Your comparison is overly simplistic and doesn't really prove anything. I'm a unix guy, so my exposure to ASP.NET, while existed, was limited. ASP.NET tries to

Your comparison is overly simplistic and doesn't really prove anything. I'm a unix guy, so my exposure to ASP.NET, while existed, was limited. ASP.NET tries to make writing large apps be a manageable process, tries to use the existing .NET library and plugs well with other Microsoft technologies. I can't really argue on much deeper levels, but comparing how many lines of code some mundane task takes isn't really saying anything. I can create my own DSL whose sole purpose in life is to send dates to a browser, and all it takes is a file with the character "x" in it; that doesn't make my language any better than Rails, ASP.NET, php or anything else. Different languages and platforms exist to solve different problems and cater to different markets.