Debating web development toolsets

[Alex Beamish]

On Jan 9, 2008 10:07 AM, Richard Dice <rdice-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Kareem,
>
> Know Thyself -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself
>
>
>
> What is your purpose for getting into web development?
> What is your expectation for growth of the web development project?
> Do you plan on having other people join in on this project in the future?  If so, in what capacity?
> Do you have a customer you will be doing this for?   Do they have specific needs or expectations that one web development framework will address more readily than others?
> What is your existing skill-base in various aspects of web programming?  (I.e. programming, design/layout, graphics, UI design)
> Do you want to play to your strengths (perhaps because your goal is to get the job done ASAP) or do you want to broaden your skills (because this is a learning project)?  I.e. do you pick something similar to what you already know or quite different from what you already know?
>
> Don't look at technology first.  Look at what your goals and circumstances are first and then pick the technology that is most suitable.  (And don't expect to find a "perfect" technology -- first, there is no such thing, and second it is quite possible that several of your goals will be mutually exclusive and therefore you have to make best-compromises between your goals, and so you should expect your technology choice to reflect best-compromises as well.)

In addition to Richard's excellent post, also keep in mind how large a
team you are working with, and what resources you can rely upon
outside that team. My situation is that I'm the only web developer at
my company, which means that for any web type challenges I have to
rely on places like Perlmonks [1] and the #perl and #apache IRC
channels. Don't necessarily make your choice based on technology --
also think about how you're going to be able to get support and
feedback for it.

Also think about trying something simple in a couple of languages, and
see how you do. You might find that you love PHP; you might discover
that RoR is really difficult (I haven't used it myself, I'm just
throwing out ideas here). Try as many options as possible and see what
works for you.

I liked Perl pretty well from the start, because it really did 'fit my
brain' .. but in addition to that, CPAN [2] is a great resource of
software modules that are tested, pre-packaged and ready to go; and
there is a local user group, the Toronto Perlmongers [3] with their
own mailing list and monthly get-togethers. And I've progressed from
ugly CGI scripts in 1998 that contained HTML code to really nice
web/database applications written using CGI::Application and
Template::Toolkit running under mod_perl.

And I loved the earlier quote about how "There are a number of rabid
old school fans of Perl, but it's been supplanted by PHP." .. Perl is
actually alive and well; version 5.10 was just released last month --
Perl's not disappearing any time soon. :) Really. No, Perl 6 isn't
ready yet, but work continues .. and in the mean time, Perl (5.8 or
5.10) is a great language to use. And I hope that doesn't sound too
rabid. ;)

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

-- 
Alex Beamish
Toronto, Ontario
aka talexb

1. http://www.perlmonks.org/
2. http://www.cpan.org/
3. http://to.pm.org/
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