rubyOnRails

Why I fell for CodeIgniter

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Since leaving Kapow a week and a half ago I have been coding more than I have for the last 3 years combined, and I have done it all in PHP using the framework CodeIgniter. I looked at quite a few frameworks, CakePHP and Ruby on Rails for example, and quite a few applications/blogging platforms/Content Management Systems that can be hacked and adapted, wordpress and Drupal for example. In the end CodeIgniter won the day, and so far I am extremenly happy with my choice. There are a handfull reasons why I prefer CodeIgniter:

  • It is PHP, this might be a dealbreaker for some, but for me that is a huge plus. Primarily the advantages of this is that I can easily host my creations on basically any cheap web host, that there are plenty of libraries and resources out there to make my life easier and also that I know PHP. For the last reason I could have gone with Ruby on Rails or Java as well, but it put all Python frameworks out of the competition.
  • CodeIgniter is very easy to install and as easy to deploy. All you need for things to play nicely is an Apache server, a MySQL database and a copy of the CodeIgniter files. Deploying and setting up things are the most boring thing when it comes to writing your own apps, so it is a must for me that it is a breeze, I just dont have the patience to deal with deployment problems.
  • Great documentation, the CodeIgniter user guide is excellent. This is a huge difference from many other frameworks and platforms, especially the ones developed by an open source community (CodeIgniter is developed by Ellis Labs, the guys behind the Expression Engine blogging platform). The developer community is also very active and knowledgable, so what isn’t in the user guide is in the CodeIgniter forums.
  • Finally, a framework that improves my productivity. Most frameworks tries to do to much and are so huge and rigid that there is a huge learning curve if you want to doing anything but a “Hello World” app. CodeIgniter helps me with the stuff I need help with and doesn’t meddle in the rest. There is no need to hack 10 plugins of different qualities together to get what I need (like in Drupal), and that just makes developing fun as it should be. It is also the first MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework that helps me organise my code in a good way, something that I usually suck at otherwise.

In short I recommend that anybody that knows PHP and want a light weight, good framework checks out CodeIgniter. A good place to start are the CodeIgniter video tutorials, and if you get a bit deeper into things Elliot Haughin has a great blog that often covers CodeIgniter and he also have some great libraries that are well worth looking at (CodeIgniter libs for Twitter, Flickr and Akismet for example). Another great resource is the blog of Derek Allard, Technology Architect at Ellis Labs.

What I learned at JavaOne 2007

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I am just back from a week in San Francisco at JavaOne where I was one of 12.000 geeks that got together to get to know more about the latest and greatest in Java development. Since it was almost 2 years ago I worked full time with Java development this almost felt like a trip back in time for me, back to the time when Java was equal to my professional life, and what I have worked with the last few years (Web 2.0, mashups, web scraping etc) is still considered new and exotic in the Java world.

It was also very interesting for me to compare JavaOne with the Web 2.0 Expo that I attended a few weeks ago. JavaOne is almost strictly for developers that are using a mature technology that has not really taken any real leaps lately. The Web 2.0 Expo was for both techies and business people and it looking forward at new technologies and business oppertunities.

Keynotes and General Sessions
Most of the Keynotes and the General Sessions were also about running Java on all kinds of devices (cell phones, ATMs etc) and generally about how great Java is, so nothing new there. But there were a few things that caught my eye:

  • JavaFX Script – Sun has decided to take up the fight with Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe’s Flash, unfourtunatly they decided to give it a name that most people will confuse with “JavaScript” and Adobe’s “Flex” (just try saying JavaFX Script 10 times quickly). This is a very interesting move since it suddenly makes it easy for the whole Java community to develop Rich Internet Applications. This and Silverlight has the potential to make the web a much more interesting place.
  • Netbeans 6 – There was a quite impressive demo of Netbeans 6 and how it can be used for programming Ruby on Rails, much better than RadRails I am using now. Of course it was a demo and I havent had time to test the Netbeans 6 preview yet, but as soon as I have to dig down into Rails again Netbeans is my choice.
  • Blu-ray – There was some semi-desperat plees (=competitions) to get Java developers involved in the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD fight. Sun is squarly behind Blu-ray (they mentioned that it ran Java about 100 times). The Blu-ray demos were cool, but personally I just want one format to win quickly so I know what player to buy.

Java and Web 2.0
Most of the presentations were of course about hardcore Java stuff, and I skipped those. Instead I went to all presentations about Mashups, RSS, Atom and REST (acctually I held a presentation about Mashups myself, more about that in a later post). It is pretty clear that all the Web 2.0 technologies are viewed as some distant hype by most of the Java community.

The only really cool thing I saw in regards to Java and Mashups was a couple of demos of jMaki. It is a project developed by Sun and it is basically a framework where java developers can easily program Mashups. The great thing was what is called the “Glue” which is an event bus that enables widgets from different providers like Yahoo and Dojo. jMaki has a great future if it ever moves into the Enterprise world and it could be a real step forward for both Java and Web 2.0.

Another interesting Sun research project is Project Caroline that enables java developers to control all resouces from the code, ie create new server instances on the fly, set up new file systems etc etc. If this ever moves beyond just being a half implemented research project it could open up to a lot of competition for Amazons S3 and EC2.