ruby I looked into w/ Rails a time back, didnt do much for me.

I was happy with PHP at the time. I've never liked the language in comparison to C++ or C# and in Windows applications used to a considerably better IDE environment. But I've lived with it.

Many PHP coders are already jumping ship to .NET due to Mono, I know of 6 now local to me as of last week. Thats basically 30% of PHP coders I know locally.

PHP should have stuck with its roots of what its growth was. Linear, fast and on course as the task of a markup preprocessor. The moment they added OOP into the mix its performance started shooting downhill.

Symfony is perhaps the most amazing framework for PHP. Its really excellent code. But its performance due to PHP is just plain horrible. Yet, its probably the best framework out there for PHP. It pales in comparison to .NET but thats not a surprise. .NET was not made as a web application only framework, it supports everything from Windows to Mobile app's, Web apps, client server apps, enterprise levels, scalability etc.

The big boost PHP coders have been asking for now for years has not come, multiple threads.
Every server on the planet runs multi-core CPU's and most multiple CPU's w/ Multiple cores. That would afford some great performance increases for those of us that understand how to use threads.

But, its been years and years now and not come.

As I said, I dont personally pick at this or that. I've been a developer for 35 years (now 52). I remember coding games that had to fit in 8K bytes of Rom cartridge in assembler all night long.

Mono will open up gobs of PHP programmers into .NET as now they have the platform (linux) .vs MS IIs to still "freelance" and open completely new generations of applications that are event driven.

Just as linear code died on Apple's, PC's same same with the Net. Event driven code is a much more predictable and enjoyable way to develop. Even on the Net. No way you say?

jQuery proves it. Its the #1 javascript library out there because its Event driven. Otherwise, why bother? There is nothing that cant be done with Javascript .vs jQuery and many libraries took care of the growing more scant by the year browser differences. jQuery took off like a storm because of its event driven model for the Internet.

Thats the future as really its the only way to do device independence in unity across any smart devices.

In applications such as Word, Excel, MS Access I've never liked them per se. I dont hate much anything. I loved what Lotus had done in fact. Lotus Word, 1-2-3, Approach Database. Was fantastic with a user interface that was phenomenal. But that waned.

I am not a MS fanboy. I am not a WP or Joomla or C++ or C# or PHP fanboy. Fanboy's come and go. Over 35 years most I have saw go. Few days back a Mac tribesman was over spilling all over me about how we ought use Mac's instead of PC's for development. What?

I fired up my Core i7 game system which basically gathers dust well and Windows popped up in about 7 seconds. SSD drives in it (I got 12 samsung SSD 240GB drives for $60 each) and three sit in the game box. So he say's, "That was fast" I told him. SSD drive. I launch VMware and it loads up Mac OS/x. I get out of my chair and say "Go ahead".

Its faster than his Mac and for whats on it, I've yet to find anything that doesnt work not that I use it much.

He's a "C++" coder.

I fired up Visual Studio, sat him in front of it. Made coffee and some snackies. Took maybe 10-15 minutes. I come back he says, "How do I compile this into an executable". In 15 minutes he wrote a Windows form application. Nothing spectacular of course. I asked him "What do you think?" He said, "This is amazing".

So I sat down and showed him some of the stuff we'd been working on, a BIG project for the web. He was pretty much floored. I showed him some of the codebase and he said, "Nothing like this environment out there on the Mac". I already knew that. I said to him, "Thats why we dont have Mac's"