A long time ago, when Java was just a little way on from being an acorn, I started learning it as an alternative to hand coded web forms and CGI scripts. The concept was to build web apps using the existing framework. Then I hit AWT’s core issues: form design in code and event loops. Ugh!
After experiencing both Mac and Windows event loop ugliness, I had escaped into the Paradox and Delphi haven, where the core libraries handled default behaviours, and all I had to do was extend the base with my specific functionality. Linked GUI and database elements made it easy for data entry and display in Borland’s offerings. However, the technology was limited to application development for Windows.
Now, Java is a behemoth, and would take a substantial investment of time to come back up to speed, and a large number of framework choices to make.
I took up Perl in the late 90s, and found a fast data manipulation & automation language that spoke my language. There were some exciting things happening in the web space (apart from the ever present CGI.pm).
PHP, Python, and Ruby sprung from the dark and shone out as scripting beacons. Perl had Catalyst, Maypole and .*App.* varieties; Ruby had Rails.
Each framework had a good start, but still relied on tedious coordination of database, object and presentation layers.
So after a long hiatus, I returned to an overwhelming array of choices in the web application framework space. Given that it is easy for analysis paralysis to set in, I decided to make a quick assessment, rather than a thorough one. Why? (It should be obvious….I wanted to develop something, and not contribute to the hue, cry and inevitable flame wars a full evaluation article would raise.)
So after a number of likely candidates, I chose PHP as the language, and Symfony as the framework. I selected PHP to learn a new language, and for the ubiquity of PHP module development for existing solid web applications. I selected Symfony for the design once/generate many philosophy used for database and object structures, and the ability to reverse engineer an existing schema into the ORM.
Resources
The resources below are not comprehensive, but represent the breadcrumb trail I took in my evaluation.
General Framework/MVC:
PHP:
Perl:
Java:
Choosing a web application framework
Posted by Adrian on 2009-02-09
A long time ago, when Java was just a little way on from being an acorn, I started learning it as an alternative to hand coded web forms and CGI scripts. The concept was to build web apps using the existing framework. Then I hit AWT’s core issues: form design in code and event loops. Ugh!
After experiencing both Mac and Windows event loop ugliness, I had escaped into the Paradox and Delphi haven, where the core libraries handled default behaviours, and all I had to do was extend the base with my specific functionality. Linked GUI and database elements made it easy for data entry and display in Borland’s offerings. However, the technology was limited to application development for Windows.
Now, Java is a behemoth, and would take a substantial investment of time to come back up to speed, and a large number of framework choices to make.
I took up Perl in the late 90s, and found a fast data manipulation & automation language that spoke my language. There were some exciting things happening in the web space (apart from the ever present CGI.pm).
PHP, Python, and Ruby sprung from the dark and shone out as scripting beacons. Perl had Catalyst, Maypole and .*App.* varieties; Ruby had Rails.
Each framework had a good start, but still relied on tedious coordination of database, object and presentation layers.
So after a long hiatus, I returned to an overwhelming array of choices in the web application framework space. Given that it is easy for analysis paralysis to set in, I decided to make a quick assessment, rather than a thorough one. Why? (It should be obvious….I wanted to develop something, and not contribute to the hue, cry and inevitable flame wars a full evaluation article would raise.)
So after a number of likely candidates, I chose PHP as the language, and Symfony as the framework. I selected PHP to learn a new language, and for the ubiquity of PHP module development for existing solid web applications. I selected Symfony for the design once/generate many philosophy used for database and object structures, and the ability to reverse engineer an existing schema into the ORM.
Resources
The resources below are not comprehensive, but represent the breadcrumb trail I took in my evaluation.
General Framework/MVC:
PHP:
Perl:
Java:
Posted in Commentary, Programming | Tagged: application, Commentary, framework, PHP, Symfony, web | Leave a Comment »