I'm an experienced C/C++/C#/Objective-C desktop,web, and mobile programmer and I've become accustomed to building most of my software from scratch. I've built all my websites from the ground up using ASP.NET. I have quite a few ideas for websites that I'd like to test and I'd like to increase the rate at which I can actually build a website. I'm sure I'm unaware of many of the technologies that are commonly used for building out ideas quickly. About a year back, I looked into using the popular CMS called Drupal to see if it would help me speed up development. After two weeks of trying to decipher the structure of the Drupal CMS, along with trying to learn PHP, I found the learning curve to be steep enough to convince me that it would just be faster if I built my website yet again from scratch using ASP.NET MVC. I'm wondering if anyone could suggest any other technologies that are designed for programmers to build websites quicker than my current method of building them from scratch using ASP.NET MVC.
Secondly, I've been hearing many entrepreneurs mention Ruby on Rails is what they use to speed up the development of their ideas, so I'm planning to investigate it. Why do I hear more about Ruby on Rails than any other technology? Would you suggest using it to speed up development?
Thanks in advance for all your wisdom!
I've tried out Ruby on Rails, Django (the Python equivalent of Ruby on Rails) and Drupal. Drupal is nice if you're just acting as a sysadmin: install the modules you want and use it as-is. But PHP as a programming language is so annoying that I'd hate to use it for something serious.
Django has some odd quirks but seems to work well. From an MVC perspective, Django calls views "templates" and calls controllers "views", which is ugly. Also, instead of generating default URL -> controller/action mappings for you the way that Rails does, Django set up routing files by hand before things work. You also have to set up some DJANGO environment variables if you want to run other helper Python code with access to your model objects. Rails also creates and configures a sqlite database by default so that you can start right away, but with Django you have to set it up yourself.
Rails seems to "just work" in so many ways that I highly recommend it. Ruby is also a pleasant language to work in. Try the simple startup to see what I mean:
rails foo # Create the foo webapp
cd foo
script/server
Then browse to http://localhost:3000 to try things out. That page will give you some info about your webapp and point you to the next steps.
Use an ORM for the data layer. That will increase the speed.
Also reuse common code elements from your previous projects.
And still, for any more or less different site you would need to do some work. Cannot avoid that. ASP.NET MVC is quite powerful tool, especially because it's backed up by the rich .NET class library. At least this framework doesn't build you obstacles at any step along the way, which is quite an accomplishment.
Django is a framework for database-driven web pages in Python.
I agree with your assessment. I was rather proficient in C/C++/C# and never built a website before. I looked at a couple of things, but when I started working with ASP.NET MVC2, I loved it. Another method/architecture I like but haven't messed too much with is WPF. If you download Microsoft Expression Blend 4 there's a 60 day trial and it's really nice. A lot of clicking and less typing. :) Hope this helps.
I toyed with the Zend PHP Framework a bit, and found it to be pretty good. You mentioned that the learning curve for Drupal/PHP didn't make it worthwhile to pursue, but if you retained any of the PHP you learned from that, this might go a bit quicker. To read more you can check out "10 Compelling Reasons to Use Zend Framework". Zend might not exactly be "configure and you're done," but since I usually work with Enterprise Java, I found it pretty reasonable in the speed-to-set-up department.
Related
I'm new to the web framework, but have been using Java/Servlet/JSP for my previous web development because I hate PHP. I'm thinking of starting a new feature laden website that I need to quickly create and been deciding on numerous technologies.
I dabbled in Drupal for a while and found it too restrictive and didn't particularly enjoy constantly trying to find a module that almost do what you want so I'm moving over to a web framework.
I considered ASP .NET or Django. Searching on this site, I found a couple of questions ("[Is there any advantage to Django versus ASP.NET MVC other than platform? closed" and "ASP.NET MVC vs. Django - Which framework should I learn?"), but they don't fit my situation.
In my case, I'm new to Python and have to learn that, but am relatively familiar with C# due to Java/C++/XNA and VB Classic 6.0. In both cases, I have no experience with Django/Python or ASP .NET/SQL Server and have never created a site with either.
My reasons are as follows:
I like the idea of having a full stack from one vendor and not mock around with Linux as it took me forever to setup a proper secure setup of Ubuntu, PHP, MySQL and Apache. I don't want technical oddities of learning gazillion different applications with obscure settings to get it working. This is mostly a concern with Django/Python as I believe MS got their stuff well tied togheter.
Django is designed for newspaper website so it focuses on rapid and efficient development of new features with good design principles. I love the idea of there is only one good way to do it and the Django authors perfectionism. The pitfall of course is since 2005 they are still on version 1.2! Ruby on Rails is far ahead of them considering I saw this video. Yeah, I watched the whole entire 3-hours, but didn't understand much from the RoR demonstration.
ASP .NET is appealing to me because I already know C# and VB Classic 6.0. I'm familiar with Visual Studio and like the fact that it is also tied in to Windows Phone 7/Xbox Live Indie games with XNA. However, if those features are used is another question down the road. However, as mentioned before ASP .NET just seemed streamelined with plenty of documentation and support. Future job prospects also seem more in favor with MS technology.
What does the community here think?
I would like to hear different ideas as I beginning web programmer it is very daunting and I have vasted far too much time figuring this out on my own the hard way. Help would be very much appreciated!
ASP.Net and WISC# stack.
WISC - Windows/IIS/SqlServer/C# :)
if you want an MVC Web Framework use ASP.net MVC , since you come from a Java Background C# wont be a problem for you
Django is a good framework but you have to learn python
i've worked with classic asp so far and want to change to php (instead of asp.net)
could someone explain the main benefits from php over asp/asp.net?
thanks
I'm not sure there is a definitive answer for this question as most of the items are going to boil down to your own style. And I have used quite a bit of both in my professional career. I just like c# better.
Both technologies are used to build web pages.
Both are highly flexible and provide you the capabilities to do whatever you want in a web site.
Both have idiosyncrasies that just take time to understand and get comfortable with.
Both have a large following and can be deployed just about anywhere.
Both have good database and security support.
You can shoot yourself just as easily with one as the other.
At the end of the day, the only real difference I can come up with is that the .Net languages are usually precompiled prior to deployment and therefore enjoy compile time checks and static code analysis.
Take a look at PHP vs ASP: An in-depth Comparison.
PHP has much more to offer than ASP which is why it powers sites like facebook and yahoo.
Main benefit of PHP is cheaper hosting.
Disclaimer: all below is IMHO.
The only benefit of php vs asp.net I see is that it runs on open source LAMP stack, so if you want to get a job in a startup php skills might be more demanded than asp.net.
Other than that, asp.net beats php on ease of implementation and flexibility. So being a biased asp.net developer, I would advise you to look into asp.net instead of php.
I'm deciding between LAMP and Google App Engine with Python. Mainly this is an educational experience so I'm weighing the potential ease/quickness of developing on App Engine against the value in learning LAMP from the get go (and not being locked into the App Engine way of doing things
It depends on where you come from. If you're already familiar with either PHP or Python, I'd let my choice depend on that.
If you're starting from scratch, there's a few things to consider :
PHP (if you consider the P in LAMP to be that) has the advantage that there is a huge amount of web applications/sites out there that use it. If you're aim is to be able to modify or contribute to lots of other webapps, I think you should go with PHP. On the other hand PHP is easy to mess up and it is hard to cleanly seperate webdesign and code. PHP has no real application outside of web development that I am aware of (I may be wrong).
Python is a real sweet language with a clean syntax and a lot of (third party) libraries. Python has lots of applications outside of web development.
Google App Engine allows for a clean MVC approach in conjunction with Django (among others). A MVC approach allows to cleanly seperate HTML/CSS/Javascript layout stuff and Python Code.
If you master GAE/Python, it's a small step to go to Django, running on (Linux|Windows)/(Apache|Ningx)/(MySQL|several OtherDB's).
I'm trying to get a few web development ideas off the ground. Unfortunately I will be the only developer, so I'm focusing on getting a good debuggable, testable setup going that I can develop applications rapidly with.
Which languages, development styles and frameworks would you recommend for rapid development? Last time I checked RoR was the next big thing but that was a while back.
Ruby on Rails is a good choice for rapid prototyping. It's simple, clean and easily learned. PHP also offers a fairly low learning curve and a wide variety of built-in functionality for accomplishing most tasks. Both languages have their shortcomings, but on small-team projects for low to moderate traffic sites, you aren't likely to bump up against them.
The one you know best.
For people who are comfortable with Python there's also Django.
I guess it is pretty much an equivalent to Ruby on Rails (although I never used Ruby on Rails). Django's concept is to have many autonomous applications which can be used together in order to build small to large scale websites. It has great documentation, although deployment can be quite a hassle. Unfortunately it's not supported by many hosters.
PHP with Zend Framework has comparetively lower development time.
If you are familiar with C# or VB.NET and HTML then ASP.NET is also a very good option.
Just to add another, GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is an awesome option. It allows you to write all of your code in one language (more or less, you'll still need a bit of css --for the record ASP.NET allows this as well) and you can create really rich applications with all kinds of awesome javascript and ajax stuff without needing to know javascript. Their tutorials are great and personally, I think you can get off the ground really, really quickly.
I guess it matters more as to what languages you're most familiar with.
Whatever that language is, look for a good MVC framework for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks
Since we are ambitiously aiming to be big, scalability is important, and so are globalization features. Since we are starting out without funding, price/performance and cost of licences/hardware is important. We definitely want to bring AJAX well present in the web interface. But apart from these, there's no further criteria I can come up with.
I'm most experienced with C#/ASP.net, PHP and Java, in that order, but don't turn down other languages (Ruby, Python, Scala, etc.).
How can we determine from the jungle of frameworks the one that suits best our goal?
What other questions should we be asking ourselves?
Reference material: articles, book recommendations, websites, etc.?
For me, the most important things to consider were:
Fantastic lead developers who I trust to keep working on the project.
Googling a question brings a lot of good answers.
Most importantly, I have to like the way the code flows.
Edit: Also they have to be anal about coding standards. If there is inconsistency, I get very annoyed.
Those 3 points brought me to Symfony. It is always using the latest cutting edge features of the latest PHP version. Symfony 2.0 is using namespaces before any other framework.
Two of your points were:
i18n - there is great support for it (helps that the company behind it is French, so i18n is a first class citizen).
Scales - Yahoo Answers and Vimeo use Symfony and contribute back code. If those guys can scale Symfony to 100 million users, you can too :)
It all depends on the type of project you will be developing.
Are you building a web application or a heavy content website or something else?
You also mix up programming languages with frameworks. The frameworks for PHP that I know are: CakePHP, CodeIgnitor, Zend and Symfony. For an out-of-the-box heavy content website I would suggest Drupal or Expression Engine.
It seems you won't be developing yourself. In that case I would determine the cost and availability of programmers and how widely the framework is supported and by who it is backed. The Zend framework is backed by the guys behind PHP, while CodeIgnitor is backed by the guys behind Expression Engine. Drupal has professional support packages,...
IMHO, for something that will have a lot of users, go for a compiled language.
If you don't try it, you will not know. So, I'd say do a small project in each of the frameworks you are seriously thinking about. I would prepare myself to do a lot of testing if it's something I'll be maintaining for some years. It's better to start off on the right foor than to get half way through a project only to realize you took the wrong path. There may be some requirements that end your search. For example, your servers' OS, a framework feature, or scalability. If you lay out your software plans and requirements, you probably will have very little left to choose from - unless your project really is quite generic or simple.