While other alternatives like PHP, PHP based frameworks (CI,Symfony,Zend), then Rails etc... really make the job easier when compared to asp.net.
While in PHP you would be writing 5 to the point lines to do something, in asp.net the same would need you to have things that are irrelevant to the goal, in the code...
have a look - <%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server">
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Label1.Text = DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString();
}
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Sample page</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> The current time is: <asp:Label runat="server" id="Label1" /> </div> </form>
</body> </html>
Now how much of PHP would the same code require ?! So, Why would anyone go for asp.net?
I understand that number of lines doesn't matter after reading some great comments, but don't you thing it slows down quick learning in some way... because you've to go through big chunks of code that do simple tasks... while on this front, other languages make learning really easy and fun with short straightforward codes.