I’m Taking a Vaction!
I’m taking a vacation – that’s what a consultant calls it when he is unemployed. For some people, that means less blogging. For me, I expect to blog more. I won’t tie my own hands by saying what I will blog about, but I plan to spend time biking and enjoying the colors of fall. I also plan to return to my work with Jython and DB4O.
I also plan to play with Django 1.0 because it is cool. But, I also plan to spend some time with the Zend Framework – I believe that it is the best choice for a church web site I am working for Faith Fellowship Christian Assembly. (Is that too much? Yes, but any time spent learning is not wasted.)
Why The Zend Framework?
The Faith Fellowship site is hosted by dreamhost, which provides good PHP support. My goal is to put Faith Fellowship in a place where anybody can easily support the site. PHP programmers are easier to come by than Python programmers who can work with Django.
So in short, the reasons are:
- PHP has a large community – programmers are easy to find.
- PHP is well supported by hosting services.
- The Zend Framework has a rich set of components.
- The Zend Framework employs the MVC approach.
- The Zend Framework does not force you to use the whole thing – just use the parts you like.
- You can use Smarty templates if you prefer. (Very good docs.)
- The documentation and the examples are fantastic.
- Zend isn’t going to go away any time soon.
- Zend is distributed under the new BSD license – play with the code if you like.
Does this mean I prefer the Zend Framework to others? No, it does not. But, given my hosting arrangements and all of the other considerations, I think this is the best Open Source solution for this particular client. I prefer coding in Python. If the Ruby on Rails community continues to grow, and the documentation improves, and the market is swimming in RoR programmers, I could choose RoR. (Please note: There are some fantastic RoR books, but they cost money. The free docs are not as good.)
I might also recommend Django if my client’s hosting service supported it well. The Django docs are great.
Time to go for a bike ride in the fall leaves.
PHP may not be as elegant or as feature-ful as Python and/or Ruby, but when you’re doing development for the web I think that the strengths of the framework you’re using have at least as much impact on the quality and velocity of development as the language.
In any case, I hope ZF treats you well, and best of luck on finding that next gig!
,Wil