Best Web Application Language/Framework?

[FanIn80]

How close to C is C#? Objective-C is really just pure C with an OO layer on top (my understanding at least). Is C# the same way, or is it just a modified C? Mind you, I can look that up on my own I guess.

Like I mentioned earlier, I don't mind the .Net IDE. I'm used to it from my days of doing VBA coding. Sure it's a resource hog (like pretty much all MS products), but it's laid out in a way that makes sense to me.

I guess I really need to think about how I want to ply my trade afterward. I don't really want to do the code monkey thing, and I'm kinda hoping that my resume (+ a degree) will help me avoid that stuff. There's also the option of doing my own stuff, which is where learning a decent language and framework is important.

Either way, maybe C# is something to consider. Java, PHP or C#...

Edit: There's also Perl as well, though I'm not sure how it fits into everything these days. I remeber starting to teach myself Perl back in '97, when I thought I had to write some CGI stuff for a project I was doing for the Lethbridge Public Library. We figured out a different way to do it though, so I stopped reading up on it.

[Shazam]

I recommend reading the Wikipedia entry for C#.

There's nothing wrong with being a "code monkey", but the fact of the matter is most developers are also analysts, and vice versa. Especially in Calgary, I've met very, very few people that can do OO design non-crappily.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

How close to C is C#? Objective-C is really just pure C with an OO layer on top (my understanding at least). Is C# the same way, or is it just a modified C? Mind you, I can look that up on my own I guess.

Like I mentioned earlier, I don't mind the .Net IDE. I'm used to it from my days of doing VBA coding. Sure it's a resource hog (like pretty much all MS products), but it's laid out in a way that makes sense to me.

I guess I really need to think about how I want to ply my trade afterward. I don't really want to do the code monkey thing, and I'm kinda hoping that my resume (+ a degree) will help me avoid that stuff. There's also the option of doing my own stuff, which is where learning a decent language and framework is important.

Either way, maybe C# is something to consider. Java, PHP or C#...

Edit: There's also Perl as well, though I'm not sure how it fits into everything these days. I remeber starting to teach myself Perl back in '97, when I thought I had to write some CGI stuff for a project I was doing for the Lethbridge Public Library. We figured out a different way to do it though, so I stopped reading up on it.

Syntactically, C and C# are pretty similar so the learning curve shouldn't be too rough (but then, Java is very similar syntactically as well). Technically, they're quite different. I don't know enough about pure C to really get into the details though.

Your resume and degree will not, on its own, keep you free from ending up as a code monkey. You'll almost certainly spend some time in that capacity as part of paying dues; not unlike any profession, really. Actually, it's a good way to get used to working in a professional environment and getting familiar with how a software development team works from start to finish. Just don't get complacent. Push for opportunities to take part in design and don't screw it up when you get the chance.

Another thing worth noting: the smaller the team, the better chance you've got of taking on a bigger role earlier, and having an opinion worth something in determining the direction of the project. There are obvious caveats to working in smaller companies but it can pay big dividends experience-wise early on.

[FanIn80]

This is all awesome stuff guys. Thanks, I appreciate all of this immensely. The programming landscape is quite huge, and it's great to have some help narrowing things down a bit.

[photon]

Frack I hate perl.

One thing I did like about .NET is it seemed to take all the "WTF? I thought this was an OO language" stuff in Java and fix it.

I mean getters and setters Java? REALLY?

[Shazam]

Python is probably the 'best' non-WTFy OO language there is.

You still have primitives in C# for whatever reason.

Only wimps diss perl.

[badnarik]

Generally speaking, PHP runs on cheaper hosting plans. That alone makes it popular, so if you want to work with smaller clients I would recommend PHP w/ MySQL. Learn some CSS and JavaScript and find a few designers who don't know programming. They make the design, and you do the backend and tie it all together.

Great for working from home.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Like I mentioned earlier, I don't mind the .Net IDE. I'm used to it from my days of doing VBA coding. Sure it's a resource hog (like pretty much all MS products), but it's laid out in a way that makes sense to me.

It's not a resource hog, its a serious, enterprise class tool. It's the kind of thing you use to build the resource hogs like Office.

Seriously - upgrade your machines if you find Visual Studio and other development environments heavyweight. Development is serious business and needs fast disk and lots of RAM. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to do any kind of development on a middling machine. It'll slow you down, and thats the last thing you want when your in a deep build/debug/build cycle, or rapidly iterating through different ways of doing something, or any other of a million situations that come up when doing dev work.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

It's not a resource hog, its a serious, enterprise class tool. It's the kind of thing you use to build the resource hogs like Office.

Seriously - upgrade your machines if you find Visual Studio and other development environments heavyweight. Development is serious business and needs fast disk and lots of RAM. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to do any kind of development on a middling machine. It'll slow you down, and thats the last thing you want when your in a deep build/debug/build cycle, or rapidly iterating through different ways of doing something, or any other of a million situations that come up when doing dev work.

Well... I am using it inside a VM. Perhaps it's time to revisit the Boot Camp thing... or maybe even just spend $500 to build myself a dev box.

Edit: I wonder how 2008 runs in Win7...

[Shazam]

VS2008 takes about 100 megs on my machine. ReSharper adds another 200-300 megs.

That's five web apps, one database project, one class library, one service project, a unit test project and five deployment projects.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

It's not a resource hog, its a serious, enterprise class tool. It's the kind of thing you use to build the resource hogs like Office.

Seriously - upgrade your machines if you find Visual Studio and other development environments heavyweight. Development is serious business and needs fast disk and lots of RAM. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to do any kind of development on a middling machine. It'll slow you down, and thats the last thing you want when your in a deep build/debug/build cycle, or rapidly iterating through different ways of doing something, or any other of a million situations that come up when doing dev work.

If VS was just a resource hog that would be one thing; you can always upgrade. It's just that are other IDEs that, as far as I can tell, do everything that VS does faster and smarter.

I'm sure this thread wasn't meant to be a debate between IDEs but I think the quality of tools is relevant in a comparison of languages.

I haven't used VS2K8 so maybe some of these have been addressed, but the big complaints I had with VS2K5:

No background compiling - seriously, I have to wait for my entire project to compile and can't do anything in the meantime? In comparison, Eclipse compiles in a background thread and lets you know how far along it is, but you can still work in the IDE.

No on-the-fly error detection - Eclipse builds in the background and tells you immediately (not whenever you decide to compile again) if your code isn't going to compile.

Customization - VS had view customization but not at the level Eclipse has. In Eclipse you can store the entire screen layout according to anything, language, design, debug, etc. etc. When I'm writing java I've got a package explorer on the left, my main code window, and a logger/terminal on the bottom. When I open a JSP or HTML file, the package explorer is replaced with a file explorer, the logger disappears, and the code window is split screen so I can work on markup and CSS at the same time.

Source Control - MS SourceSafe was a nightmare. Haven't used Team Foundation but I've heard it's better. But subversion is awesome. When I worked in C# I'd spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour per day just managing conflicts. With SVN I don't even worry about it. SVN's merging is incredible; the team I'm on now has maybe one or two conflicts per week which is nothing. Plus, SVN's multidisciplinary. Some guys on my team use NetBeans, some even use emacs, and we can all use the same repositories.

Machine Portability - there's no installer for eclipse. You just unpack and run. If I want to export all my visual preferences, hotkey assignments, code templates, and even all my plugins from one machine to another, I just zip up my Eclipse folder and unzip it on my new workstation. I can reformat my OS partition and leave my Eclipse installation untouched elsewhere. This is huge when you have a growing team, you can just set Eclipse up once, on one machine, then copy that installation to any new machine for a new developer. Setting up VS on a machine for a developer can take hours.

OS Portability - I do my Eclipse development in Windows, Linux, or a Mac depending on the mood that strikes me. It's exactly the same everywhere.

Performance - You need plenty of RAM to run any IDE but Eclipse is just quicker. I ran both on a windows machine for quite awhile and there was no comparison, especially on the frontend stuff.

Price - the IDE and all the plugins I use are all completely free. No big deal if your employer is footing the bill but if you're doing independent contracting you can save a good chunk of coin.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Shazam

VS2008 takes about 100 megs on my machine. ReSharper adds another 200-300 megs.

That's five web apps, one database project, one class library, one service project, a unit test project and five deployment projects.

I haven't used ReSharper but I've heard great things. You mind outlining some of the features? What's it cost now?

[FanIn80]

Can you work with Visual Studio languages outside of Visual Studio though? Like I mean, can I build and compile projects in say... VB... without using VS?

IDEs are very important, for sure. Also, if there's a way to do VS stuff outside of VS and outside of Windows, then I might be able to get rid of Windows entirely (other than a test box, of course). Something tells me this is a pipe dream though. It would have to have some kind of emulator at the very least...

Hmm...

[photon]

Good to bring up version control, and I agree with checking out Subversion. Though I would like to check out one of the distributed source control packages just to see what they are like.

[photon]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Can you work with Visual Studio languages outside of Visual Studio though? Like I mean, can I build and compile projects in say... VB... without using VS?

IDEs are very important, for sure. Also, if there's a way to do VS stuff outside of VS, then... I might be able to get rid of Windows entirely (other than a test box, of course). Something tells me this is a pipe dream though.

You can check out MonoDevelop and Mono:

http://monodevelop.com/
http://www.mono-project.com

Mono is an open source implementation of C#, though I'm not sure how good or complete it is as I've never used it, they claim binary file compatibility though so it seems pretty good.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Can you work with Visual Studio languages outside of Visual Studio though? Like I mean, can I build and compile projects in say... VB... without using VS?

IDEs are very important, for sure. Also, if there's a way to do VS stuff outside of VS and outside of Windows, then I might be able to get rid of Windows entirely (other than a test box, of course). Something tells me this is a pipe dream though. It would have to have some kind of emulator at the very least...

Hmm...

Yes, you can call the compiler via command line.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

I haven't used ReSharper but I've heard great things. You mind outlining some of the features? What's it cost now?

I like the code analysis features and the way it lets you run unit tests within VS. It's $200 for a personal license.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Shazam

I recommend reading the Wikipedia entry for C#.

There's nothing wrong with being a "code monkey", but the fact of the matter is most developers are also analysts, and vice versa. Especially in Calgary, I've met very, very few people that can do OO design non-crappily.

Question for you: Do you have any particularly good resources that you could recommend regarding OO design or design in general?

[Bobblehead]

My office used VSS for years and still has a number of those projects in there. We still maintain a number of VB5 projects.

Any new projects we have started are in SVN. Personally, I prefer SVN (TortoiseSVN to give Windows integration) but I do know there have been a couple of developers butting heads while using SVN (I steered clear of that kerfuffle so I don't have the detailed gripes).

[llama64]

Originally Posted by photon

Good to bring up version control, and I agree with checking out Subversion. Though I would like to check out one of the distributed source control packages just to see what they are like.

Git and Mercurial are the two best distributed source control packages.

I highly recommend Git overall. I've had far too many issues trying to make Mercurial work properly whereas Git just seems to work as you would expect.