Web Programming Frameworks
Posted by Jim at July 25th, 2006
A fair number of people reading this blog have probably heard of programming frameworks used in web development. The rest of you, of course, could happily live without this knowledge.
This won’t stop me from writing about them.
The idea behind a programming framework is that by following conventions you can let the framework handle certain details. As a result, you’ll presumably develop programs more quickly.
The framework people seem to be most excited about among people I know is Ruby on Rails. Another that people might want to look into is CakePHP. Inspired by Ruby on Rails, CakePHP has one advantage for PHP programmers–you don’t have to learn a new language. Not that learning Ruby is a bad thing, but sometimes you want to use a language that you already understand.
ThinkingPHP is a blog that sometimes includes CakePHP related material.
I’ve been thinking of developing two versions of an application–one in CakePHP and the other in Ruby on Rails. That might allow me to compare the two and decide which I like better. It might also be something of a waste of time. I’m not sure yet.
I’m curious about both frameworks and that might motivate me to learn more about them. On the other hand, I’ve limited amounts of time in my life and I want to do other things too.
We’ll see what happens.
As a long time PHP developer I was initially tempted to try Cake, but Ruby on Rails has me so won over that I’ve not given it a go.
Ruby is just so much more elegant a language, and brings with it several features (meta-programming support, open classes, etc) that make it much more appropriate for a framework like this. If you have to work in PHP, Cake looks like a good option, but it just feels clunky and overly-verbose to me lately.
James Stewart
I’ve got to get into programming in Ruby a bit more, but I can see what you mean there.
Ruby’s got some very cool control structures and (from my limited experience) feels more cleanly designed than PHP.
I unfortunately am in a situation in which all of the people I develop for have PHP available while not all of them have Ruby on Rails available.
All of the people I do webhosting for have Ruby available of course. Unfortunately, that means that anything I do in Ruby will be unavailable about half my clients.
Jim Zoetewey