I used Dreamweaver's "Site Management" for about two years until I realized what a mess it was. In a perfect world, with one developer only and one development computer only and a lot of spare time, it works. But when you introduce a second (or third or fourth) developer, or you move to a new computer, or you get sick of three hour FTP synchronizations or having the "Cancel" button lock up your computer, or you want to code AND synchronize at the same time, it is terrible. Maybe Dreamweaver 8 takes care of a few of these problems, but it doesn't take care of the flawed philosophy behind check-in/check-out.
We moved to source control about six months ago. Subversion took about three hours to learn, and it is free, and there are easy-to-use tools available for Windows and Mac (Tortise for PC, Textmate etc. for Mac).
Subversion (and other source control products like CVS) let you check in and check out your code, but instead of locking a file, multiple users can work on the files at the same time. The program is smart enough to merge the versions successfully most of the time, and when it can't, it lets you know so that you can resolve the conflict. More importantly, you never need to worry about having the latest version of a file or overwriting someone else's change.
Source control reduced our versioning conflicts by about 99% and has saved us countless hours. I am really ashamed for the years I spent without it. Do yourself a favor, all you Dreamweaver users out there, and try it out.
I come to Rails from PHP. I was a pretty good PHP programmer, but no expert. I wrote object-oriented code, tried to keep logic out of my presentation, etc. I switched to Rails three months ago, and I would estimate that I already program at least 3x-5x faster in Rails. I recently recreated a project that took me 3 weeks in 2 days. Granted, having built the site once, I had worked through the planning issues, but these were not that complex. My experience with PHP was that it is great for small projects (a few pages), but time and difficulty grew really fast as the project got bigger. It was like going from 5 major functional items to 6 major functional items would double the project.
A better PHP programmer could have probably avoided some of the problems I ran into. But after a few months on Rails, I am developing faster, making more money, and writing far better code. It is scary to think of where I will be in a year.
This is anecdotal, like you said, but it is true. People have come from the other direction (Java) and reported similar things.
Rails may not be for everyone. If I worked for a team 10+ programmers, I might not use it. If I were a designer who just needed to add basic functionality to pages (like a random image gallery), I might go quick-and-dirty with PHP. But for my own purposes--working with one or two other programmers on a project; building $8k-$25k web applications for small businesses--Rails is perfect.
The reason performance isn't a big deal is simple, for myself and for many others. 1. Most of my projects are low traffic/high complexity. 2. A dedicated server can handle a lot of traffic, even with Rails, and can be had for $1200-$3000/year. 3. Most of my projects don't even need a dedicated server to begin with, even using Rails. 4. Development and maintenance savings far exceed any extra hosting costs.
Like I said earlier, a low complexity/high traffic site might benefit from PHP. But in my world, these sites are rare.
Finally, in my experience the low performance of Rails is a lot of hype. Use caching, use fastcgi, optimize your queries, and it is definitely _not_ "an order of magnitude" slower than other technologies. If I am wrong, fine... Just show me some solid data.
Hmm - if your priority is raw speed, then Rails might not be the best framework for you. But how many applications are like this?
Let's assume (and this is my experience, and the experience of countless others) that a Rails project can be developed much faster than a Java project or a PHP project. (I come from the PHP world and can back this up; others have seen the same advantages with Java.) And development is typically a much bigger cost than hosting when it comes to most web applications.
We can immediately cross off any website that is hosted on a shared server (99%?), since these sites don't even need a dedicated server (which can be had for a fairly trivial cost of $99-$299/month). And if a single server is too slow, then scaling across 2-4 machines a fairly affordable option. So what are we looking at? Banking software? Amazon.com?
The only sites I can imagine that "need" the speed avantage of PHP or the database scaling of Java are (1) sites that are ridiculously large, or (2) sites that are very easy to program and get a huge amount of traffic. If a site can be built in a day or two in PHP and has hundreds or thousands of concurrant users, then the development advantages of Rails are less important. And if a site is going to be built by 10+ developers, and it needs to scale across a dozen servers, then maybe Rails isn't right. But I would suggest that for 99.9% of projects, application speed should be one of the least important criteria used when deciding on a language or framework.
So what was it about my post that set you off? Or are you just having a bad day?
Did you leave a 0 out of that? Or is most of your programming done in trivial problem domains where a 100 line class can do something? (Or have you been infected with one of the object obfuscated memes where one useful class must be shattered into several smaller ones to fit some arbitary idea of proper module size?)
Yes, you can do something with 100+ line classes. (Notice that 500 lines is larger than 100 lines, and would therefore be 100+ lines.) My entire point was that with Ruby on Rails, I was able to do a lot with 5 to 25 line classes, which tends to make development and maintenance more manageable. Three lines of Active Record code can duplicate 300+ lines of PHP. Which would you rather write?
I switched from PHP to Ruby after reading the Pragmatic Programmer's tip to learn a new language every year. Learning new languages makes you a better programmer, and Ruby is a great language to learn.
After only a few months using Ruby on Rails, I can't imagine trying to manage a large project in PHP. My attempts at OOP resulted in huge classes (100+ lines), my code wasn't reusable, unit testing was nonexistent, and adding functionality to an existing page usually meant breaking the rest of the application. I'm sure that there are better programmers out there than I was, who can avoid these problems while using PHP. That is fine. But Ruby and Rails helped me to become a dramatically better programmer.
1. Men are the target audience for both showgirl women and action hero men. Most (not all) men are attracted to the showgirl body, and most (not all) women don't particularly care if a guy is built like Duke Nukem.
2. Seeing an unrealistic buff action hero does not cause women to treat objects like men (to paraphrase the Dude).
I'm not being prudish here. Have your sex. Just don't ignore the ways in which the objectification of women in video games, magazines, etc. contributes to anorexia and depression, not to mention the vanity and consumerism that have taken over the capitalist world.
Firefly is not about fight scenes or "bad boy" characters, and it is sci-fi in setting only. The series only used action as a vehicle, not as an end in itself.
Did you watch more than a few episodes? In the right order?
Were you hoping for more action?
You are definitely entitled to your opinion. Personally, I saw a few glimpses on Fox and was never that intrigued. Later, I rended the first disc from Netflix and I was hooked. Firefly had more thoughtful writing, more compelling characters, and a better mix of drama, humor, and action than I had ever seen in a TV series.
If you enjoy a drama with good writing, characters, settings, and (usually) plots, you might want to give the series another try. Watch the episodes in order.
Yes - but beware of generic responses. I posted an ad for a Ruby on Rails programmer, and got 20-30 responses from generic web design companies (most of which had never even heard of Ruby on Rails), and 1 response from an actual Rails programmer. About half of the responses were from large companies (many of them off-shore) and about half were from smaller or independent programmers.
craigslist is a great tool. Just be really specific about what you're looking for so you avoid the junk responses.
I'm interested - are studio bang-per-buck decisions like this really sensible in the long run, or only for the next quarterly statement?
That is exactly the reason why you or I can sometimes make better decisions than professionals. The same phenomenon applies to mutual funds: in many (not all) cases, a fund manager is evaluated on short-term performance (say, quarterly or yearly). If they can't beat an index during each term, they lose their job. So they have no incentive to produce any long term results. The company wants long-term winners, of course, but they shoot themselves in the foot by assuming that short-term results are a reliable indication of long-term results.
People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
So shouldn't these people be charged for these crimes, and not for using a technology that makes these crimes possible? Why not:
People have used the postal service to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
People have used computers to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
People have used telephones to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
Java is only the better language to learn if you work on large projects with a team of programmers. For 1-3 programmers on a mid-sized project, I'd take PHP over Java any day.
And what's this business about scripting languages not being true languages?
PHP is a full programming language. You can do basically anything in PHP that you can do in Perl, Java,.NET, Ruby, etc.
Granted, PHP lends itself to sloppier code than some other languages. Or rather, it _allows_ you to write sloppy code. But this is only a disadvantage if the developer is unskilled/undisciplined. A skilled PHP programmer can write robust, object-oriented code that follows the same design patterns as Java. It's just that certain Java frameworks force every project to be heavyweight, while PHP allows you to do a lot of things simply. If you want to write yourself a simple photo gallery app, why bother with Struts?
I write this as an ex- (not current) PHP programmer. I recently made the switch to Ruby on Rails, which has proved to be fantastic thus far.
Never trust anyone who says "Language X is terrible and Language Y is great."
Re:Thanks for the career, PHP!!
on
A Decade of PHP
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· Score: 1
And that someday, Ruby will make you happy. But don't learn it until you don't need PHP anymore, because you will never want to use PHP again.
You're probably right, and I would maybe switch this summer if I could convince my partner that it was a good idea.
Care to share your personal experience with Ruby? Had you used PHP or ASP or Perl beforehand? What was the learning curve like? How long before you were building complex web apps? What do you like about it so much?
Re:Thanks for the career, PHP!!
on
A Decade of PHP
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The poster makes a valid point: PHP is a marketable language. Whether it is good or bad, perfect or not, it gets the job done for some people. Myself included. I'll give Ruby a chance someday, but for now, PHP keeps my clients happy.
As advanced as the E1-E3 were technologically (and they were pretty impressive), a close-up shot of Yoda left no doubt that he was digital. During the scene in E3 where Yoda councils Anakin, I felt like I was playing a computer game. But this was only on close-up shots.
A real human would be exponentially more difficult than Yoda. I'm skeptical of whether we'll see fully digital actors in 20 years that are _not_ based on puppets.
Wonder why none of them produces large commercial jets?
Part of the reason is that the world's economy can only support a few passenger jet manufacturers. Remember McDonnell Douglas and Concorde? The market had a hard time supporting three-and-a-half major manufacturers.
It is possible, of course, that China/India/Brazil/Russia could support a new player that produced planes more efficiently (cheaply), which would probably hurt Boeing or Airbus substantially.
...but your premise is wrong. Paul Allen may no longer be on Microsoft's payroll, but as their second largest shareholder, he is thoroughly invested in all of their business matters. Troubles with the EU? Paul Allen loses money. Happy times with the EU? Paul Allen makes money.
I agree completely, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when I got my first Mac last fall. "Preview" (the universal file reader in OS X) is extremely fast and is well integrated with the OS. If a free, bundled app with a generic name can handle PDF files without locking up a computer, why can't Adobe do the same?
(Not trying to start a religious war here. I regularly use both platforms, with a healthy bit of Linux thrown in.)
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I used Dreamweaver's "Site Management" for about two years until I realized what a mess it was. In a perfect world, with one developer only and one development computer only and a lot of spare time, it works. But when you introduce a second (or third or fourth) developer, or you move to a new computer, or you get sick of three hour FTP synchronizations or having the "Cancel" button lock up your computer, or you want to code AND synchronize at the same time, it is terrible. Maybe Dreamweaver 8 takes care of a few of these problems, but it doesn't take care of the flawed philosophy behind check-in/check-out.
We moved to source control about six months ago. Subversion took about three hours to learn, and it is free, and there are easy-to-use tools available for Windows and Mac (Tortise for PC, Textmate etc. for Mac).
Subversion (and other source control products like CVS) let you check in and check out your code, but instead of locking a file, multiple users can work on the files at the same time. The program is smart enough to merge the versions successfully most of the time, and when it can't, it lets you know so that you can resolve the conflict. More importantly, you never need to worry about having the latest version of a file or overwriting someone else's change.
Source control reduced our versioning conflicts by about 99% and has saved us countless hours. I am really ashamed for the years I spent without it. Do yourself a favor, all you Dreamweaver users out there, and try it out.
I come to Rails from PHP. I was a pretty good PHP programmer, but no expert. I wrote object-oriented code, tried to keep logic out of my presentation, etc. I switched to Rails three months ago, and I would estimate that I already program at least 3x-5x faster in Rails. I recently recreated a project that took me 3 weeks in 2 days. Granted, having built the site once, I had worked through the planning issues, but these were not that complex. My experience with PHP was that it is great for small projects (a few pages), but time and difficulty grew really fast as the project got bigger. It was like going from 5 major functional items to 6 major functional items would double the project.
A better PHP programmer could have probably avoided some of the problems I ran into. But after a few months on Rails, I am developing faster, making more money, and writing far better code. It is scary to think of where I will be in a year.
This is anecdotal, like you said, but it is true. People have come from the other direction (Java) and reported similar things.
Rails may not be for everyone. If I worked for a team 10+ programmers, I might not use it. If I were a designer who just needed to add basic functionality to pages (like a random image gallery), I might go quick-and-dirty with PHP. But for my own purposes--working with one or two other programmers on a project; building $8k-$25k web applications for small businesses--Rails is perfect.
The reason performance isn't a big deal is simple, for myself and for many others.
1. Most of my projects are low traffic/high complexity.
2. A dedicated server can handle a lot of traffic, even with Rails, and can be had for $1200-$3000/year.
3. Most of my projects don't even need a dedicated server to begin with, even using Rails.
4. Development and maintenance savings far exceed any extra hosting costs.
Like I said earlier, a low complexity/high traffic site might benefit from PHP. But in my world, these sites are rare.
Finally, in my experience the low performance of Rails is a lot of hype. Use caching, use fastcgi, optimize your queries, and it is definitely _not_ "an order of magnitude" slower than other technologies. If I am wrong, fine... Just show me some solid data.
Hmm - if your priority is raw speed, then Rails might not be the best framework for you. But how many applications are like this?
Let's assume (and this is my experience, and the experience of countless others) that a Rails project can be developed much faster than a Java project or a PHP project. (I come from the PHP world and can back this up; others have seen the same advantages with Java.) And development is typically a much bigger cost than hosting when it comes to most web applications.
We can immediately cross off any website that is hosted on a shared server (99%?), since these sites don't even need a dedicated server (which can be had for a fairly trivial cost of $99-$299/month). And if a single server is too slow, then scaling across 2-4 machines a fairly affordable option. So what are we looking at? Banking software? Amazon.com?
The only sites I can imagine that "need" the speed avantage of PHP or the database scaling of Java are (1) sites that are ridiculously large, or (2) sites that are very easy to program and get a huge amount of traffic. If a site can be built in a day or two in PHP and has hundreds or thousands of concurrant users, then the development advantages of Rails are less important. And if a site is going to be built by 10+ developers, and it needs to scale across a dozen servers, then maybe Rails isn't right. But I would suggest that for 99.9% of projects, application speed should be one of the least important criteria used when deciding on a language or framework.
So what was it about my post that set you off? Or are you just having a bad day?
Did you leave a 0 out of that? Or is most of your programming done in trivial problem domains where a 100 line class can do something? (Or have you been infected with one of the object obfuscated memes where one useful class must be shattered into several smaller ones to fit some arbitary idea of proper module size?)
Yes, you can do something with 100+ line classes. (Notice that 500 lines is larger than 100 lines, and would therefore be 100+ lines.) My entire point was that with Ruby on Rails, I was able to do a lot with 5 to 25 line classes, which tends to make development and maintenance more manageable. Three lines of Active Record code can duplicate 300+ lines of PHP. Which would you rather write?
I switched from PHP to Ruby after reading the Pragmatic Programmer's tip to learn a new language every year. Learning new languages makes you a better programmer, and Ruby is a great language to learn.
After only a few months using Ruby on Rails, I can't imagine trying to manage a large project in PHP. My attempts at OOP resulted in huge classes (100+ lines), my code wasn't reusable, unit testing was nonexistent, and adding functionality to an existing page usually meant breaking the rest of the application. I'm sure that there are better programmers out there than I was, who can avoid these problems while using PHP. That is fine. But Ruby and Rails helped me to become a dramatically better programmer.
Exactly the point of this topic!
Man, I wish I had mod points right now...
Not sure about that.
1. Men are the target audience for both showgirl women and action hero men. Most (not all) men are attracted to the showgirl body, and most (not all) women don't particularly care if a guy is built like Duke Nukem.
2. Seeing an unrealistic buff action hero does not cause women to treat objects like men (to paraphrase the Dude).
I'm not being prudish here. Have your sex. Just don't ignore the ways in which the objectification of women in video games, magazines, etc. contributes to anorexia and depression, not to mention the vanity and consumerism that have taken over the capitalist world.
Firefly is not about fight scenes or "bad boy" characters, and it is sci-fi in setting only. The series only used action as a vehicle, not as an end in itself.
Simon: "Are you Alliance?"
Early: "Am I a lion?"
Simon: "What?"
Early: "I don't think of myself as a lion. You might as well, though. I have a mighty roar."
Simon: (pause) "I said 'Alliance'."
Early: "Oh." (pause) "That was weird."
Did you watch more than a few episodes? In the right order?
Were you hoping for more action?
You are definitely entitled to your opinion. Personally, I saw a few glimpses on Fox and was never that intrigued. Later, I rended the first disc from Netflix and I was hooked. Firefly had more thoughtful writing, more compelling characters, and a better mix of drama, humor, and action than I had ever seen in a TV series.
If you enjoy a drama with good writing, characters, settings, and (usually) plots, you might want to give the series another try. Watch the episodes in order.
Yes - but beware of generic responses. I posted an ad for a Ruby on Rails programmer, and got 20-30 responses from generic web design companies (most of which had never even heard of Ruby on Rails), and 1 response from an actual Rails programmer. About half of the responses were from large companies (many of them off-shore) and about half were from smaller or independent programmers.
craigslist is a great tool. Just be really specific about what you're looking for so you avoid the junk responses.
I'm interested - are studio bang-per-buck decisions like this really sensible in the long run, or only for the next quarterly statement?
That is exactly the reason why you or I can sometimes make better decisions than professionals. The same phenomenon applies to mutual funds: in many (not all) cases, a fund manager is evaluated on short-term performance (say, quarterly or yearly). If they can't beat an index during each term, they lose their job. So they have no incentive to produce any long term results. The company wants long-term winners, of course, but they shoot themselves in the foot by assuming that short-term results are a reliable indication of long-term results.
People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
So shouldn't these people be charged for these crimes, and not for using a technology that makes these crimes possible? Why not:
People have used the postal service to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
People have used computers to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
People have used telephones to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
You're right about the caching. I have no doubt that Java is a better language than PHP for the largest 1% of web apps.
:)
And if you want spaghetti code, both PHP and JSP are happy to help.
This doesn't mean (contra the AC above) that PHP is a toy language.
So... Let's see some examples.
Java is only the better language to learn if you work on large projects with a team of programmers. For 1-3 programmers on a mid-sized project, I'd take PHP over Java any day.
And what's this business about scripting languages not being true languages?
PHP is a full programming language. You can do basically anything in PHP that you can do in Perl, Java, .NET, Ruby, etc.
Granted, PHP lends itself to sloppier code than some other languages. Or rather, it _allows_ you to write sloppy code. But this is only a disadvantage if the developer is unskilled/undisciplined. A skilled PHP programmer can write robust, object-oriented code that follows the same design patterns as Java. It's just that certain Java frameworks force every project to be heavyweight, while PHP allows you to do a lot of things simply. If you want to write yourself a simple photo gallery app, why bother with Struts?
I write this as an ex- (not current) PHP programmer. I recently made the switch to Ruby on Rails, which has proved to be fantastic thus far.
Never trust anyone who says "Language X is terrible and Language Y is great."
And that someday, Ruby will make you happy. But don't learn it until you don't need PHP anymore, because you will never want to use PHP again.
You're probably right, and I would maybe switch this summer if I could convince my partner that it was a good idea.
Care to share your personal experience with Ruby? Had you used PHP or ASP or Perl beforehand? What was the learning curve like? How long before you were building complex web apps? What do you like about it so much?
The poster makes a valid point: PHP is a marketable language. Whether it is good or bad, perfect or not, it gets the job done for some people. Myself included. I'll give Ruby a chance someday, but for now, PHP keeps my clients happy.
That may be, but it took a few years to reach its stride.
As advanced as the E1-E3 were technologically (and they were pretty impressive), a close-up shot of Yoda left no doubt that he was digital. During the scene in E3 where Yoda councils Anakin, I felt like I was playing a computer game. But this was only on close-up shots. A real human would be exponentially more difficult than Yoda. I'm skeptical of whether we'll see fully digital actors in 20 years that are _not_ based on puppets.
Wonder why none of them produces large commercial jets?
Part of the reason is that the world's economy can only support a few passenger jet manufacturers. Remember McDonnell Douglas and Concorde? The market had a hard time supporting three-and-a-half major manufacturers.
It is possible, of course, that China/India/Brazil/Russia could support a new player that produced planes more efficiently (cheaply), which would probably hurt Boeing or Airbus substantially.
You may be right that...
This looks more improper than it truly is.
...but your premise is wrong. Paul Allen may no longer be on Microsoft's payroll, but as their second largest shareholder, he is thoroughly invested in all of their business matters. Troubles with the EU? Paul Allen loses money. Happy times with the EU? Paul Allen makes money.
I agree completely, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when I got my first Mac last fall. "Preview" (the universal file reader in OS X) is extremely fast and is well integrated with the OS. If a free, bundled app with a generic name can handle PDF files without locking up a computer, why can't Adobe do the same?
(Not trying to start a religious war here. I regularly use both platforms, with a healthy bit of Linux thrown in.)