So here we are in 2022, still using classic ASP. Why?

The story behind asplLite tells the story of my career and the way I dived into web development about 22 years ago.

The early days

22 years ago - in 2000 - I was 28 years old. I was young and eager to learn to code. I had no degree in computer science whatsoever, but I picked up a lot from colleagues very quickly. Developing web applications quickly became an obsession. I developed all sorts of applications - both as a professional web developer, and for a hobby. Back in those days, I happened to work for a company that specialized in developing COM components for e-commerce websites. I was not part of the RnD team actually building these components. I was part of the support-team, implementing them for customers. We used classic ASP and VBScript. What else did you think?

Visual Basic Scripting - VBScript

Rather than use the COM components made by that RnD team, I quickly realized that it was actually much easier (and much quicker) to develop custom classes in VBScript to fully meet the customer's requirements. Actually, using those COM components slowed down our applications and the development cycles. So in the end, we didn't use them. It somehow meant the end of that company. And I was in it for something... well, a lot actually. When I left that company in 2002, I took it's biggest customer with me and started my own company. Shame on me. But hey... that's life. I was a 30y old entrepreneur after all. I simply had to do it.

VBScript was the first programming language I learned to use. Full stack developers will claim that VBScript is useless and cannot be called a serious programming language. I disagree. VBScript is visual (easy to read/write, case-insensitive coding, no nested curly braces {{{{{}}}}} - I mean...), basic (easy to understand, no complex statements) and scripted (just-in-time, no compilation). These 3 properties made a huge success of VBScript back in 1997-2002. VBScript can also be used together with ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) - a high-level, easy-to-use interface to OLE databases (Access, SQL Server, Oracle, etc). ADO is what made VBScript a success. And it still does.

QuickerSite

After having coded my way through basically any type of web application somewhere between 2000 and 2007, I decided to come up with a CMS (Content Management System) that combined all my best scripts and coding habits that had passed the test of time so far: QuickerSite. QuickerSite was a success, especially in it's early years. Only one year after it's initial release in 2007, it was translated into 11 languages, including Danish, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish and Swedish. In 2008 QuickerSite was used by about 1000 users worldwide, who created at around 6000 QuickerSites in total. It was as if a lot of ASP coders all over the world had been waiting for a CMS developed in pure ASP/VBScript.

Between 2007 and 2014 I built a hosting business around QuickerSite. At its peak, I hosted 1200 QuickerSites on single dedicated Dell server with very basic specs (3GB RAM, a slow 120 GB SATA disk and a single CPU). But it worked. It rocked. And all this time, I was a one-man-band. Nobody else but me, myself and I was dealing with everything related to my business: selling, developing, designing, hosting, invoicing, mailing. And everything else related to QuickerSite. So yes, I sure was a bit of a lone wolf back then. And as much as Microsoft forced me to switch over to ASP.NET, I did the exact opposite and stayed with classic ASP. That's me.

Developing, selling, hosting and supporting QuickerSite for a wide variety of customers (and hosting conditions) learned me even more about ASP/VBscript, its caveats AND its strengths. Developing QuickerSite was no doubt the best time of my life. I still host many QuickerSites today on a Windows 2019 Server. And I made some life-time friends.

The 2010 paradigm shift

By the time QuickerSite had grown mature - somewhere in 2010, there were quite a few things going on: HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript frameworks got adopted by the WWW, mobile devices (phones and tablets) were rapidly gaining in popularity, social media took over our lives, and last but not least - by then - a large group of developers adopted open source solutions and frameworks developed in PHP/MySQL. Nowadays, JavaScript/CSS frameworks like Bootstrap (Twitter), React (Facebook), Angular (Google) and Node.js are completely dominating the web development business. While Microsoft was trying hard to keep up with these ever changing circumstances - by releasing dozens of ASP.NET versions and editions - classic ASP developers were slowly and silently being ignored and left alone in the woods. Many of them are retired by now, or they are no longer actively developing (new) classic ASP applications. I regret that a lot, because all this time - and still today - ASP/VBScript has been a perfect fit for these JavaScript frameworks, for instance by providing very straight-forward database access (ADO), dealing with binary files (uploading/streaming) or by simply delivering very useful ajax, xml and json integrations. All that is where aspLite is about.

PHP and ASP.NET libraries in classic ASP

As classic ASP is a dead-end street anyway, it may be a good idea to do some neighborhood shopping. Why not use some PHP or ASP.NET libraries in classic ASP? I'm doing that for many years already. I use .NET's web.config files to configure url rewriting (http->https), set custom error handling (404 catch) and set default documents (default.asp). I also a developed a single VB.NET page that takes care of (inobtrusive) server-side image-resizing/cropping and recoloring. I added that aspx-page to the jpg-plugin in aspLite (jpeg.aspx). The idea of using resx extensions for html files is another (ab)use of .NET. All in all it's not much, but it is something.

In the past I have also successfully implemented PHP's built-in zipper (ZipArchive()) and a plugin named mPDF to create zip -and pdf files on the server from within a classic ASP application. Worked like a charm. As these libraries reside on the server, they can safely be implemented with internal ServerHTTPRequests from a classic ASP environment.

Concerns about the future of classic ASP

Some developers may ask themselves: "For how long are we going to be able to host classic ASP applications on Windows Servers"? Windows 2019 Server (where I'm currently hosting all my ASP sites on) fully supports all classic ASP/VBScript components, better than ever before (also thanks to much better/faster hardware). As soon as Microsoft releases his next Server edition, I'll be amongst the first to deeply test-drive classic ASP on it.

Suggestion: turn ASP/VBScript into Open Source

The best way forward for classic ASP is to turn it into an open source project, pretty much like Microsoft did with ASP.NET Core. Given today's success of scripted languages like JavaScipt, Ruby and PHP, VBScript still has the potential to reach a different kind of developer. Some developers (like me) will NEVER be able to read through dozens of nested curly braces. It's just visually too poor for me. But that does not mean we are unable to write poetry in ASP/VBScript. I'll keep on trying anyway.

Stay tuned. There is a lot of crazy classic ASP code coming your way in the coming months. Promised.

Pieter Cooreman
Developer aspLite

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