I have heard several times that what I do is not “real programming” – web application development is supposedly less challenging than “proper” desktop application development. But is it really so?
Good habits I learnt from Django
Django has various good features I’ve previously mentioned. While they can’t be taken out and applied to other languages like PHP right away, it also has some nice ways of doing things that can be taken and used elsewhere. Let’s look at some good habits I took from Django and started using in PHP, that could benefit you too.
Google Spreadsheets, ASP.NET and Excel
I’ve lately been using Google Spreadsheets to display project costs to my clients etc., and for that it’s quite nice. Quite similar to Excel, too, so it was easy to get going. What bothers me to no end, though, is that editing spreadsheets does not work in Opera at all. Why is it? It works in Internet Explorer, which means …
Zend_Form’s from Doctrine models: Part 2
Previously I wrote about my class for generating Zend_Form forms from Doctrine models. This time, let’s look at some more usage examples and how it works internally, to make it easier for you to utilize it. Edit 10.10.2008: Updated the post to reflect some minor changes in the CU_ModelForm class
Autogenerating forms from Doctrine models
In a previous post I mentioned how Django’s model forms are awesome. I really like the idea of being able to generate forms automatically from models – I mean the models already should contain most of the data you’d need: the fields, field types and how they will be stored. Since I was already quite familiar with Doctrine’s internals, I …
Resource URLs and JavaScript
Sometimes when working with JavaScript, you may need to refer some resource: Maybe a page or an image. They’re then used on the client-side code on your site. But what happens if you restructure your project? Files move elsewhere… Maybe even domains change – you might be moving content to a specialized content hosting server for example. You would need …
Django = Awesome
So in the lack of anything “useful” to post, and in the attemps to at least post something interesting, I shall dedicate this post to talking about what makes Django such an awesome framework! I’m going to compare it to Zend Framework, as it’s the framework I’m most familiar with.
Excellent Zend Framework request-response process flowchart
I usually don’t post links to images or other stuff, but this one was just so good that I have to plug it here: A really nice flowchart showing Zend Framework’s request-response process. The order where things happen in ZF is often something people ask about, so this is a big help. Seen on #zftalk, image apparently courtesy of Kitpages.fr
Is PHP a good first language?
Sometimes I’ve seen people say PHP is a bad first language, because it teaches bad programming habits. But is this actually true at all? Often those who say that don’t really like PHP themselves either, many times because of equally untrue reasons. I think PHP is a perfectly good first programming language – I would even go as far as …
Django and Python
I’ve thought it would be useful, both professionally and just for fun, to know a bit wider array of frameworks, libraries and other stuff related to web development, and last week it was Jaxer time. Now, I’ve got my hands on Django, a Python-based web framework. I’ve always liked Python – The syntax is refreshingly different, and some of its …