Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
When starting out on any project it could be seen as essential to pick an appropriate framework. I was wondering if you would point out any key questions that should be asked in order to aid the choice. I have looked at numerous sites and there doesn't seem to be any definative questions to ask before a choice is made.
I was wondering if, in any of your experience,s you have come across any key questions.
I gather one of the first is what are you developing? web app or desktop based
Any key questions would be a great help. This is a pretty general question as I am just looking for generic questions that would be asked before a choice is made.
Pick one you (or your team) already know.
Learning a new framework is a time consuming and expensive process that you don't want to be associated with a project. I would say the number one factor when selecting a framework/language is the existing knowledge base in your team.
[Obviously, this isn't very helpful if you don't currently know any, or the ones you do know aren't useful in the project's domain]
The best technology is the one you know. So ask a question - what technologies my team has experience in.
The main question you must ask is about stability. If you are developing an enterprise application wich sould be maintained for several years and should me stable, you should use mature and well tested frameworks. Something Java EE or .NET based for web applications. If your project is experimental, you can use experimental frameworks, technologies, languages etc.
Pick the one with good documentation. The quality of documentation gives you a clue how good the framework is.
A large user community is a plus, especially for opensource frameworks.
Ask yourself right from the start:
What are the things my application
will do, what are the ones it won't ever
do?
Choose a framework that makes it easy to accomplish the things you want from your application, care less for things that are extra. Don't worry, when you'll really need extra, you'll worry about looking then.
Who will use my application? What are
the numbers and needs of people that
will be the application's users?
You need a framework that scales well to the number of users you intend your app to handle and to their specific needs(collaboration, social interaction, ease of use, necessary tools, etc).
Is there a strong support
for the framework(from the developer or the community)?
Make sure you'll have who to turn to if you'll have questions or problems.
I usually try to find the framework that is the most popular. Have a look at a comparison of Javascript frameworks in Google Trends. It's pretty obvious that jQuery is the most popular by a large margin, so I'd lean towards using that.
It's not the only criteria, but more users means better documentation, testing, features, etc. Also, if you're new to an area of programming, then it usually pays to follow the wisdom of the crowd.
I would start by thinking about the pros and cons of frameworks in general. Based on those things that matter most in your situation, see which frameworks fit.
It's also helpful to think about the general features found in most frameworks of a platform (web application frameworks, for example). Decide which of those features are important to you, then investigate the frameworks that provide those features.
Related
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I would like to create a website similar like imdb.com. Whether imdb.com uses any framework? if so which framework it uses? Otherwise are they developing on their own? Is it easy for a normal PHP developer to create my own php framework?
As a PHP developer:
I have my own php framework, So you can say it's not so hard; But you must first learn how other frameworks work... And decide what your framework need to do... Which design patters you agree with...
Most of big websites didn't use famous frameworks, Or even their own frameworks... Mostly using a plenty of libraries... Because when you use a framework you code faster but you waste resources as RAM, CPU IO/Disk...
A well programmed application is this one that use 100% of its code source, It's good to go OOP, MVC... But not in the way most of frameworks works... This what is life less working time cause a less quality project.
There are two reasons why you would want to create your own framework:
Learning purposes, it's a great learning opportunity because you
will learn a lot.
This one I highly doubt is a issue for you, but
If you believe your framework can be different and better in some
way than those already existing, go for it.
A framework isn't the application, a framework is a tool set that lets you get straight on the application itself, instead of writing a database abstraction layer you learn how built-in in works and writes the busniess logic your application needs.
Developing a new framework is not a trivial or easy work at all. Even for a team is difficult to handle, so be extremely sure you need to create yet another one before starting.
Instead, use open source, well known solutions, so that bugs are likely to be triaged and fixed. There are many which are available even for commercial use. Just choose your favourite one: Symfony, Code Igniter or Kohana or whatever and start building your application on top.
As of IMDB, probably they are using a framework, but there is no way to tell what if any.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
My team is tasked with implementing Unicode in our software, which is well over a million lines of code. We support an MFC Client and a Server on Windows, AIX or Solaris with an Oracle or SQL Server database. ICU looks like a very helpful tool. What are the pros and cons of using ICU? Does ICU work as advertised without major bugs?
A data point: Our (yes, that's a disclaimer) list of users and bugs is all on our project site.
IMBO (biased):
Pros:
works as advertised, comprehensive.
Mature: 10+ years now, with a good stability policy and very active development.
Uses latest Unicode+CLDR+BCP47+other standards.
Compiles basically everywhere. C/C++/J and called by/implements python,perl,php,…
Open source, with an increasing diversity of contributors.
Comes with all needed data for the above (see below, under cons), yet customizable. (can add custom data)
Cons:
Needs better documentation (we try- anyone want to help?).
Lots of APIs- "it's too big #1" hard to know which one to use, even if it does what you want.
Used by lots of types of programs, from embedded devices, smartphones through major desktop apps through databases and operating systems and enterprise apps: So, there may be multiple ways to do something.
Comes with all needed data for the above! "it's too big #2" (see above, under pros), yet customizable. (can be trimmed down to size)
ICU is terrible: avoid if at all possible.
Despite its age, basic things in it are broken, for example in this question: Fixing regex to work around ICU/RegexKitLite bug
Time handling is broken as times are underspecified: you can't distinguish a DST from a non-DST time in a reliable way in many APIs.
It's freaking huge.
The documentation needs a lot of work. Less-used features are often unusable because there's no way to figure out the right way to use them. I spent days trying to get transliteration to work as explained and eventually gave up.
It likes to work in UTF-16, the worst of all possible worlds.
Support is unresponsive to problems.
In my experience, it's not until you're most of the way through a project that you begin to discover the insidious flaws that will take 90% of your time.
For many people, there is no alternative so you're stuck with it.
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 13 years ago.
Improve this question
I want to convert a website to use a Content Management System for updating a large number of content pages for a website. The current website is mostly ASP.NET, but I am considering converting to PHP if it means I will have better integration with the "CMS of choice" in the market. I have heard of Joomla! and other CMS' but I would like some answers to which ones are considered better. Features that I need to support are custom sidebar and tab menus (with expandable javascript drop downs for example). Can anyone tell me of a good solution?
You should look at opensourcecms.com. It's a site that hosts demos for the majority of open source CMS's out there in both PHP and ASP.NET. You can try each one out and read the features and reviews. It's a good way to find one that meets your needs without actually installing them.
Joomla and Drupal are your most common and popular PHP based CMS solutions.
On the .NET side I would suggest only DotNetNuke. The amount of development that goes on in that CMS is second to none and there is a huge marketplace for content, modules, themes, etc. There is pretty much everything available in DNN to meet your potential needs.
The "best" CMS really, really depends on your requirements.
I will say that Joomla is pretty much typical PHP spaghetti, and I hate it, but it might work for you.
Kentico (a .NET CMS) is a pretty decent one that I've deployed a few times. Microsoft CMS is supposed to be decent, I haven't tried it though.
Without knowing specifically your requirements, I find it impossible to give a solid recommendation, though.
I didn't work with these applications yet, but AFAIK TYPO3 and ezPublish (both PHP) are considered much more professional than e.g. Joomla.
Drupal has a long history, proven track record of success (many high profile use cases, including the Obama campaign, Mozilla Firefox, and MTV in the UK), and a boatload of free modules and themes so you can start somewhere good. Drupal is also highly customizable in terms of how data is stored in terms of content types. Drupal has excellent consulting and contracting help.
Joomla is a strong second, but a quick look at Joomla criticism on wikipedia, and I think the choice gets much clearer. Two out of the three criticisms of Drupal on wikipedia are that it's too complicated, which is really a subjective matter as compared to the shortcomings of Joomla.
If web development is a hobby for you, then use an open source CMS such as those mentioned. If it is your profession, consider working towards writing your own that meets your needs. The first few will likely be a little rough, but in the long run it can prove very fulfilling and must more customizable than anything off the shelf.
Writing your own also forces you to consistently expand your skills and learn the intricacies of the programming language.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
If you have worked with DotNetNuke, what are advantages and disadvantages that you have come across? What are alternative Content Management Systems that you have used that you find are better or worst. I'm trying to get a feel of what Content Management System Frameworks people are using and the advantages and disadvantages of them.
Thanks,
XaiSoft
This post may help as it has covered some of this info!
DotNetNuke works well, and has a wide variety of addins that are available for purchase from various vendors. It is also open source which is nice, as it allows you to troubleshoot issues to a deeper level then if it was closed source.
We didn't spend a lot of time researching CMS systems but this past summer we couldn't find anything with the functionality of DotNetNuke which targets the .net framework. If your not tied to .net then there are a ton of options available.
DNN is very very dynamic in terms of functionality, features and security. There's is nothing like it. However there are a few drawbacks that i felt while using it.
The biggest drawback in my opinion is the response time of a DNN using sites. The code itself is very obsolete and you need to lock yourself and scour on each and every coding details before using DNN. One more is the URL dependency, if you need to change your domain name to another your old database will be of no use.
There are a lot of new promising CMS extension in Dot NET market and Sageframe, in my opinion, is the best of them. I have been using this extension for quite a time now and I am quite fascinated by its features though still in beta.
DotNetNuke is quite powerful. It's biggest advantage is the inline editing of site content, in my opinion. It's biggest disadvantage is that it is pretty resource intensive compared to other CMS systems.
Here's a comparison I wrote last month:
http://www.logicalvue.com/blog/2009/01/cms-shootout-dotnetnuke-vs-joomla-vs-wordpress/
The biggest disadvantage is the missing support for multiple languages.
Yes, you can install multiple languages but you can't write seperate content for each installed language...
It's not hard to write such a module yourself but the other problem is the URLs.
You can use the 'Human Friendly' option but yet again, this does not support multiple languages.
For instance /Products/tabid/57/language/en-US/Default.aspx becomes products.aspx but there isn't a possibility to include the language like this /en-US/products.aspx
I know there are 3th party tools like UrlMaster which covers this up but still I think this should be available in such a framework.
The biggest advantage is the ease of developing your own modules! If a functionality isn't available, you can write your own module without any problems!
.Net Nuke is not good for developing projects.
Microsoft is releasing lot of versiond and including lot of lauguages.
So how developers will learn all the things...
This is very bad for developers.....
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 6 years ago.
Improve this question
As a long time World of Warcraft player, and a passionate developer I have decided that I would like to combine the two and set about developing some addins. Not only to improve my gameplay experience but as a great opportunity to learn something new.
Does anyone have any advice on how to go about starting out?
Is there an IDE one can use? How does one go about testing? Are there any ready made libraries available? Or would I get a better learning experience by ignoring the libraries and building from scratch? How do I oneshot Hogger?
Would love to hear your advice, experiences and views.
This article explains how to start pretty well.
Your first bookmark is possibly the US Interface Forum, especially the Stickies for that:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1011693/
Then, grab some simple addons to learn how XML and LUA interacts. The WoWWiki HOWTO List is a good point here as well.
One important thing to keep in mind: World of Warcraft is available in many languages. If you have a EU Account, you got an excellent testing bed by simply downloading the language Packs for Spanish, German and French. If you're an US Guy, check if you can get the Latin America version. That way, you can test it against another language version.
Once you made 1 or 2 really small and simple addons just to learn how to use it, have a look at the various frameworks. WowAce is a popular one, but there are others.
Just keep one thing in mind: Making an Addon is work. Maintaining one is even more work. With each new Patch, there may be breaking changes, and the next Addon will surely cause a big Exodus of Addons, just like Patch 2.0.1 did.
Another useful tools you might like is WarcraftAddOnStudio which lets you make plugins in the visual studio environment.
I learned the art of add-ons primarily by looking at the code of Blizzard's UI. You can see that code by extracting the default UI or finding a copy of the default UI online. Add-on developers sometimes like to over-engineer their pet projects (who doesn't?), while Blizzard's code is usually pretty no-nonsense and straightforward. In addition, Programming in Lua is a pretty useful (if slightly out-of-date) reference for the actual Lua language.
The best way to start is with the book World of Warcraft Programming. It covers LUA, XML, WarcraftAddOnStudio and the WoW API. The book also has sections on best practices and avoiding common mistakes.