27 Nov 2008 at 9:15pm
Design Patterns vs Agile Development
I don't think there can be a professional developer out there that isn't aware of the term 'Design Patterns'. Put simply these are standard solutions to common program architecture problems that have stood the test of time and have been abstracted to the point of being applicable to a number of different domains without needing simplification first. They are often overused at the start of a project, building in flexibility for potential future requirements. One of the corner "Patterns" of Agile Development is YAGNI - You Ain't Gonna Need It. With Agile Development being "The One True Way" of developing Web Applications, are the two mutually exclusive?
View 5 Comments
20 Nov 2008 at 8:01pm
Developing components considered bad form in Rails
On a typical modern website, most pages are dynamically generated from various database tables. There is normally the main content area which contains content such as the latest news stories. Then there are usually various boxes in a side bar such as the latest pictures from the galleries which contains the latest content in various other tables. How those boxes are developed differs in best practices between Rails and Symfony...
View 5 Comments
7 Nov 2008 at 6:15am
Rebuilding a site from Symfony to Rails
After building my personal site from scratch in Symfony/PHP5 - I decided as I am leaning towards Rails now it was time to rewrite it in Rails. I had some good experiences during the process and overall I'm pleased with it. This may serve as a useful push if you're currently a PHP developer tempted by Rails.
View 16 Comments