Web Framework discussions

[davidktw]

Currently in the process of creating a web app using cakephp for my friend's company so far other than the learning curve, i think its a great framework for starting on a simple application that just does simple inventory management.

Why don't you give content management systems like Drupal or Joomla a try.

Will save you a lot of effort on accompanying features such as users management and you get to learn how to build something on a CMS at the same time.

CMS is also a platform. So you can totally morph it into anything, doesn't need to even look like a website.

 

[Lasogette]

Why don't you give content management systems like Drupal or Joomla a try.

Will save you a lot of effort on accompanying features such as users management and you get to learn how to build something on a CMS at the same time.

CMS is also a platform. So you can totally morph it into anything, doesn't need to even look like a website.

Did try wordpress for some minor projects. Joomla has too steep a learning curve for me so will check it out when I got more free time. Reason was because these cms have plugins which give too much functions somehow my clients only want to see the bare minimum.

However i do agree if it is a simple thing like creating a viewing website cms are definitely more easier.

 

[davidktw]

Did try wordpress for some minor projects. Joomla has too steep a learning curve for me so will check it out when I got more free time. Reason was because these cms have plugins which give too much functions somehow my clients only want to see the bare minimum.

However i do agree if it is a simple thing like creating a viewing website cms are definitely more easier.

For Joomla,

Most of the plugins can be switch off. Your client do not need to have the Super Administrator that can see all plugins.

You can be the Super Administrator or you reserved it. Give an Administrator account to your client that only have administrative access to certain backend of Joomla, such as User/Group management and the Inventory module you are building. Then the administration page for the client will be a lot simpler

Make the front end page start up with your Inventory module and you will find it wouldn't even look at a website. It will look like a web Inventory system with a login form at the top.

True Joomla will be more complicated to develop than your normal web site since there is conformance. But at the end of the day, what you have developed can be used across all Joomla systems instead of something so customized that can only be use standalone.

If you spend time to develop something, why not consider that it can be sold in the future.

 

[saysuzu]

Just because it is hard for some to find out which PHP framework make sense for them and therefore one should give it PHP a miss? That is really a new school of thought...

that's not what i meant

of course if you want to use a PHP framework, go ahead and try, it might not solve certain problems easily but then again, at least you gain some experience in using that particular.

However, there's just too many PHP frameworks for you to choose. Furthermre, there might be a equal distributions of the usage among all the common PHP frameworks, so in a way, usage is not a good factor in choosing the framework.

I'm not stopping anyone from learning PHP framework,much less PHP. PHP language is good. In fact, it's awesome to me.

 

[ActuallyHor]

I adopt asp.net MVC 5 with IoC(ninject) and ORM approach(EF 5) for most of my web projects. Previously, I used .net webforms last time and I feel that there isn't a "standard" for developers to organize their files. MVC also compliment unit testing with the use of IoC and some of design patterns I used such as DDD or TDD.

MVC is ubiquitous. I programmed in iOS, Android, Python(Web.py) and PHP(Kohana). All of them uses the MVC structure.

One thing I learn is that picking up a programming language is not sufficient. You can learn to write codes in C#, Java and Objective-C in a few days. On contrary, it will take months to master the framework. But the effort will payoff. Without framework, I would have to write my own database module, membership module and not forgetting no ORM support. (No need to write different SQL for different db like MySQL, MSSQL or Orcale. I esp resent the fact that every db differ sightly in SQL statement).

 

[davidktw]

I think it is a good thing developers know how to use the ORM properly. But like web framework, don't be a slave to these technologies. It is still very important to understand SQL and know the various variants SQL are implemented for each database. The more knowledge you have upon these databases, the better you build up knowledge on how they function and where the bottlenecks are.

There are times when building some system or application modules do not require ORM for they introduce all much layering into the application and performance may be compromised.

None of those Object Oriented approach to abstract database access comes free. Even SQL has its own overhead. Without good understanding of how SQL ends up accessing the database and how ORM translate into SQL, it will be a very surface understanding on database and its inner workings.

These skills don't come because you just use ORM all the time to make things work. Sometimes going down the gutters is still required to get the best knowledge.

 

[wangzj]

GWT is best

if you know JAVA, then using GWT is the best solution.

 

[davidktw]

if you know JAVA, then using GWT is the best solution.

GWT will not bring you the vast knowledge of HTML5, CSS3 and all those caveats among browsers. Besides, there are a lot of good web widgets frameworks like KendoUI, YUI and so forth. Java is still very much good at the backend. One is encouraged to understand both ends of the web technologies.

 

[thisisnotme1212]

Let me start the ball rolling, my experience firstly was with ruby on rails. Did not have any knowledge in ruby however had a simple website which my friend wanted me to help him change abit of the layout. Had some simple HTML, javascript and asp.net knowledge and i was thinking at that point what could be so hard about it. Boy was I wrong. The MVC concept for a new beginner is difficult to understand if you are new to it. However when you become more well versed in it, it starts to sink in and you can't help but just follow this concept. Well for me the experience I got from ruby on rails
- If you dont have a Nix machine, you are going to get a hard time getting it to work in windows.
- Don't try implementing it on shared hosting, it is really too difficult, instead, go for cloud based hosting like heroku, they make it look like a breeze.

Just my 2 cents worth with my limited one week of using ROR. Welcome to all discussions.

Just curious, did the original website have any server side code, or were u using rails to build static sites?

IMO, frameworks are a matter of taste. Maybe you hate semicolons, or maybe you hate the | characters. Then the choice will be easier.

With a typical SG mindset, I usually choose the most popular frameworks. Usually to attract users, they will typically be well documented, have a great community support, well maintained and frequently updated.

Rails seems to be a more popular choice to develop web applications. PHP, I would say is more dominant in CMS/Blogs/Ecommerce etc. Python, seems to be popular with machine learning and data analysis applications. These are just based on what I generally feel.

 

[godchuanz]

Rails seems to be a more popular choice to develop web applications. PHP, I would say is more dominant in CMS/Blogs/Ecommerce etc. Python, seems to be popular with machine learning and data analysis applications. These are just based on what I generally feel.

I think the latest trend is to have the applications built on the client-side with HTML5 and JS, and the server-side is really just an API - and many hoping to be able to claim implementation of a "REST API". As client-side machines become more powerful, mobile becoming even more ubiquitous and the web technologies converging towards HTML5, we're today already seeing lots of JS frameworks sprouting up. The situation developing in JS is a little reminiscent of the situation at PHP - developers will use one or two very strong libraries, and be spoilt-for-choice for frameworks. If client-side frameworks continues to gain popularity, we may one day find many of these server-side frameworks we're talking about today redundant.

 

[exim22]

Learning web framework alone is not enough, you need to be skillful in Linux and fast in product lifecycle, that where I'm trying to maximize my speed with Laravel 4.x and deployment in minutes rather than hours or days.

Building an eCommerce in Laravel is so easy and sexy!