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Lightning Zwei
Aug 7, 2013
Thanks for the quick replies, and no I'm not necessarily stuck on learning asp.net or c# I just assumed it would be easier to learn given that I'm already learning Java.

I started out messing around with twitter bootstrap and bootstrap plus because I liked how simple it was to modify the templates and I like the clean visual aesthetics. But I suppose I can use bootstrap stylesheets and still code with ruby, and once I get the hang of it I can just create my own custom stylesheets anyway.

So ruby is probably my best bet?

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Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Lightning Zwei posted:

Thanks for the quick replies, and no I'm not necessarily stuck on learning asp.net or c# I just assumed it would be easier to learn given that I'm already learning Java.

You'll become a better programmer if you learn completely different languages.

Lightning Zwei posted:

I started out messing around with twitter bootstrap and bootstrap plus because I liked how simple it was to modify the templates and I like the clean visual aesthetics. But I suppose I can use bootstrap stylesheets and still code with ruby, and once I get the hang of it I can just create my own custom stylesheets anyway.

Any technology stack you use is going to have to have stylesheets and Bootstrap is a fine framework to use. I'd challenge you a little bit on the "I can just create my own custom stylesheets anyway" part. There's nothing wrong with using a framework like Bootstrap, and in fact, as long as it meets your needs, you're possibly better off not creating your own and just customizing Bootstrap as needed.


Lightning Zwei posted:

So ruby is probably my best bet?


I'd vote for Python+Flask+Peewee (or Django, but I think Flask is probably better to get your head around everything that goes on with a modern server+site+client), but that's a personal preference. Ruby+Rails is also good.

Sudden Infant Def Syndrome
Oct 2, 2004

As someone who has always programmed in PHP, are there benefits I could be missing out on with Python or Ruby?

Most of my programming is running an intranet for my company for sales information and such as that.

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe

SlightlyMadman posted:

My boss is asking me to write up a comparison of Google Maps and MapQuest for a client who currently uses MapQuest but is considering switching. I've of course tried googling but the comparisons are mostly based on UI and usability, and for the most part are several years old (which makes sense, considering most sites made the switch back then already). Does anybody know of a good resource out there for a feature comparison from a development standpoint? I'd like to be able to point out things that they can do with Google Maps that would be expensive or impossible with MapQuest.

MapQuest has been contributing data and development resources to OpenStreetMaps data, and MapQuest runs the big OpenStreetMaps servers now, and have also been the main developers and data sources behind their new route planning service Nominatim, and MapQuest's main source of income comes from government contracts to add GTFS data to transit systems. MapQuest has really pulled a 180 since you last heard of them.

I wouldn't use the MapQuest APIs directly, but I think that anything that uses OpenStreetMaps (Leaflet, MapBox, Mapnik) would be better than the GMaps API.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

SlightlyMadman posted:

My boss is asking me to write up a comparison of Google Maps and MapQuest for a client who currently uses MapQuest but is considering switching. I've of course tried googling but the comparisons are mostly based on UI and usability, and for the most part are several years old (which makes sense, considering most sites made the switch back then already). Does anybody know of a good resource out there for a feature comparison from a development standpoint? I'd like to be able to point out things that they can do with Google Maps that would be expensive or impossible with MapQuest.

I'd just throw usage numbers around. More usage -> better support, better stability. In terms of capabilities, I'm not sure I see the point of bringing them up "in the general case". Narrow down what you actually need doing and see if you can do them better with gmaps. If you can't maybe you shouldn't bother switching?

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

Lightning Zwei posted:


So ruby is probably my best bet?

I'd also say go with python over ruby just because python does less... weird poo poo. There is less hidden poo poo to bite you in the rear end and less having to figure out what the gently caress it is you're actually looking at and why it's working.

It's not a huge difference though. If ruby appeals for some reason, go nuts.

hmm yes
Dec 2, 2000
College Slice
A nitpick that doesn't really change the truthiness of the statement: the magic is usually in Rails and not in Ruby. On your first app you're not really going to care how it works, just that it does. Nothing stopping you from diving into the Rails source and figuring out the meta magic. You could also roll with Sinatra if you want stripped down Ruby on the web. Oh, and if you pick Ruby just host it using a free account on Heroku. Do not try and figure out how to deploy a Rails app on your first go, it isn't worth the effort.

Running with a PHP framework like Yii or Code Igniter is a totally reasonable choice, too.

hmm yes fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Aug 15, 2013

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:

As someone who has always programmed in PHP, are there benefits I could be missing out on with Python or Ruby?

Most of my programming is running an intranet for my company for sales information and such as that.

It really depends on how you're using PHP. It used to be PHP actively encouraged really bad practices and made the right way of doing things very very difficult, but that was long time ago. Are you using a framework? Modern PHP with exceptions and namespaces and poo poo? If so, you probably aren't missing thaaat much. Even tooling has improved substantially from what I've seen.

You should always try to broaden your programming horizons when you can, but the differences you'll notice are likely to be subtle provided you're up to date with "best practices" PHP land. Almost certainly not worth re-writing a functional site or anything without concrete reasons to though!

Oh My Science
Dec 29, 2008
If you plan on going the rails route I would highly recommend learning a little bit of ruby first. Try reading poignant-guide to ruby to get a feel for the language... if you like it, you'll like rails.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:

As someone who has always programmed in PHP, are there benefits I could be missing out on with Python or Ruby?

Most of my programming is running an intranet for my company for sales information and such as that.

Hmm. This is a hard question to answer. I mean, if you're getting your job done with PHP and you don't hate it, then don't bother. I mean, if your sites work, and you don't care about being more efficient because you're just there to punch the clock and besides you've got to convince management to change their technology stack...there's no point in it.

I've only lightly dabbled in PHP because PHP sucks so bad (completely possible that I just don't get it, but going by the Coding Horrors thread, and stuff like this I'm thinking I do get it and it just sucks), but I'm pretty sure you took the time to learn Python you'd be pretty happy.

SlightlyMadman
Jan 14, 2005

Mr. Wynand posted:

I'd just throw usage numbers around. More usage -> better support, better stability. In terms of capabilities, I'm not sure I see the point of bringing them up "in the general case". Narrow down what you actually need doing and see if you can do them better with gmaps. If you can't maybe you shouldn't bother switching?

Thanks, and yeah they basically want to see a comparison so they can do a cost/benefit analysis of making the switch. There's not much short-term benefit of the switch, but it's a major retail site and I think they're hoping google maps would enable them to add additional functionality like mashups and social integration.

akadajet
Sep 14, 2003

Oh My Science posted:

If you plan on going the rails route I would highly recommend learning a little bit of ruby first. Try reading poignant-guide to ruby to get a feel for the language... if you like it, you'll like rails.

I couldn't get past the "zany" bullshit in the intro.

visuvius
Sep 24, 2007
sta da moor
I need help picking a couple colors for my company's web app. A new feature includes a tickler system that shows open work items. Tasks can be either open, closed or past due. For closed, the item will just be gray but I need colors for open and past due items. I thought this would be easy but really its kind of not. Right now we've got like a poo-yellow for open and an ugly salmon for past due. Red and yellow/orange is just too strong and doesn't jive with our general site colors.

This page shows the basic color scheme of the web app, basically everything is green or manilla yellow: http://www.calschools.com/?page=services-projectplanning

I'd really appreciate any suggestions.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

atastypie posted:

A nitpick that doesn't really change the truthiness of the statement: the magic is usually in Rails and not in Ruby. On your first app you're not really going to care how it works, just that it does. Nothing stopping you from diving into the Rails source and figuring out the meta magic. You could also roll with Sinatra if you want stripped down Ruby on the web. Oh, and if you pick Ruby just host it using a free account on Heroku. Do not try and figure out how to deploy a Rails app on your first go!

It is true that Rails is one of the worse abuser (though hardly the worst), but I think the language itself has some problems encouraging "action at a distance" which is a very very bad idea. Two notable features are my bug-bears for this:

1. No explicit imports (just require everything into the same global namespace, what could possibly go wrong??). Python's file-level import semantics make it very easy to know where something comes from. If someone overwrites a builtin or such crazy poo poo you can immediately tell where that happens. It is much easier to follow along without dropping into irb all the time.

2. Yes, open classes. Sure, you don't have to make use of them, but boy oh boy people do anyway. It's just too easy to. Didn't DHH coin the term "syntactic vinegar"? It's a good idea that was. Python let's you do stupid poo poo too, but it just looks dangerous, which is good, because it should!

(And to be perfectly honest, I actually wish both Python and Ruby would just kill that loving feature dead. As far as I can tell, there is no "good" way to use __metaclass__ in Python, period. It is fundamentally broken. I have not seen a single use-case for it that justifies the complications it brings with it. As for Ruby, more often then not open classes are just a lovely fix for the slow release process. You mean we can just add the methods everyone wants to the standard library? Hold the loving presses, that is way too radical an idea, it would actually having a release process beyond "every few years, when matz feels like it", we could not possibly!)

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

akadajet posted:

I couldn't get past the "zany" bullshit in the intro.

Congrats, you're a grownup!

Oh My Science
Dec 29, 2008

akadajet posted:

I couldn't get past the "zany" bullshit in the intro.

Yeah... if you can't handle the way it's written try Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby. More straightforward, but not quite as dry as a technical manual. Or give the good ole Pickaxe a read.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA
Pickaxe is good. The Crystallized Ruby section especially.

Sudden Infant Def Syndrome
Oct 2, 2004

Mr. Wynand posted:

It really depends on how you're using PHP. It used to be PHP actively encouraged really bad practices and made the right way of doing things very very difficult, but that was long time ago. Are you using a framework? Modern PHP with exceptions and namespaces and poo poo? If so, you probably aren't missing thaaat much. Even tooling has improved substantially from what I've seen.

You should always try to broaden your programming horizons when you can, but the differences you'll notice are likely to be subtle provided you're up to date with "best practices" PHP land. Almost certainly not worth re-writing a functional site or anything without concrete reasons to though!

Not using a framework. I see there's a bunch in the first post, so I'll sniff around there a little to check them out.


Thermopyle posted:

Hmm. This is a hard question to answer. I mean, if you're getting your job done with PHP and you don't hate it, then don't bother. I mean, if your sites work, and you don't care about being more efficient because you're just there to punch the clock and besides you've got to convince management to change their technology stack...there's no point in it.

I've only lightly dabbled in PHP because PHP sucks so bad (completely possible that I just don't get it, but going by the Coding Horrors thread, and stuff like this I'm thinking I do get it and it just sucks), but I'm pretty sure you took the time to learn Python you'd be pretty happy.

Is there a good guide to starting out with Python? I'm always open to looking at new things. My management is essentially my direct boss and myself, so if it works better it's definitely worth checking out.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:

Not using a framework. I see there's a bunch in the first post, so I'll sniff around there a little to check them out.
Oh jesus, in that case just skip to python or somesuch. It doesn't sound like you are too married to PHP.

quote:

Is there a good guide to starting out with Python? I'm always open to looking at new things. My management is essentially my direct boss and myself, so if it works better it's definitely worth checking out.
The tutorial in the official manual is fine. As is the rest of the manual. Django also has very good tutorials in its main docs (Flask etc have tutorials as well, but are less thorough as you are expected to bring your own orm/template/etc and would thus not be covered in too much depth).

I would also recommend just jumping in and trying it! Other then the indent thing, it should be a very familiar-looking language. If something looks like something you've seen before, it probably works the way you think it does. You can look up new things as you run into them (like list comprehension, decorators, multiple inheritance ).

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



visuvius posted:

I need help picking a couple colors for my company's web app. A new feature includes a tickler system that shows open work items. Tasks can be either open, closed or past due. For closed, the item will just be gray but I need colors for open and past due items. I thought this would be easy but really its kind of not. Right now we've got like a poo-yellow for open and an ugly salmon for past due. Red and yellow/orange is just too strong and doesn't jive with our general site colors.

This page shows the basic color scheme of the web app, basically everything is green or manilla yellow: http://www.calschools.com/?page=services-projectplanning

I'd really appreciate any suggestions.

Who came up with that colour scheme and background gradient? That's just awful, like seriously awful, it's like a trip back to 2004.

ANYWHO, in my imagination I would say that open tasks shouldn't have a colour, just be kind of a plain "unmodified" look, closed states should be lighter both in font and background to show that it's less urgent (because it's less visible, also it's a convention in UI), and past-due should be some kind of urgent colour like red or yellow, but in a way that highlights the task without overwhelming it, just enough that it draws attention to it. If you want random suggestions for colour palettes then maybe try that Adobe Kuler site.

And why is this website you linked telling me my ip address at the bottom?

Munkeymon
Aug 14, 2003

Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.



Mr. Wynand posted:

And to be perfectly honest, I actually wish both Python and Ruby would just kill that loving feature dead. As far as I can tell, there is no "good" way to use __metaclass__ in Python, period. It is fundamentally broken. I have not seen a single use-case for it that justifies the complications it brings with it.

http://stackoverflow.com/a/6581949/301807 makes it sound like it's not all that bad and gives a decent example of how it's used (for good) in the real world.

As far as Python Vs Ruby as languages go, I've heard some stuff about Ruby that makes it sound kinda PHP-ish. Like that there's no grammar outside of what's defined in accepted by the official parser :ohdear:

Edit: implying that a parser implementation defines a grammar is wrong on a number of levels and I'm sorry anyone saw that

Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Aug 15, 2013

visuvius
Sep 24, 2007
sta da moor

piratepilates posted:

Who came up with that colour scheme and background gradient? That's just awful, like seriously awful, it's like a trip back to 2004.

ANYWHO, in my imagination I would say that open tasks shouldn't have a colour, just be kind of a plain "unmodified" look, closed states should be lighter both in font and background to show that it's less urgent (because it's less visible, also it's a convention in UI), and past-due should be some kind of urgent colour like red or yellow, but in a way that highlights the task without overwhelming it, just enough that it draws attention to it. If you want random suggestions for colour palettes then maybe try that Adobe Kuler site.

And why is this website you linked telling me my ip address at the bottom?

I think we paid these guys to design the look of the site around 2005 or 2006: http://www.webadvanced.com/

If I recall it wasn't cheap. To be fair, we used their design to throw together a clunky company website a few years later. It looks better within the web app. I think the IP address thing was for purposes of testing, they just never got rid of it.

Thanks for the color tips!

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



visuvius posted:

I think we paid these guys to design the look of the site around 2005 or 2006: http://www.webadvanced.com/

If I recall it wasn't cheap. To be fair, we used their design to throw together a clunky company website a few years later. It looks better within the web app. I think the IP address thing was for purposes of testing, they just never got rid of it.

Thanks for the color tips!

That was probably a good design in 2005.

Which made me realize that 2004 and 2005 were 8 and 9 years ago.

Everyone remember those sites that were made entirely in flash and they came complete with tons of flashy crap that did nothing and constant animations like a sci-fi fake computer only you were expected to actually use it? Dark times.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

Munkeymon posted:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/6581949/301807 makes it sound like it's not all that bad and gives a decent example of how it's used (for good) in the real world.

The fallout is a lot less straight-forward then that answer lets on. The one that people miss most often is that you can't actually combine __metaclasses__ in a useful way - i.e. you can't actually have 2 things in the same inheritance chain make use of them (unless both specifically know about each-other which misses the point of composition in multiple inheritance).

And why do we bother with all this? Almost every single "good" use of __metaclass__ simply does some magic registration work based on the class members. Why not use a class decorator for that? Sure, it's a few more characters, but it is also very very explicit and quite understandable even by Python novices. You know exactly when magic poo poo gets added and the exact function in the exact module that does so, and the resulting class will be an honest-to-god-normal class that can be combined with any number other classes and whatever else you want as usual. Easy peasy!

As for __metaclass__ uses that do more than what can be achieved with a class decorator like making it so instantiating your object returns something of a different class altogether or it dynamically replaces the bases you pass to it based on the phase of the moon or some other such crime against humanity, I've yet to see a single case where that is actually a good idea, and I am extremely skeptical of suggestions to the contrary.

It's a bad idea, don't use it, discourage others from using it and go out of your way to stop using it whenever possible.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Mr. Wynand posted:

__metaclass__

Nobody learning python will ever hear about __metaclass__, and by the time you've got to the point where you do hear about it, you'll go "why the hell would I use that?", and if you don't there's no hope for you and there's bound to be other horrors in your code.

kedo
Nov 27, 2007

piratepilates posted:

Everyone remember those sites that were made entirely in flash and they came complete with tons of flashy crap that did nothing and constant animations like a sci-fi fake computer only you were expected to actually use it? Dark times.

I am responsible for a few of these which are sadly still around. To this day we have people coming to us saying, "Oh I love [website], it's so fun! Will you make one like that for me?" Nonononononon on onono nononono.

Also PHP is a terrible language. Its only redeeming quality is that some of the biggest and best open source projects use it. I wish there was some sort of magical universal code translating tool so I could convert WordPress over to Python.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA

kedo posted:

Also PHP is a terrible language. Its only redeeming quality is that some of the biggest and best open source projects use it. I wish there was some sort of magical universal code translating tool so I could convert WordPress over to Python.

It's really not that bad now. They even have exceptions! All the truly unconscionable poo poo like REGISTER_GLOBALS has been gone for some time now.

Not my first choice for anything, but it is perfectly workable.

kedo
Nov 27, 2007

Yeah, it's just hard to wrap your brain around. I'm by no means a backend dev, so all of the inconsistencies in naming and syntax drives me insane and prevents me from ever feeling like I really know the language. Of course this could be due to the fact that I'm always comparing it to Javascript which is way easier to comprehend.

All imho of course.

Mrs. Wynand
Nov 23, 2002

DLT 4EVA
Nah that still sounds about right. It's not a pleasant language by any stretch of the imagination.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Mr. Wynand posted:

It's really not that bad now. They even have exceptions! All the truly unconscionable poo poo like REGISTER_GLOBALS has been gone for some time now.

Not my first choice for anything, but it is perfectly workable.

Well, yeah it's workable. Obviously. Existing sites use it and new things are developed in it.

What it boils down to is that the answer to the question "Should I use PHP for new project X?" is always:

No.*














* Unless you only know PHP, and you absolutely can't learn something new or if your existing environment forces it upon you.

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!
My Backbone-based web app fetches a lot of data on the fly after the user opens a page, and so I'd like to come up with a good reusable pattern for stubbing those DOM elements out with a spinner while the data is being fetched asynchronously. At this point I manually set a minimum height on these elements (to prevent them from flattening out to a couple of pixels), and replace the internal HTML with a centered spinner gif, and then in the callback I strip those styles and replace the innerHTML with whatever I need to. Is that what most people do, or is there a more elegant solution?

Also, is there a really nice and flexible library out there for putting up pretty spinners on the screen etc, like when the user is logging in? I've been rolling my own mostly, but it'd be cool if someone already did a much better job.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



DreadCthulhu posted:

My Backbone-based web app fetches a lot of data on the fly after the user opens a page, and so I'd like to come up with a good reusable pattern for stubbing those DOM elements out with a spinner while the data is being fetched asynchronously. At this point I manually set a minimum height on these elements (to prevent them from flattening out to a couple of pixels), and replace the internal HTML with a centered spinner gif, and then in the callback I strip those styles and replace the innerHTML with whatever I need to. Is that what most people do, or is there a more elegant solution?

Also, is there a really nice and flexible library out there for putting up pretty spinners on the screen etc, like when the user is logging in? I've been rolling my own mostly, but it'd be cool if someone already did a much better job.

I actually just set up loading indicators on my AngularJS project like now (you'd think this would just be in the packages themselves), I don't know specifically how you'd do it in backbone or if you can (I don't know if backbone only does models or if it also does templating) but how I set it up in Angular is to intercept AJAX requests, broadcast a message globally (globally over Angular, to whatever sets itself up to want to receive this broadcast) that the request started and when it finishes, and then have another set of code that listens for the broadcasts and calls .show() and .hide() on the element it's hooked to.

So it's set up in two parts:

The AJAX interceptor that sends out a global message when a request is sent, and sends out another message when a response for the message is received.

The function that listens for these messages and when it receives a message it wants to hear (an ajax request message related to the part of the site it's on) calls .show() or .hide() on the loading indicator element.

And from there I just put a div element that has something calling show and hide on it in the area I want the spinner to show up in, so it only shows when something is loading.

I don't know how much of that you can just do in backbone and how much you would need something else like Angular for though.

edit: You know what I'm making this too complicated if you're not using Angular, just put a div that holds your spinner where you want the spinner to show up, right before your ajax call call .show() on this div, after the ajax call succeeds or fails call .hide() on the div.

piratepilates fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Aug 15, 2013

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!

There's pretty reasonable pub-sub functionality in Backbone, so I can definitely make that work. I've actually been pretty lazy about using Collections/Models fetch completion notifications, mostly using callbacks instead, so it'd be good for me to revisit some of those best practices.

My question was more regarding what to do on the HTML side of things: how to make that look decent. If I hide/show the elements, then I have them pop out of nowhere as the data is done fetching, which probably looks bad unless you're using animations and that's your shtick. In my case I try to keep the size of those empty elements as close as possible to the final size (once the data is rendered) to avoid having things wildly vary in size dynamically. As in, I don't want a <table> element to flatten out to a line and then suddenly blow up to 1000px in height.

Ethereal
Mar 8, 2003
Does anyone know what the breakdown is of Flash versions at this point in time? Do 95% of users have at least Flash version 11?

Sadly we need to keep Flash around as a fallback mechanism for a small piece of our code base and I'm having trouble finding reliable statistics for the version number.

Nebulon Gate
Feb 23, 2013
Well, looks like I'm back to Firefox. If they got their drat resource reviewer up to par, I see no reason to continue using chrome. I loving loathe a lot about it.

fuf
Sep 12, 2004

haha

Winter is Cuming posted:

I loving loathe a lot about it.

Like what?

Boner Slam
May 9, 2005
Ok I post this here. I know RTFM, Google etc. But since I have no idea what's on the market I am asking for your experience and expertise before I let myself being seduced by one opinion on things or waste time researching in the wrong direction. So:

I am currently toying with some ideas for stuff, let's call it a project.
For this here project, I want to find out:
- Which languages/frameworks/databases to use
- How to set up a testing environment for myself


The last time I did anything web related the concept of frameworks didn't exist and it was either PHP/MySQL or ASP, either way you write scripts making GBS threads out html to the user. So that's what I know. I understand both of these languages are dead and the things I knew and used to do have since been replaced by better concepts.
That's fine, it means I will have to re-learn everything anyways - so please suggest whatever you feel is best.
I am using Windows, but if it must be Linux then that's no biggie. I just would like to have my environment set up locally first, without sinking stuff into infrastructure (if that is still possible, local server and poo poo)


My project would involve the following things:
- access of all functionality to the user via a web client (preferably just a web page, later with some javascript poo poo prbly)
- Multiple users (not too many but scalability to a degree would be nice)
- All the logistics related to the to the front-end, also
- Databases
- Statistical and numerical computation (think R, Matlab, but not performance critical), graphs and related stuff

So what would you use for this?
I was thinking, based on this forum and reading the "djangobook", on learning Python and using Django for the web stuff and then somehow connect it with a back-end of scripts/programs to use which would run independently and maybe even in different languages. However keep in mind I have no idea how this would look in practice and my understanding of web applications is that of pre 2004 PHP scripts.

I don't expect it to need any significant performance or serve thousands of users at the same time, but if I get a general understanding of the infrastructure behind modern web-based applications and I am not too limited by whatever I am using that would be cool.
If there is some sort of industry standard to learn that would be an advantage, also I have access to the usual academic offers such as getting all the MS stuff free but other than that I would prefer not to sink in money for my stupid ideas.

If this is all wrong and I need to learn new programming paradigms first, just throw in some keywords and I'll start researching. Sorry for skipping the last ten years of internet development.
Thanks!

Boner Slam fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Aug 16, 2013

o.m. 94
Nov 23, 2009

Oh man where to begin. There are a billion solutions to your spec, although the requirement for mathematical computation means you need to get serious.

In the long run, I think it is worth doing the following:

* Get virtualization software like VirtualBox or VMWare
* Install a Linux distribution like Ubuntu Server (should meet your needs and has lots of support)
* Set up a stack. Apache to handle requests, MySQL for database and PHP for your code is a popular example but you could use Django, or Ruby and some other kind of database.
* gently caress around trying out some kind of CMS. Drupal is a powerful choice. It will handle, gracefully, 4 of the 5 requirements you have.
* Decide the CMS is too weird and restrictive and go for a proper big boy framework like, say Symfony.
* Find out a way to integrate your computation stuff with whatever framework/CMS you decide on. You'll want it to be server-side and fast as balls, running on your stack.
* ...
* Profit!

I'm being totally LAMP-centric in my suggestion, there are plenty of other ways to go about this but the most important thing is to take away is that you need a Linux box running a stack. This is what everyone does these days. You can then take your Linux set up, buy some decent hosting (I use Linode, the important thing is to use a provider who just gives you a server with total freedom) and put it live in the same fashion.

Boner Slam
May 9, 2005
Yeah that's fine, it's always been like that. Set up a server, set up sql, do poo poo.

I heard somewhere PHP is no longer cool. Though that's why I am asking here, as I can not really confirm the validity of the things I pick up.

As far as the computation is concerned, I know that Python has some numerical packages. I would like to include R at some point probably as well. I read it can input C, so maybe there's a way to interface via that.

What is the difference between a framework like Django and a framework like Symfony? Is it just the same thing for different languages or is there a fundemental difference?

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Mister Chief
Jun 6, 2011

PHP is still very popular but a lot of people are of the opinion that it is not very good.

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