James W Lane

I’ve been building a decent amount of new sites lately dealing with different structures and servers configuration. Clients now a days want so much for so little and with the way the economy is we try and give it to them. It has got me thinking about the tools we use to rapidly develop our web designs into sites and applications. There are so many developers out there, who have so many designs and styles on how to do things from using templates and modifying it slightly or extremely just using it as a structural base. Some hand code everything, and I applaud those who do. Then there is most of us out there who use our own pre-made or community developed framework to ensure rapid development of our web application.  That’s what I would like to dig further into in this post. I would like to talk about what frameworks are out there and what to use them for. I want to tell you what in my opinion I think are the best frameworks out there for each server side language. I will touch on how to use some of them. And I will give you a list of some of the best ones you should keep handy. Of course this is my opinion and I would like for you to comment and add to the value of this article with your opinions and maybe introduce me to things I have not yet found.  As I sit here thinking about everything I use and know I am starting to think I should break this post up. Well enough of the babbling chit-chat lets dig into this.

This will be a multi post series following this guide line.

• Part One: Server side languages and recommended frameworks to look at.
• Part Two: Comparison of my favorite PHP language based framework for web development.
• Part Three: Client side languages and recommended frameworks to look at.
• Part Four: Comparison of my favorite AJAX and Javascript frameworks.
• Part Five: Comparison of my favorite CSS and other styling frameworks.
• Part Six: Some key points for rapid web application development, looking at other server side options and reader request material.

You can choose from ASP.NET, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, LUA, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, SmartTalk, and combinations of this list. Well I could tear all these server side languages apart and make this extremely boring, but out of all honesty there really is no need. What ever server side language you choose to develop in is most likely a great language I will admit I have experience in only a few and heavy work in fewer. But that doesn’t mean I am not open to a new framework to develop in. While writing this I found some that have peaked my interest so expect other blog posts to come out going into detail on those. But for this post other than just a general going over of the languages and my recommended frameworks I am really going to stick with PHP server side language and its framework.

But to start things off I will go over some of the server side languages and the frameworks you can use to rapidly develop an application in that language. While I will admit I am not an expert in all these languages I know enough about them to be able to build a simple web application and know people in the community to pull missing information from.

ASP.Net – I personally don’t use ASP but if I was I would use the DotNetNuke framework or MonoRail. I think they are well developed and great starts to any web application. I would love to hear your feed back on ASP framework and development. I will admit I am not an expert and I would love to hear what the experts have to say about it.

ColdFusion – This framework has a long standing and has been bought out several times. It started with Joseph J. (JJ) Allaire who co-founded Allaire Corporation, then Macromedia bought them out and ran it for a while. And then Adobe came along and bought them out. As for a platform its great to develop on, but its just not for me. If your looking for a framework for ColdFusion development look at ColdSpring or Fusebox for two great frameworks.

Common Lisp – I am defiantly not an expert on this server side language, but according to a friend of mine that I consulted with while writing this article, BKNR and blow are the frameworks to go with. I am looking for some commenting and discussion and insight on this.

Groovy – I can not really say much about this server side language. I have never programed in Groovy before and I am not very informed on the frameworks available for it. By doing some Google searches I have found two I found to be very promising Grails and Project Zero. Now I have done some reading on these frameworks and I will dig more into them over the next few weeks. They look well developed and promising.

Java – Java is a great server side language with powerful frameworks out there like AppFuse, SmartClient, ThinWire, and WebObjects. This language and framework is not going anywhere anytime soon. It has a strong base and following. The Java community keeps pushing it beyond what most people thought it could do and I seen Java written web applications that have amazed even me. So give Java a look and you will be surprised.

JavaScript – You may think java script is just for pretty animation and functionality without flash but this little language may surprise you. More and more people are finding out this is a powerful scripting language. Server side its dominating with the right community backing it; and can pull its self in the number two spot of server side languages. I don’t think it will be able to knock out PHP from what I believe to be the number one spot but with the right backing and inspiration I think it can give future PHP releases a run for it’s money. Two great frameworks coming up from this prince of darkness are AppJet and Jaxer. Give these two frameworks a look over and you can see what I am talking about.

LUA -  This is a nice lightweight framework with some nice feature in it. Myself all I ever done in LUA is World of Warcraft add-on’s and thats the only reason I learned it also. But looking over in what Kepler and Orbit has two offer. I would be interested in giving it a whirl in web development. This may be a diamond in the rough who know. Only time will tell.

Perl – Perl is one of my first loves. It was on of the first languages I picked up and held on to due to my love for linux and unix platforms; and for a web development stand point its powerful. Two frameworks leading the way in this are Catalyst and WebGUI. Looking over this language and these frameworks you can see why its structured for large scaling applications dominating some of the market in rapid development. Its well written and a great community follows Perl. It will always have a place in my heart.

PHP – Let’s get down to the meat and potatoes, PHP has to be the largest and most used server side language. Also one of the best, and this one packs one hell of a punch. I will be writing in depth on PHP because it not only is what most people use but also one of the easiest to learn. I will be talking about frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Drupal, FUSE, Horde, Joomla, Mambo, MediaWiki, Symfony, Wordpress, Yii, Zend Framework and the Zoop Framework. Yes I did include Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress into this because they have become a huge part in application frameworks used for web developments. As I go more into depth you will understand how I can include them next to some more advanced frameworks like CakePHP.

Python – I remember all the way back in 98-99 I was writing back end web applications for a consulting company I was working for at the time and I wrote most my stuff in perl. One of our lead web developers who used to work for British Intelligence showed me python and I will admit I was impressed, ten years later I am still impressed. With framework like CherryPy, Django, Pylons, TurboGears, Webware and Zope python is a great base for any web application no matter what size you need it to scale to.

Ruby – Next on the list comes a young but upcoming language and frameworks. Ruby is the up and coming big thing. Based off a lot of the big languages and taking some of the best from each of them. Ruby is working its self slowly to top. With frameworks like Nitro and Ruby on Rails and some amazing developers I am excited to see what the future of web development has in store out of the Ruby corner.

Smalltalk – Last but not least we have smalltalk. This framework, well it’s small. With the Seaside framework needing 48kb of memory this little framework packs a powerful punch. Minimal footprint and powerful well developed language. So check out my two favorite frameworks AIDA/Web and Seaside, and your next project might be with Smalltalk.

Well I hope you will look at other options when developing your web app or at least know what’s out there. Remember the way we become great developers is looking and thinking outside the box. If people didn’t, we would still be writing everything in HTML, everything would still be static information. So don’t restrict yourself to one language, framework, or anything else. I am trying to show you what is out there so you as a developer know what’s around you. Its up to you to think outside that box and make something great. Don’t copy and mimic. See what people are doing and find something new. Put you own twist on it and smile when you see people writing tutorials on how to do it and every where you look they are copying you. When I write these I am more trying to inform and inspire you then teach you something that ten thousand people have already written. Not saying I don’t write tutorials I just try not to copy something thats already out there. Well I am going to work on part two of this series and you should leave a comment, please social bookmark and tweet this if you like it, and go out there and learn something new and change the face of the web. Till next time…..

Tags: .NET, AIDA, AppFuse, AppJet, ASP, BKNR, blow, CakePHP, Catalyst, CherryPy, CodeIgniter, ColdFusion, ColdSpring, Common Lisp, Django, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Framework, FUSE, Fusebox, Grails, Groovy, Horde, Java, Javascript, Jaxer, Joomla, LUA, Mambo, MediaWiki, MonoRail, Nitro, Perl, PHP, ProjectZero, Pylons, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Seaside, SmartClient, SmartTalk, Symfony, ThinWire, TurboGears, WebGUI, WebObjects, Webware, Wii, Wordpress, Zend, Zoop, Zope

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.