Cocoa Crusty

I have been a long time Zend Studio user for developing web sites and PHP applications. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of the Zend development environment. It is a multi-platform application (thanks to Java), has excellent code completion and highlighting capabilities, and is overall a well designed IDE. But, some of its turn-ons are also turn-offs.

Java is extremely bulky. I have never been a fan of Java applications. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Java or Java based applications, but I just haven’t ever particularly liked Java apps. I prefer an application that is native to the operating system I am running, which these days is Mac OS X on an Apple MacBook. When I used to run FreeBSD exclusively, I preferred applications that would run natively on FreeBSD. But, I was able to run Zend Studio on FreeBSD due to the fact that it runs in a Java Environment. See what I mean?! The turn-ons are turn-offs and vice versa… It’s like a catch 22.

Zend Studio also has a ton of useful features for developing web sites. Utilities related to SQL and debugging, etc. Basically, a lot of features I never used. I only used the development portions of the environment so I really don’t know how good the other utilities in the Zend Studio are for development.

So, what if you could have an application with an excellent development interface with code highlighting and completion, built-in previewing of your applications, a graphical CSS editor, a built-in SSH client for connections to a remote server or a local shell, a PHP manual/language reference, and books. That’s right… books! And, what if this development environment was developed to run natively on Mac OS X?! Sound good (to you Mac users, anyway)?!

Well, now is your chance. This software may not be new to you, or the general public as a whole, but it is to me. The application is called Coda (cool web site, eh?!), developed and distributed by Panic, Inc. Imagine everything you love about Zend and runs natively on your Mac… Plus it has books! That’s right… books!

I have been using Coda for a little over a month. The interface is extremely sexy (well, it does run on Mac) and intuitive. The way sites are displayed is extremely nice with a screenshot preview of the site you have defined. It is a lot more fun to choose a site to work on based on a home page preview than from a list. Not real functional, but definitely a plus in the eye-candy department. Having all of the built-in features (that I described earlier) at your disposal within this easy to use window is extremely helpful, and helps reduce desktop clutter.

So, since I have been using Coda, I have been very impressed with the IDE. It is intuitive (which I said before), extremely sexy (which I said before), robust in the functionality arena, and it has books… Have I mentioned the books?!

Now, I haven’t used the books, but I have “virtually” thumbed through them. Well, it’s really only one book but it is divided into three parts: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The book these subsets are from is titled The Web Programmer’s Desk Reference from No Starch Press. It is extremely handy to have these references right in your development environment for easy access when you need to know what property X does in CSS, or what arguments function Y accepts in JavaScript.

And my last words are this: If you’re a Mac OS X user and also a web developer, I highly recommend you give Coda a try. There is a “Try Before You Buy” download available from the Panic web site (again, nice web site). Give it a try and let me know how it compares to your current development environment. I’d be interested to see what a.) other development environments and tools you all use, and b.) what you think of Coda.

Until next time…

I have been looking for a rapid development framework for PHP for a little while now and stumbled upon CakePHP. The CakePHP web site describes the frame work as follows:

Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.

I am currently using the framework on a production project and have been very happy with the way everything is organized and how it all relates. It is starting to make sense to me and I am very happy so far with my choice. Everyone says the framework is basically Rails for PHP (ever heard of Ruby on Rails?). Since I have never programmed in Ruby (nothing extravagant anyway), nor used the Rails framework with Ruby, I cannot validate this comment but will take everyone’s word for it.

I have had some people ask me (you know who you are) and seen others asked in the #cakephp IRC channel on irc.freenode.net why people don’t just use Ruby on Rails. My answer to that is simple, to me anyway: I have been using PHP since around late 1999 and have been happy with it ever since. My code is getting better and better, more efficient, better organized, etc. I don’t have time right now in my life to learn a new programming language and a development framework. I need to use something now that will allow me to turn out applications and robust dynamic sites with the quickness.

One thing I really like about CakePHP is the user/developer community. There is a lot of user contributed code available for use at the CakePHP Bakery. The range of examples and working applications on that site is enormous (huge-mongous?). I have found a lot of examples that I have been able to include into the site I am currently working on and some things I hope to implement after launch.

Again, I have been very happy with my CakePHP experiences thus far and hope that trend continues. I will be blogging about my experiences, and possibly be making notes in my blog for my own future reference, from here on. If you’re a PHP developer and are itching to try something new to develop sites and applications quicker and with more reusable code, I would give CakePHP a try. It may be worth it in the long run.

Until next time…