With some glamour LassoStudio claims to better, easier and cheaper (!) then PHP. I tried myself the lasso plug in for Adobe GoLive 6...

From LassoStudio website:
"cannot begin to tell you how long I floundered with UltraDev and ASP, getting no where, and then I found Lasso. So easy to learn and use, yet now that I've learned it well, I can do anything with it..."

Wow! I said to myself. Why do you need to code in PHP or Perl when you can do everything with Lasso by adding the relevant Lasso Studio plug in to DreamWeaver or Adobe Golive ?

The first issue would be the price tag: lasso doesn't come free, 299 US$ for Lasso Studio and around 1000 US$ for their sever side application (yes, without this you cannot publish on your website. The number of lasso friendly hosting companies is rather limited and they are, like every niche provider, more expensive)

But hey, if something can save you hundred of hours and dozen of coding night session, why not ?

So I downloaded my evaluation copy of Lasso Studio. The first problem is their form, way to long and they are asking way too much (how many servers I own, am I the one with "da money"
within the company or yet another budget less geek ? etc...)

But let's play fair and fill the form decently (even if the temptation to write XX on each field was huge) and download the plug

Install: fairly simple. Double click..initialize and wait for a serial number by email to activate Lasso Studio on GoLive. Nicely Lasso will add directly and integrated with GoLive ..monkey it looks promising!

Nice start but..wait. True Lasso uses the same style of windows and drag system as golive, but as everything dynamic on the web it requires
a good amount of patience and lot of karma points.

First you need to setup the mysql lasso system in your local computer (in my case an Ibook 900) and familiarise with its commands.

Unfortunately it seemed to me to be more complicated then coding in PHP or Perl. One for all you can find a huge amount of free tutorials, sample scripts and material on both PHP and Perl. After one hour of googling around, not much luck with Lasso.

Simple task on lasso ?

Let's try something like a simple mail form on lasso. It would add the user's input on a database. This is not a big task, but now way to understand how lasso could easily send a confirmation email to the user or to the administrator. What about sending an email with attachment to the user ? No simple way to do it.

With lasso form generator you can build a form with a simple click but..you will need to add all the fields into a local database. So not a major advantage.

Lasso allows you to create a simple dynamic site with few clicks, but again everyone will need to customize it somehow.

In short I don't see such a big advantage: on the contrary. Everything that automagically generates a code would not allow you to simply fix it when things are not going as you WYSWYG interface might suggest.


Lasso vs PHP

On the Blueworld website I found a number of interesting comparisons apparently they suggest that lasso is both cheaper and faster then PHP...oh dear...

I don't know much about how Lasso can do more then PHP (if you do please email me) but if I can't build a simple form mail after 4 hours something is wrong.
I tried on google, on the manual but no mention as far as I can see on how to auto generate an email with attachment.

My conclusion

-Language popularity is very important. You don't want to learn a new language if is not widely used and supported. The lake of support for the majority of hosting providers is a major problem with Lasso.

-Another big issue is marketability. When you try to learn a programming language it needs to be as popular and efficient as possible. This will make your knowledge/ asset back pack as something truly valuable. For sure lasso is not as popular as other major languages.

- Limited support: less programmers in a language, more difficult is to find some qualified support and online support material. During my first adventure with perl I subscribed to the great perl beginners mailing list and in no time I found valuable support to correct or create a new script. No matter how smart you are, sooner or later you will need some help from the community.

-With Mac OS X using PHP and MySQL is really and easy task. You can edit PHP directly with GoLive, no need of a second plugin.

Oh well..one more thing...Lasso studio made Golive to crash very often (in my case), so adieu stable programming environment.

I don't really see a reason to use Lasso over PHP or Perl. Probably because there is no reason to do that beside being lazy and under the impression that with Lasso you will have to work less. Of course if you know of any reason or significant advantage, feel free to email me.


GuruGeek