What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Classic ASP?

Classic ASP (Active Server Pages) can still be a very powerful and also flexible technology in which to develop websites. Being a scripted language, VB Script (the underlying code) is easy to modify and develop and requires only a simple text editor to make code changes.

There are however, a few downsides to using Classic ASP: because each file effectively has it’s own inline code, it can make site-wide changes to things like layouts quite difficult which would otherwise be achieved by modifying a template. Like many other server-side scripting languages such as PHP, many classic ASP developers will aim to solve this by using includes, so only one file may provide a self-contained snippet (for example, the copyright notice in the footer) and therefore only require one change to be site-wide. This however, doesn’t really solve the issue of being able to reuse code and functionality across the website.

Many of the technological arguments will naturally be in favour of ASP.NET over Classic ASP: ASP.NET has a much improved structure, it supports much better coding paradigms such as ‘separation of concerns’ and generally encourages much better design and coding practices than would be demanded of the classic ASP developer.

But in practical terms, there are also some benefits businesses might enjoy from Classic ASP: because edits are easy and less risky to make, generally some development updates and code changes may actually be a lot faster and cost effective to make. ASP is also a simpler technology and – as with most things in I.T. – simpler technologies will usually have less opportunity to go wrong.

Why some developers seek Classic ASP support

While we fully recommend ASP.NET over Classic ASP and we would not undertake a new project using Classic ASP from scratch, we also understand and recognise why some businesses may choose to seek Classic ASP support to continue development for their existing code bases, rather than rewrite a Classic ASP website for ASP.NET.

If you are looking for a Classic ASP developer in the UK, why not get in touch with us today?