What are the advantages and disadvantages of php over visual basic?

im making a thesis (inventory/information system) and im using php for it. A friend of mine told me that i should use VB instead. because it can run as is unlike php which is only web based.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of php over visual basic?
Really they are for completely different things.





PHP is more designed for web development, but it is easier to port between systems, since it is interpereted. PHP also has native bindings to many database systems, including Oracle, MySQL, PosgreSQL, and others, but not a native connection to MSSQL or SQL Server (to my knowledge).





VB is more designed for applications. However, they only will work in Windows. VB, if I remember right, as a MS product, does have native bindings to MSSQL and SQL Server, I don't know about other databases though.





If you are making a full featured application, I recommend using either Java or a C/C++ language. If it would make more sense to make a web based app, even just an intranet based one, use PHP.
Reply:In your case if you need to use this system on the web and the user need to access at through the web then you should use the PHP , if you do need that so go to VB
Reply:There are database adapters for MSSQL and SQL Server in PHP.





I think using the fact PHP is widely used for web programming as an argument against it, is being really closeminded.





PHP is perfectly capable of being used as a system or application scripting language. It's efficient and quite fast too; and the code is portable across platorms very easily.





Have you considered looking at other languages that share PHP's strengths? I'm thinking about Python. That's a really excellent language, it's as portable as PHP and it's much better than VB.





You probably have a Python interpreter running already, if you'd like to try it.