ASP stands for Active Server Pages. ASP.NET is the next generation of ASP. After the introduction of ASP.NET, old ASP is called 'Classic ASP'.

Classic ASP uses vb script for server side coding. Vb Script is not supported any more in ASP.NET. Instead, ASP.NET supports more languages including C#, VB.NET, J# etc. VB.NET is very similar to vb script, so it should be easy for old Visual Basic or ASP programmers to switch to VB.NET and ASP.NET

We can differ ASP and ASP.NET in the following way:

1) ASP is interpreted, ASP.NET is compiled

ASP uses vb script, there is no compilation. All ASP pages are interpreted when th page is executed.

2). ADO and ADO.NET

ASP uses a technology called ADO to connect and work with databases. ASP.NET uses the ADO.NET technology (which is the next generation of ADO) and providing new database features and making lengthy things into smaller parts

3). Event driven programming

If you have written Visual Basic programs before, you would love the event driven programming approach. It is so easy to drag and drop a button control and double click on the button to write the event handler for the button click event. When you click on the button at turn time, it will execute whatever code you have written in the event handler.