Post #225,566
9/20/05 2:32:18 AM
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Question is now moot (re: network scripting)
My schedule has changed and instead of intro to networks, I'm teaching an e-biz class. I do appreciate the tremendous, non-flame-war-y response I got from all of you, though. I'll be saving that thread for future reference.
Students are supposed to team up, design and code up an n-tiered Web-based app. (I think, I'm still looking at the textbooks and catalog description).
I'm now looking at [link|http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html|Xampp].
So far it looks like a nifty dev. environment, available for Windows, OS X, Linux and Solaris. It's an all-in-one installer that gives you Apache2, PHP, Perl, SSL, ProFTPD, MySQL, phpmyadmin, etc. (more detail on the site above).
Anyway, I dumped it on my PowerBook and so far I'm pretty impressed. The default home page has easy access to server admin, sample code and documentation.
Anyone have experience with this? I mainly like it because it's a nicely integrated installer so I don't have to have my students (e-biz majors, after all) to struggle through installing and configuring each little piece so that they all work well together.
I don't have a lot of experience with PHP but it looks pretty straightforward so far.
Tom Sinclair
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of
evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed
to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)
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Post #225,585
9/20/05 9:48:44 AM
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Biggest criticism I've seen of PHP
It makes it too easy for people who don't know what they're doing to do something really stupid.
Second biggest is that various related functions don't necessarily use the same syntax or argument list/order. That part is really frustrating. After several years of use, I still needed to consult the docs regularly to get the argument lists right.
Otherwise it seemed pretty straightforward to me. But then I "get" formal logic. I wouldn't assume that of e-biz majors.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,589
9/20/05 10:42:49 AM
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Re: Biggest criticism I've seen of PHP
It's an improvement over the suggested environment from the text, which includes FrontPage Express.
Haven't dug into PHP very deeply yet, but it looks okay so far and my students who work with it seem to like it.
I take your meaning re: e-biz majors, but in their defense they have had programming and database courses prior to this. Now the question is how much were they paying attention.
Word on the street (i.e. from my PD) is that these kids are pretty sharp and they're aching to learn PHP and some Web coding.
Plus of course now they have me.
Tom Sinclair
Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've
got magic aaargh."
-- Magic armour is not all it's cracked up to be.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
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Post #225,591
9/20/05 10:52:55 AM
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Word from your Police Dept? What kind of students are these?
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Post #225,602
9/20/05 11:42:28 AM
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Haven't met them yet
But, according to a colleague who has taught a class with them, the ones I'm getting are pretty sharp but a bit bored due to lack of challenge.
Tom Sinclair
Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip
out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed
her mother, especially when he did it just before meals.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)
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Post #225,600
9/20/05 11:30:15 AM
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I'd definitely vote for it over Front Page
The biggest problem with FP being[1] code that only IEx will render as expected. As a teaching tool, my complaint would be that it abstracts so much of what it's doing that I question how much you're really learning. Everything I've ever learned in a Microsoft IDE was only useful in that IDE.
[1] Take this with a grain of salt, as I haven't used it in a while. But based on Microsoft's history, I'm still pretty confident saying it.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,604
9/20/05 11:53:52 AM
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My thoughts as well
I try to push for open, cross-platform solutions as much as allowed. My PD has told me that I have a lot of leeway in how I run this class. So far he likes my ideas.
Now I can justify the use of Apache based on Netcraft stats, but I want to sell them on PHP as well. I note from the stats that it's the most popular Apache module but I'm looking for numbers on its popularity in general as a CGI language.
I've got [link|http://www.php.net/usage.php| this ] from php.net and [link|http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200508/apachemods.html| this ] showing how PHP compares to other Apache modules (it's way out in front).
Tom Sinclair
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted
to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being
peasants *really quickly*.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
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Post #225,606
9/20/05 12:04:50 PM
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Personal Dictator? Professional Druid? Practical Devil?
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Post #225,616
9/20/05 12:29:11 PM
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Program Director
Although Personal Dictator works as well. (He's a benevolent one, luckily, and he actually has some technical background as well as good people skills.)
Tom Sinclair
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made
you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)
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Post #225,679
9/21/05 12:28:09 AM
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Agreed.
If you've done the hard yards and have the experience to know What Not To Do, then PHP is quite good and you can push it a long long way in most directions before you start hitting boundaries. If you don't have the experience to build library layers, then PHP makes it awfully easy to shoot yourself in the foot. To which the only solution is usually quite extensive re-factoring.
However, that's not a criticism peculiar to PHP. Any full-featured, orthogonal language you could setup for web-programming will have that problem. Like C, it doesn't have any native structures to make you program better.
Wade.
d-_-b
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Post #225,608
9/20/05 12:17:00 PM
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I'd use Seaside + Squeak + Postgres
but I'm funny that way. This combination will allow coding/styling from the browser.
[link|http://seaside.st|http://seaside.st]
add in a postgres database and you're good to go.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,611
9/20/05 12:19:18 PM
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OT: What country code is "st"?
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,617
9/20/05 12:31:34 PM
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OT: It's the Peoples Republic of SmallTalk. :)
But according to [link|http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm|IANA], it's Sao Tome and Principe
Alex
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #225,614
9/20/05 12:22:32 PM
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What's the learning curve?
I'm not interested in programming any more, but there are still things I'd like to create. One of the reasons I'm not interested in programming is that you have to deal with so much of the minutia over and over again.
How much effort would it take to start producting working apps with this framework?
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,630
9/20/05 2:09:54 PM
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I think its easy, once you install squeak + seaside image
And Avi has a prebuilt image ready to go.
It is already its own web server, I typically stick it behind apache using mod_proxy and let apache serve the static content.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,633
9/20/05 2:18:52 PM
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There a good step by step "how to set this up" anywhere?
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,744
9/21/05 1:11:09 PM
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You mean seaside?
I assume you know how to set up postgres.
You need a squeak vm. [link|http://squeak.org/download/index.html|http://squeak.org/download/index.html]
Squeak requires 3 additional data files. A .sources, .changes, and .image file. The .sources is just there, you only need one. The .image/.changes files are used in pairs. To launch squeak, you typically drag and drop a .image file onto the vm exe (or if using the command line you just do something like %squeak myfile.image).
There is a prebuild seaside image at: [link|http://seaside.st/Download/Images/|http://seaside.st/Download/Images/]
You'll need to load up the postgres client. To do this, click in the main squeak window background (not on one of the squeak tool windows) to bring up the "world" menu. Choose "open..."->"SqueakMap package loader". This is squeak's CPAN equivalent, find the postgres client and right click on its name in the scrolling list - choose "install". Browse the connection class in the postgres package and setup the login parameters for your database.
You're set.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,753
9/21/05 2:08:33 PM
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Sounds Windows-specific ... that work on Linux?
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,754
9/21/05 2:19:31 PM
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Of course
[link|http://www-sor.inria.fr/~piumarta/squeak/|http://www-sor.inria...~piumarta/squeak/]
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,820
9/21/05 7:47:20 PM
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Raises a question in my mind:
How is site-specific configuration for things like database connections usually handled with Smalltalk images? Edit the image itself, some sort of standard config file, or something different?
The Java equivalent would be app.xml deployment files for webapps with site-specific data source entries.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #225,881
9/21/05 11:41:54 PM
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Everything in the image is typical
So you'd likely write a class side factory method to return a configured object. You could also just create the connection object and save the image. Since the image "freezes" a copy of your app state when you save it, restarting will reconstruct all the connections.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,888
9/22/05 12:11:31 AM
9/22/05 12:11:46 AM
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Yeah, but where does the config info come from?
The database host, port, uid and pw are not going to have the same values (ok, maybe the port) on some random machine a user has installed my app on as they do on my dev box.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Edited by admin
Sept. 22, 2005, 12:11:46 AM EDT
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Post #225,895
9/22/05 12:43:55 AM
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Prompt them for it?
I don't quite follow your scenario.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,921
9/22/05 9:21:08 AM
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Re: Prompt them for it?
I make an application, say, for example, stIWT. This app uses Seaside and PostgreSQL.
On my dev machine, I have the image set up to point to forumuser:pw@localhost:5432/forum/.
Someone downloads my app to create YouUsThem, and they need it to point to forumuser:wp@pgserver:2345/myforums/. They're running it headless.
Do Smalltalk applications generally require the installer to modify the image through the ST GUI for configuration information like this?
I guess you could always have a configuration web page that comes up before any database connections are made...
If you're keeping the config info in the image, how do you handle upgrades?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #225,923
9/22/05 9:40:56 AM
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There are various ways
Seaside has a fairly elaborate app configuration system with a web UI. [link|http://seaside.st/Documentation/ConfigurationandPreferences/|http://seaside.st/Do...onandPreferences/]
You could trap db connection failures and send the user to a "please set up your db connection" page, get the info, and modify the method that returns the connection config and save the image. This is typical.
As for updates, most of us are using Monticello which does differencing and has a nice merge tool. There is a component called WAVersionUploader which allows you to download incremental updates from a server. Its all there and pretty sweet.
A new project designed to provide stable urls for published resources has just started, this is, I believe, your biggest objection to seaside and is being addressed for apps that are more like iwethey.
FWIW, big river books urls are like a combination IWETHEY url with a bunch of seaside type state tracking stuff tacked on at the end.
for instance
ttp://www.bigriver.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/toys/B000096L5J/ref=pd_qpf_gw/104-3225208-4242306
You can delete everything after the B00 bit and the url will still work, its stable up to then, the last bit is session tracking info. Seaside is doing something similar.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,927
9/22/05 9:56:55 AM
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Thanks.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #225,638
9/20/05 3:18:23 PM
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Based on personal experience...
Coding into a repository from a browser really, really sucks ass.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #225,640
9/20/05 3:22:03 PM
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Memories...
Like the corners of my mind.
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/21/184222/896/91#91|Misty water colored memories...].
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #225,745
9/21/05 1:13:32 PM
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You can use emacs now
[link|http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/avi/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3303394043|http://www.cincomsma...&entry=3303394043]
Or the squeak code browsing UI.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #225,819
9/21/05 7:45:32 PM
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Now that's progress... ;-)
But where's smalltalk.el?
[link|http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/1963895/com/emacs-mode-smalltalk-el-2.1.5-alt1.i586.rpm.html|Oh.]
Ben... actually, the kitchen sink IS in emacs. Ever look at the icon...?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #225,821
9/21/05 7:48:43 PM
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The description that I remember is...
that emacs contains everything except the kitchen sink. Xemacs includes the kitchen sink.
I don't know how widespread that joke is.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #225,823
9/21/05 7:50:02 PM
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:-)
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #225,854
9/21/05 10:37:26 PM
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Nah. Emacs is a great operating system.
If only it had a decent editor.
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Post #225,876
9/21/05 11:17:25 PM
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ICLRPDx2 (new thread)
Created as new thread #225875 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=225875|ICLRPDx2]
d-_-b
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