These have been on my to-do list for a while:
1. Write some site or application in Django
2. Begin doing test-first programming
3. Begin using Subversion
4. Learn Python
Notice the order of these items. My sensible self says I should do it the other way around. “You’re not hacking PHP now, you know. This is serious stuff. A strategic and organized approach will benefit you and others.”
I find it disturbingly easy to reject these sensible admonishments. Who wants to be sensible? So I’m taking the items in the order presented above, and I’m currently at step 1, tentatively building a real-world side-project in Django, which may come to something. In fact, I’m fairly sure we’ll use it just amongst ourselves, at least (here … read on »
Posts Tagged ‘development’…
The Magical MODx ManagerManager Plugin
My first MODx-powered website went live today (Pinnacle Telecom Group plc), and my intention now is to share some of my experiences. From a development point of view MODx is so flexible that there are several ways of doing most things, so if like me you constantly fret about your architecture and constantly refactor your code for re-usability, you might be confused about just what is the best way of doing things, especially if you’re just starting out. So in this and forthcoming posts I’ll be discussing some of my development techniques.
This post is mainly an introduction to the ManagerManager plugin written by Nick Crossland. In my opinion it is absolutely indispensable, unless you’ve come up with your own way … read on »
A Paradigmatic Project: Building a Flickr Gallery with PHP, jCarousel and Lytebox
Don’t re-invent the wheel. That’s a motto that every good programmer and web developer lives by. If we’re being creative or original it’s usually in knowing which components and scripts to combine, amongst all those that have been created by other people; and in knowing how each of those components can be tweaked and configured to produce a good solution.
In web development this amounts to a synergy of languages, APIs, engines and interfaces working in blissfully ignorant harmony to provide rich functionality. This is the beauty of web development in the age of its blooming youthfulness, following the awkward stumblings of its infancy.
Incidentally, I think this is the characteristic of this kind of work that conventional programmers, or software engineers … read on »
Moonbase Internet Photography Website Now Live
On a screen, I cannot read white text on black. I know I’m not alone in finding it totally unfathomable that advertisers, publishers and web designers persist in using white on black, when all research shows that people don’t like it.
Well, after searching on the web I discovered that while I am certainly not the only one, there are also plenty of people who are quite happy with it. (These must be the ones who become web designers.)
In case you are one of those people, and you can’t understand why I’m making such a fuss, let me be clear: if I get to a web page with white text on black, even if I know it has something of interest, … read on »
©2010 Alistair Robinson