Ok, I've got a newbish question that Google is turning up tons of different answers too....hopefully I can get some interactive input.

I've been working in Microsoft shops doing web development for going on 10 years now. I'm very familiar with SQL Server and classic ASP, and that is what my company's software-as-a-service application is written in. I've worked with .NET, too, and we were in the process of porting our web app to ASP.NET when our company merged with another, and that project has been halted indefinitely.

I've used and played with PHP/MySQL a little on my own, mostly it's just been with my personal webhost, editing premade software with tweaks and whatnot. Things like Wordpress, image galleries, etc., just going in and editing minor things here or there in the various PHP/MySQL scripts you can set up.

I've wondered before if I would be able to replicate our ASP/SQL Server app in PHP/MySQL. But now I'm wondering...what is the rough "standard" open source enterprise-level web development environment these days? I figure MySQL works for the back end, but does PHP work well for sites, even advanced ones? I know the jump from classic ASP to ASP.NET was phenomenal, but in my mind PHP is closer to classic ASP. Does PHP have ways to do some of the things like how ASP.NET handles things? What about some of the other environments I hear about - Python, Ruby, etc.? What about Java? My experience with Java hasn't been that great, but I see the Netbeans stuff looks pretty sharp - and you can probably develop on both the desktop and web and share libraries and stuff with that, right?

I guess I'm ultimately wondering where I might focus to pick up some new skills. Thanks for any input!

I think what you are loooking for is something like Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails isn't exactly Enterprise level, it has horrible scalability. PHP has been argued to be enterprise level, and Java is supposedly an enterprise level language ( JSP ). Really, its all up to you, there's no sense in using a language that you hate only to get halfway through a project and start dreading looking at the code every day. Pick a language with a syntax you're familiar with ( Though ASP.NET doesn't really have too many equivalents [ I don't really like a language with an ain't keyword])

Thanks everyone! I've read some about RoR and such, and it does sound interesting. I think I'm going to pick up my PHP skills a bit and see where that leads me!

There is no real ASP .NET OSS equivalent. There are options, as mentioned, like PHP and RoR, but they are not as scalable or pwoerful as the .NET framework.

Java is generally considered slower, but it's the common alternative... but it's not open source (yet?)

Java is (recently) Open Source

I have seen no evidence of this.

Ever heard of a little service called Twitter?

I'm sorry so far I found Java to be much faster then doggy ASP servers, no offense...

Yes. The Twitter people say it's not Rails that was the limiting factor in their scalability situation.