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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 >