ASP is an older development framework, while ASP.NET is its new counterpart. The original ASP (Active Server Pages) was an early web development framework released by Microsoft in the mid-1990s. Programming was done mostly in the VBscript or JScript languages, with other languages being made available through third-party engines. ASP.NET is an entirely new (in 2002, that is) web development framework built on their .NET platform.