JSP allows for dynamically generated web pages from HTML, XML, or other documents. It is a Java technology that serves as an alternative to ASP and PHP by making it easier for developers to write and modify regularly generated HTML compared to using print statements. Some key advantages of JSP are that it is portable to different operating systems and web servers unlike ASP, and it provides more built-in functionality than servlets but requires less code. The document then provides basic instructions on setting up a development environment for JSP and examples of coding basic JSP pages that display the current date, handle form selections, and output text.