[Originally published on the Open Source Small Business blog, in January 2008.]
I’ve seen a lot of code in various languages. As a technical writer, I used to write documentation for programmers teaching them how to use a particular interface or system. I’ve been involved with traditional software development projects at large software companies and startups. And I’ve done my share of actual programming of web applications.
No, it's not a misspelling. Symfony is a framework for rapid development of PHP web applications.
Jim asks:
LAMP is a general term for a development platform, on top of which developers create custom web applications. The two other major established platforms for web development are Java and Microsoft's .NET.
The acronym LAMP refers to the parts of the platform:
You can have a custom website that will do just about anything, and we can prove it. This is a brief outline that describes how we bring your ideas to life through our proven methodology.
One of my projects in the past few weeks has been to put together a SOAP server for a client. So suddenly I've had to learn a lot of the nitty gritty details about what works and what doesn't...
While they're fresh, let me jot them down here. WARNING: Extremely technical content ahead.
What's extraordinary about the open source community is that this level of support happens all the time, every day, without charge, in hundreds, thousands of projects out there.
At Freelock, we're always trying to figure out ways to do things better.
I've been struggling to get Project Auriga to set HTTP Auth from a nice pretty login form, and think I have it working.
What follows is a very technical discussion--if you're a business reader, you should probably skip this post...
PHP development is one of our specialties at Freelock Computing. I've written quite a few PHP applications, some from scratch, some starting with other people's code, some as extensions for open source projects.
There are thousands of languages out there, but only a couple handfuls are used for web applications. Of these, PHP is a runaway success. Yet I constantly see it criticized by developers of other languages, often for completely untrue reasons.
Before code can be customizable, it must be clear. But clarity is not enough, if you're going to be using a codebase in multiple places.
Programming is an exercise in understanding a problem. To program effectively, you need to fully understand, in intricate detail, the problem your program is solving. Sometimes as a programmer you don't fully understand the problem until you've wrestled with it a few times in code.
