Re: Software survey

[Adam Tauno Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I'm doing my last school project!!
>Just a simple survey about your favorite web building applications:
> 
>What LINUX software would you use for e-commerce/web development
>applications?
>(ie.  favorite distribution, 

RedHat,  commercial stuff supports it.

>server, 

IBM ALL THE WAY!!! Their ServerRAID SCSI controllers are SO !*>&@*&% FAST the
neighbors windows rattle.  And IBM is the only "real" company not hesitant about
it's Linux commitment.  On top of that you get about the server's weight in
documentation.

>database

PostgreSQL for light to moderate processing,  Informix if you need to deal with
a constant barrage.

>scripting language

PHP,  the language that can do anything

>html

As little as possible.  As I've gotten the chance to exchange mail with
high-power web dev guys, none of them write HTML.  So I thought they might be on
to something, wrote some class libraries to encapsulate HTML generation, and it
really does make creating apps more productive.   The commercial libraries for
PHP found at http://www.vhconsultants.com/layout/layout.htm have gotten several
good reports,  but I have not used them.  Of course, if you hire developers (I
realize this is only a hypothetical case study) they would probably come with
their own libraries.  Bluefish is useful if your developers are not terribly
proficient in PHP/HTML.

>editor, even proprietary e-commerce development applications would
>apply).

I don't know of a single top of the line web developer who uses composting
applications. Neither do I personally understand the appeal of them.  Dream
Weaver (I think that is what it was called) seemed to have been popular for
awhile,  but instabilities of the mother company caused the users I know to get
out of it early.

>If money is no object would you rather buy a proprietary e-commerce
>development tool or use open source tools? WHY ????

No, at least the ones I've seen don't add anything significant to the mix.  I'd
spend the money on a good graphics dude (they are expensive but very handy to
have around).
 
>If you were familiar with Microsoft and Linux web tools, would you be
>more productive coding web pages on a Microsoft system (with its related
>software) or a Linux system with open source web tools?  WHY??

Developing web sites on M$ (at least for me) is a genuine pain in the rear. 
File name capitilaztion and punctuation issues, the stupid .XXX extensions
fighting against the proper naming of files, only a single workspace on a
desktop, the Edit->Copy + Edit->Paste marathon just to move text.  To someone
used to M$ these are probably trivial,  but they leave me wanting to pitch the
machine down an elevator shaft.  On an objective note, if you use PHP as your
language,  the platform shouldn't matter to much except that it is cheap and
easy to run Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL on each developers own workstation so they can
test code without bothering anyone (accidentally create a page of infinite size
and the only box that goes-a-swapping is the workstation).  The best thing about
IDEs for development (IMHO) is syntax-highlighting and I haven't seen one that
does that for PHP.  

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW.
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505