Definitely not a waste of time. But besides languages, also investigate
frameworks.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:44 AM, marijane white <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> I may have worded that poorly, abstract reasons to choose a language was
> exactly what I was looking for.
>
> Your suggestion matches my natural inclinations, I think I just needed some
> reassurance that taking the time to explore wouldn't be a waste of time.
> Thank you. =)
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > I realize you didn't want to start a religious war nor were you
> > interested in the abstract reasons people chose a particular language,
> > that being said...
> >
> > I honestly think choosing the best* development language is very
> > similar to how one settles on politics, religion, diet, etc.
> > Environment plays a part, of course, but, in the end, what generally
> > works best is the language that jibes best with you and your
> > personality. Since you've dabbled with several different languages,
> > you've had to have come across this - some languages just "feel
> > better" than others. This is, however, an entirely personal choice.
> >
> > Dan Chudnov, for example, seems to think in Python. When I tried
> > Python, it never really clicked -- I muddled through a few projects
> > but never really got it. I then got introduced to Ruby, everything
> > made sense, and I never looked back. I recently did a project in
> > Groovy/Grails and my takeaway was that it was a scripting language
> > that only somebody that had spent their career as a Java developer
> > could love. My coworker (who has spent his career as a Java
> > developer) LOVES Groovy. He thinks Ruby is a Fisher-Price language.
> > To each their own.
> >
> > Since you don't seem to have institutional constraints on what you can
> > develop in, I would recommend you try something like this:
> >
> > Take a handful of languages that look interesting to you and try
> > writing a simple app to take some of your data, model it and shove it
> > into Solr and make an interface to look at it. Solr's pretty perfect
> > for this sort of project: it's super simple to work with and
> > immediately gives you something powerful and versatile to wrap your
> > app around. If you can't make something useful quickly around Solr,
> > then move on to the next language because that one's not for you.
> >
> > If the ones that click happen to be PHP, Python or Ruby, well, there
> > you go. If not, I, for one, look forward to your new Lua (or
> > whatever) based discovery interface.
> >
> > Ultimately, any project you choose for your discovery interface is
> > going to require a lot of customization to make it work the way you
> > want -- the key is finding the environment that stands the least in
> > the way between turning what's in your head into a working app.
> >
> > Good luck,
> > -Ross.
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 6:04 PM, marijane white <[log in to unmask]
> >
> > wrote:
> > > Greetings Code4Lib,
> > >
> > > Long time lurker, first time poster here.
> > >
> > > I've been turning over this question in my mind for a few weeks now,
> and
> > Joe
> > > Hourcle's postscript in the Online PHP Course thread has prompted me to
> > > finally try to ask it. =)
> > >
> > > I'm interested in hearing how the members of this list have gone about
> > > choosing development platforms for their library coding projects and/or
> > > existing open source projects (ie like VuFind vs Blacklight). For
> > example,
> > > did you choose a language you already were familiar with? One you
> wanted
> > to
> > > learn more about? Does your workplace have a standard enterprise
> > > architecture/platform that you are required to use? If you have chosen
> > to
> > > implement an existing open source project, did you choose based on the
> > > development platform or project maturity and features or something
> else?
> > >
> > > Some background -- thanks to my undergraduate computer engineering
> > studies,
> > > I have a pretty solid understanding of programming fundamentals, but
> most
> > of
> > > my pre-LIS work experience was in software testing and did not require
> me
> > to
> > > employ much of what I learned programming-wise, so I've mostly dabbled
> > over
> > > the last decade or so. I've got a bit of experience with a bunch of
> > > languages and I'm not married to any of them. I also kind of like
> > having
> > > excuses to learn new ones.
> > >
> > > My situation is this: I would like to eventually implement a discovery
> > tool
> > > at MPOW, but I am having a hell of a time choosing one. I'm a solo
> > > librarian on a content team at a software and information services
> > company,
> > > so I'm not really tied to the platforms used by the software
> engineering
> > > teams here. I know a bit of Ruby, so I've played with Blacklight some,
> > got
> > > it to install on Windows and managed to import a really rough Solr
> index.
> > > I'm more attracted to the features in VuFind, but I don't know much PHP
> > yet
> > > and I haven't gotten it installed successfully yet. My collection's
> > > metadata is not in an ILS (yet) and not in MARC, so I've also
> considered
> > > trying out more generic approaches like ajax-solr (though I don't know
> a
> > lot
> > > of javascript yet, either). I've also given a cursory look at SOPAC
> and
> > > Scriblio. My options are wide open, and I'm having a rough time
> deciding
> > > what direction to go in. I guess it's kind of similar to someone who
> is
> > new
> > > to programming and attempting to choose their first language to learn.
> > >
> > > I will attempt to head off a programming language religious war =) by
> > > stating that I'm not really interested in the virtues of one platform
> > over
> > > another, moreso the abstract reasons one might have for selecting one.
> > > Have any of you ever been in a similar situation? How'd you get
> yourself
> > > unstuck? If you haven't, what do you think you might do in a situation
> > like
> > > mine?
> > >
> > >
> > > -marijane
> > >
> >
>
--
---------------------------
www.maf.org/rhoads
www.ontherhoads.org
|