When I first decided to learn web programming I looked at both ASP and PHP.
ASP seemed so straightforward, much like BASIC.
a = 4
b = 5
c = a*b
response.write "The answer is " & c
It took me about two weeks to learn the majority of ASP. PHP seemed to be more convoluted and hard to follow so I opted not to learn it.
Fast forward to 2014 and I realize that ASP died years ago while PHP continues to live on. It's alright if you've got your own IIS server like UER, but from a career point of view, ASP.NET is where it's as well as PHP.
But I've always lived in the past so no use changing now.