I'm glad someone mentioned maintainability. I used to work in embedded
systems, where design, testing, and maintainability were of utmost
importance, and coding is just the brief stage in between design and
test. I lived by the adage, "Code as if the person who will maintain
your code is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live."
Sharon M. Foster, JD, MLS
Technology Librarian
http://firstgentrekkie.blogspot.com/
"Have you tried switching it off and on again?"
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Naomi Dushay <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Marijane,
>
> It also makes sense to examine the available software for what you wish to
> accomplish. Available software goes beyond current features to
> - maintainability (one reason Stanford switched to Blacklight) I'll talk
> a little bit about this in our Code4Lib 2010 presentation about testing.
> - community
> - active development
> - potential applicability to additional projects. (we like Blacklight for
> its ability to run on any solr index, regardless of what's in there)
>
> probably some other stuff I've left out.
>
> Our experience at Stanford Libraries is that the common conventions of Rails
> give us a lot more ease in reading each others' code.
>
> - Naomi
>
> On Jan 5, 2010, at 3:04 PM, marijane white 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
>
|