which language/program for web development

bitterSTAR said:
I could code a whole dynamic website using notepad and not referencing anything,

Good luck writing an j2ee struts app like that ;)

Can you debug in dreamweaver? (ie step through functions etc?)
 
boycee said:
Good luck writing an j2ee struts app like that ;)

Can you debug in dreamweaver? (ie step through functions etc?)

Well, when i said dynamic website I was thinking more of server-side scripting, such as PHP/ASP.
 
bitterSTAR said:
Well, when i said dynamic website I was thinking more of server-side scripting, such as PHP/ASP.

j2ee is server side. ;)

But I know what you mean, small scale apps I sometimes just do entirely in notepad++. However my host has started accepting compressed wars now, so I figgure I might as well write them properly :)
 
I'd say that even if you're creating a simple website with a few dynamic scripts, it still makes sense to use a proper IDE (or at least a text editor that supports the idea of "projects").

The only reason people stick with basic editors even after they've moved past the basics is because they haven't used the extra features and therefore don't miss them.

I seriously advise everyone to give Eclipse a try. It's not immediately intuitive, but once you get your head around having to create a project rather than just open a file, it's incredibly customizable and powerful. I actually prefer it to Zend's official PHP IDE.
 
I can't find the link, but the #1 reason on this list of "Top 10 reasons a project will fail" was "Your programmers do not believe in IDE's and consider them bloatware". It then went on to say how it helps productivity and cuts down the time it takes to make things, etc.

Which is a fair comment tbh... I've (literally) just moved to Zend Studio from Dreamweaver but neither of them are bad - Zend is just more helpful from an object-orientated point of view :cool:

Notepad++ is good - especially considering it's free - but it doesn't touch Zend as far as helpfulness is concerned. To be quite honest, I even prefer Dreamweaver to Notepad++, but I haven't spend a lot of time playing in Notepad++ so it could be that I just haven't explored it enough :)

Sic; that band in your sig is awesome :D But I disagree about not using Windows - has nothing to do with php/webdev/programming ;) And Dreamweaver doesn't make people lazy - it's totally up to the user whether they become lazy. I learnt php and CSS in Dreamweaver and I'm certainly not lazy, but that's because I deliberately didn't let it make me lazy...

Depends on if you're the kind of person who cant resist taking short cuts if they're available, I guess..!

LazyManc said:
I seriously advise everyone to give Eclipse a try. It's not immediately intuitive, but once you get your head around having to create a project rather than just open a file, it's incredibly customizable and powerful. I actually prefer it to Zend's official PHP IDE.

Is it as helpful as Zend (listing class contents and such)? I might give eclipse a try if it's better than Zend :)
 
Exactly, without shortcuts we'd still be coding in machine code. What do you think a higher level language is?

I have tonnes of plug ins on netbeans, and they save me stupid amounts of time. You can configure them too, so you can cut out the junk you don't want auto generated each time too!
 
furnace said:
I can't find the link, but the #1 reason on this list of "Top 10 reasons a project will fail" was "Your programmers do not believe in IDE's and consider them bloatware". It then went on to say how it helps productivity and cuts down the time it takes to make things, etc.

Which is a fair comment tbh... I've (literally) just moved to Zend Studio from Dreamweaver but neither of them are bad - Zend is just more helpful from an object-orientated point of view :cool:

Notepad++ is good - especially considering it's free - but it doesn't touch Zend as far as helpfulness is concerned. To be quite honest, I even prefer Dreamweaver to Notepad++, but I haven't spend a lot of time playing in Notepad++ so it could be that I just haven't explored it enough :)

Sic; that band in your sig is awesome :D But I disagree about not using Windows - has nothing to do with php/webdev/programming ;) And Dreamweaver doesn't make people lazy - it's totally up to the user whether they become lazy. I learnt php and CSS in Dreamweaver and I'm certainly not lazy, but that's because I deliberately didn't let it make me lazy...

Depends on if you're the kind of person who cant resist taking short cuts if they're available, I guess..!



Is it as helpful as Zend (listing class contents and such)? I might give eclipse a try if it's better than Zend

I wouldn't say it's better than Zend, it's actually very similar, it's just a matter of personal preference to be honest. That and the price tag on Zend IDE :) You need the PDT plugin, but it does all the code-hinting / suggestion and hot linking of methods (hold ctrl, click a method name, it will jump you to that method in the right class file). It doesn't integrate quite as well with Zend debugger (not suprising really!) but you can also use xDebug etc.

The only thing that slightly lets it down is it doesn't syntax highlight PHP functions yet, only language constructs (i.e. echo but not substr()) but I'm sure this will be available soon as the PDT plugin is in active development by Zend / IBM / etc.
 
furnace said:
Sic; that band in your sig is awesome :D But I disagree about not using Windows - has nothing to do with php/webdev/programming ;) And Dreamweaver doesn't make people lazy - it's totally up to the user whether they become lazy. I learnt php and CSS in Dreamweaver and I'm certainly not lazy, but that's because I deliberately didn't let it make me lazy...

Newton? Yeah, he's ace - and he has a big ginger beard and ginger dreads, just like me! (only his dreads are longer!) :D

And Windows DOES have something to do with it. I'll be really specific to my individual complaint against it that caused me to jump to Ubuntu:

I had a WAMP install that I set up and configured, but when I tried uploading things to it, I couldn't change the folder permissions to allow me to upload things from a web browser. no matter what I tried, all the recommendations from microsoft.com, all the threads I read on the subject didn't work, and that's why I don't use windows. That coupled with the fact that I hate Windows as an environment for anything (other than gaming) made it a pretty easy move to make!!

I should probably clarify that Dreamweaver doesn't make you lazy, but it certainly offers up plenty of encouragement to be! And it doesn't stop you!! :o
 
Sic said:
I had a WAMP install that I set up and configured, but when I tried uploading things to it, I couldn't change the folder permissions to allow me to upload things from a web browser. no matter what I tried, all the recommendations from microsoft.com, all the threads I read on the subject didn't work, and that's why I don't use windows. That coupled with the fact that I hate Windows as an environment for anything (other than gaming) made it a pretty easy move to make!!
Ah yeah, I had the same problem with permissions on Windows :p I run websites on a Linux server now, but I do the programming itself on a Windows machine.

I haven't tried Linux for ~18 months and apparently it's changed a lot since then, but when I did try it I found it far too fiddly to be my primary OS. I should give it another go, but at the moment it's too much hassle ;)
 
boycee said:
Good luck writing an j2ee struts app like that ;)

Can you debug in dreamweaver? (ie step through functions etc?)

I work on a product at work that has 20 Million+ lines of code. Most the guys I work with use VIM or Emacs. Even though we have our own IDE (Websphere studio/Eclipse) hardly anyone uses it. If you have a good editor you can be just as productive as an IDE in my opinion.

Emacs/VIM can do basically anything you throw it (macro's/split buffer windows etc..) and if your working on a big project you aint gonna be compiling your self anyway.
 
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