My current gripe with Linux
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Disclaimer: The majority here should know I jumped ship with the bastard offspring of Microsoft that they named "Vista". Working with Vim/Emacs (Vim is my preference) is nice for the small odd jobs, but now that I'm just waiting to get paid and to fly off to greener pastures, I figured I'd tackle learning more on linux, particularly giving Eclipse another go. Well, installing a LAMP server is a breeze on most distributions. Just you try and setup a proper PHP development environment. Eclipse is a snap, but the debuggers?! Why, they'll just leave you buggered... So I tried again, this time with NetBeans 7, now with more "ooh shiny!", and what do you know, if it isn't the same issue? Hmmm... I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
Apache, MySql and PHP do have elaborate settings and commands, enough to provide for a decent living. The MonoDevelop-IDE has a nice debugger, used it a few times with WinForm projects under OpenSUSE. Why not give ASP.NET and Moonlight a try? :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss:
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Come back! Windows 7 is really nice. Stay away from VS 2010 though, unless you really enjoy coffee breaks!
-- Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
I still do some work on 2008 SP1 on Weven, but frankly, and I say this as an ex Microsoftie, its lost all its glamour. Haven't tried 2010 but from what I hear its not that great.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
a malformed, hook of a hand.
That could be the best way of describing emacs ever! :D The good thing with emacs though, is that you can easily reconfigure the key bindings to something sane.
-- Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
True on both accounts, but it takes forever to get used to emacs. On an offnote, I remember someone posting here about how after they've setup emacs properly, they have the best C/C++ IDE ever.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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True on both accounts, but it takes forever to get used to emacs. On an offnote, I remember someone posting here about how after they've setup emacs properly, they have the best C/C++ IDE ever.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I remember someone posting here about how after they've setup emacs properly, they have the best C/C++ IDE ever.
That must have taken a life time of just working with it. Way to much of a pain for me...
Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.
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I only get coffee breaks when I start up VS2010. With ReSharper that gives quite a long coffee break, but normal editing and debugging is fine.
Oooh. I really despise VS2010. Intellisense doesn't work for C++, that just drives me nuts. The excuse is that it's tooooo hard when there are so many conditional compilation paths. At least that is the last excuse I heard from MS. Bah! I've moved on to Qt Creator. It's version of "intellisense" works quite well, thank you!
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Disclaimer: The majority here should know I jumped ship with the bastard offspring of Microsoft that they named "Vista". Working with Vim/Emacs (Vim is my preference) is nice for the small odd jobs, but now that I'm just waiting to get paid and to fly off to greener pastures, I figured I'd tackle learning more on linux, particularly giving Eclipse another go. Well, installing a LAMP server is a breeze on most distributions. Just you try and setup a proper PHP development environment. Eclipse is a snap, but the debuggers?! Why, they'll just leave you buggered... So I tried again, this time with NetBeans 7, now with more "ooh shiny!", and what do you know, if it isn't the same issue? Hmmm... I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
I feel your pain - went from doing a lot of Windows/ASP.Net to doing both Ruby/Rails and PHP on Linux. Along with all the requisite work to set them up, BEYOND the standard "here, Apache's returning your phpinfo() file", you just are going to be screwing around in config files and trying to figure out the correct syntax for things like VirtualHosts in Apache or whatnot. Apparently that's just what the Linux dev community leans towards, and it can be a real pain in the ass. Like it or not, at least in my opinion VS just gives you a better debugging experience, because it's integrated into the IDE, and Linux devs just despise IDEs on principle - they call them crutches. For debugging, you're going to be doing a lot of command line and plain-text config file work. The other thing is that the Admin GUIs in Windows Server are just a lot easier to work with, for me at least. It's easy to screw up those aforementioned httpd.conf files with misplaced tags or misspellings; clicks get you pretty far in WinServer's IIS Config snap-in or SQL Server Management Studio, and that new PowerShell interface gets you the benefits of some command line server config without requiring it. I know you're more asking for help to solve your pain problems on Linux, and it is great to be able to use a free OS on servers and match that environment on your desktop for testing purposes. And not invest in those heavy MS costs for licenses. But I think you might be looking at a weakness in the Linux world that just isn't going to be as slick as it is in the MS world. Good luck though either way, and hope this helps!
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Disclaimer: The majority here should know I jumped ship with the bastard offspring of Microsoft that they named "Vista". Working with Vim/Emacs (Vim is my preference) is nice for the small odd jobs, but now that I'm just waiting to get paid and to fly off to greener pastures, I figured I'd tackle learning more on linux, particularly giving Eclipse another go. Well, installing a LAMP server is a breeze on most distributions. Just you try and setup a proper PHP development environment. Eclipse is a snap, but the debuggers?! Why, they'll just leave you buggered... So I tried again, this time with NetBeans 7, now with more "ooh shiny!", and what do you know, if it isn't the same issue? Hmmm... I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Try JetBrains. Their IDEs work on Windows, Mac and Linux. No matter what environment I am on, I always have the same IDE, same keyboard shortcuts, same UI...it's nice. Combine that with JetBrains' TeamCity for a CI/Build server, and I am very happy. Hey, TeamCity even works great with Visual Studio, if you ever come back to Windows. (No, I do NOT work for JetBrains...but I WISH I did! :cool:) Highly recommend them. They are free for open source projects, and very reasonable for a personal license. And they often have sales, got most of mine for 50% off or more. TeamCity is free for up to 20 build configurations. Give them a try.
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! Have you tried turning it off and on again? Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
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Disclaimer: The majority here should know I jumped ship with the bastard offspring of Microsoft that they named "Vista". Working with Vim/Emacs (Vim is my preference) is nice for the small odd jobs, but now that I'm just waiting to get paid and to fly off to greener pastures, I figured I'd tackle learning more on linux, particularly giving Eclipse another go. Well, installing a LAMP server is a breeze on most distributions. Just you try and setup a proper PHP development environment. Eclipse is a snap, but the debuggers?! Why, they'll just leave you buggered... So I tried again, this time with NetBeans 7, now with more "ooh shiny!", and what do you know, if it isn't the same issue? Hmmm... I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Good old netbeans, I don't know if it's because I use a remote desktop to use it but it is so darn slow it's pathetic. It's almost ok as long as I don't have any mistakes, but if I have to go back and edit something it gets frustrating real quick. My biggest complaint other than the speed of netbeans is it seems like certain things are made difficult on purpose... other than that love my CentOS box.
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I remember someone posting here about how after they've setup emacs properly, they have the best C/C++ IDE ever.
That must have taken a life time of just working with it. Way to much of a pain for me...
Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.
Actually, the last post we discussed it, I specifically remember him mentioning having the whole thing provisioned and ready in less than an hour, thanks to the small installation footprint of everything and the most time consuming part was the time it took to download things. CEDET was used if I'm not mistaken, though nowadays with 2 kids my memory only acts like a guideline to events...
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
Apache, MySql and PHP do have elaborate settings and commands, enough to provide for a decent living. The MonoDevelop-IDE has a nice debugger, used it a few times with WinForm projects under OpenSUSE. Why not give ASP.NET and Moonlight a try? :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss:
I have no problem setting things on the server side, I mean, this is stuff that should be edited once in a blue moon and I'm OK with that. Its well documented and all and its not staggeringly difficult. Point me to where I could find a living doing this stuff and I'll send you a keg by mail, all expenses paid. My biggest issue is setting up the debugger for the IDE. As a programmer, I shouldn't have to mess with this stuff, I should be churning money making code with minimal downtime. If I have to waste days/weeks/months/years/eons to setup a development environment, the concept of time is money has been wrestled to the ground and been given a sound kicking to the kidneys.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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I feel your pain - went from doing a lot of Windows/ASP.Net to doing both Ruby/Rails and PHP on Linux. Along with all the requisite work to set them up, BEYOND the standard "here, Apache's returning your phpinfo() file", you just are going to be screwing around in config files and trying to figure out the correct syntax for things like VirtualHosts in Apache or whatnot. Apparently that's just what the Linux dev community leans towards, and it can be a real pain in the ass. Like it or not, at least in my opinion VS just gives you a better debugging experience, because it's integrated into the IDE, and Linux devs just despise IDEs on principle - they call them crutches. For debugging, you're going to be doing a lot of command line and plain-text config file work. The other thing is that the Admin GUIs in Windows Server are just a lot easier to work with, for me at least. It's easy to screw up those aforementioned httpd.conf files with misplaced tags or misspellings; clicks get you pretty far in WinServer's IIS Config snap-in or SQL Server Management Studio, and that new PowerShell interface gets you the benefits of some command line server config without requiring it. I know you're more asking for help to solve your pain problems on Linux, and it is great to be able to use a free OS on servers and match that environment on your desktop for testing purposes. And not invest in those heavy MS costs for licenses. But I think you might be looking at a weakness in the Linux world that just isn't going to be as slick as it is in the MS world. Good luck though either way, and hope this helps!
craigsaboe wrote:
doing both Ruby/Rails and PHP on Linux
Oh wise sir knight, I implore you, share your knowledge with me! Let me be thy page! Seriously, point me in the right direction at least. Vim is good, but it gets to the point where I need an IDE. I don't mind the mucking about with Apache, I've written bash & python scripts to automate it and when necessary I an go at it by hand.
craigsaboe wrote:
it can be a real pain in the ass.
At times, YES!
craigsaboe wrote:
Like it or not, at least in my opinion VS just gives you a better debugging experience, because it's integrated into the IDE, and Linux devs just despise IDEs on principle - they call them crutches. For debugging, you're going to be doing a lot of command line and plain-text config file work.
I agree with you so far.
craigsaboe wrote:
I know you're more asking for help to solve your pain problems on Linux, and it is great to be able to use a free OS on servers and match that environment on your desktop for testing purposes. And not invest in those heavy MS costs for licenses. But I think you might be looking at a weakness in the Linux world that just isn't going to be as slick as it is in the MS world. Good luck though either way, and hope this helps!
What?! No, "here, this is how you do it" *shining holy grail answer*?? :((
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Try JetBrains. Their IDEs work on Windows, Mac and Linux. No matter what environment I am on, I always have the same IDE, same keyboard shortcuts, same UI...it's nice. Combine that with JetBrains' TeamCity for a CI/Build server, and I am very happy. Hey, TeamCity even works great with Visual Studio, if you ever come back to Windows. (No, I do NOT work for JetBrains...but I WISH I did! :cool:) Highly recommend them. They are free for open source projects, and very reasonable for a personal license. And they often have sales, got most of mine for 50% off or more. TeamCity is free for up to 20 build configurations. Give them a try.
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! Have you tried turning it off and on again? Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
I've looked at TeamCity but never actually downloaded it. I downloaded PhpStorm last night but haven't installed it yet. Does it come with an integrated debugger? Because that's where my issue is. I just can't configure the debugging on Eclipse/NetBeans properly. Apply, but I think they're in the Czech republic. Oh and of course I use ReSharper. Brilliant piece of software.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Disclaimer: The majority here should know I jumped ship with the bastard offspring of Microsoft that they named "Vista". Working with Vim/Emacs (Vim is my preference) is nice for the small odd jobs, but now that I'm just waiting to get paid and to fly off to greener pastures, I figured I'd tackle learning more on linux, particularly giving Eclipse another go. Well, installing a LAMP server is a breeze on most distributions. Just you try and setup a proper PHP development environment. Eclipse is a snap, but the debuggers?! Why, they'll just leave you buggered... So I tried again, this time with NetBeans 7, now with more "ooh shiny!", and what do you know, if it isn't the same issue? Hmmm... I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
The word you're looking for is... Windows 7. The very definition of Linux is mucking about with configuration files. Automation in Linux just means shell scripts. Configuration by GUI is incomplete, and frowned on, if not actively resisted, by power Linux users.
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I've looked at TeamCity but never actually downloaded it. I downloaded PhpStorm last night but haven't installed it yet. Does it come with an integrated debugger? Because that's where my issue is. I just can't configure the debugging on Eclipse/NetBeans properly. Apply, but I think they're in the Czech republic. Oh and of course I use ReSharper. Brilliant piece of software.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I downloaded PhpStorm last night but haven't installed it yet. Does it come with an integrated debugger?
I don't actually do PHP, but if you look at their features page, about a third of the way down the screen, it mentions a 'Visual PHP Debugger'. The link is here[^].
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
Apply, but I think they're in the Czech republic.
Yes, they are in Czech Republic. I really wouldn't mind going over there, the work permit wouldn't be an issue since through ancestry I am eligible to apply for an Italian passport so could work in the EU. But with a family, it's not so easy to uproot to a different country.
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! Have you tried turning it off and on again? Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
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Good old netbeans, I don't know if it's because I use a remote desktop to use it but it is so darn slow it's pathetic. It's almost ok as long as I don't have any mistakes, but if I have to go back and edit something it gets frustrating real quick. My biggest complaint other than the speed of netbeans is it seems like certain things are made difficult on purpose... other than that love my CentOS box.
I find Eclipse and Netbeans on Linux to be quite responsive, better than 2008 in some cases (no experience with 2010). Strange. Could well be the remote desktop. I've faced similar issues when ssh-ing into remote machines and there's a slow connection (usually mine :()
MacRaider4 wrote:
My biggest complaint other than the speed of netbeans is it seems like certain things are made difficult on purpose...
Like what? I've been working with Linux (administration, bash, python and ruby scripts, all on vim, didn't need an IDE) for nearly 2 years now. I find CentOS to be a remarkably great server and because its built from Red Hat's RPMs, what I test on CentOS is practically guaranteed to work on RHEL.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I'm sure there is an easier way, something more, what's the word I'm looking for? AUTOMATED. I shouldn't have to mess with configuration files unless I have to or if I'm tweaking my production environment for a specific case or if I'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.
The word you're looking for is... Windows 7. The very definition of Linux is mucking about with configuration files. Automation in Linux just means shell scripts. Configuration by GUI is incomplete, and frowned on, if not actively resisted, by power Linux users.
Meh, I use Windows 7 o my other box. I'm actually looking for a paradigm shift.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I downloaded PhpStorm last night but haven't installed it yet. Does it come with an integrated debugger?
I don't actually do PHP, but if you look at their features page, about a third of the way down the screen, it mentions a 'Visual PHP Debugger'. The link is here[^].
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
Apply, but I think they're in the Czech republic.
Yes, they are in Czech Republic. I really wouldn't mind going over there, the work permit wouldn't be an issue since through ancestry I am eligible to apply for an Italian passport so could work in the EU. But with a family, it's not so easy to uproot to a different country.
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! Have you tried turning it off and on again? Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
Alexander DiMauro wrote:
I don't actually do PHP, but if you look at their features page, about a third of the way down the screen, it mentions a 'Visual PHP Debugger'. The link is here[^].
Yep, saw that. That's what got me interested in the first place. I hope it is what I think it is. I wouldn't mind shelling out a 100 if it works. I've got 30 days to try it out.
Alexander DiMauro wrote:
But with a family, it's not so easy to uproot to a different country.
I'm actually going to be doing that very soon. Going back home to Canada unless I find a really nice offer in the US.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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craigsaboe wrote:
doing both Ruby/Rails and PHP on Linux
Oh wise sir knight, I implore you, share your knowledge with me! Let me be thy page! Seriously, point me in the right direction at least. Vim is good, but it gets to the point where I need an IDE. I don't mind the mucking about with Apache, I've written bash & python scripts to automate it and when necessary I an go at it by hand.
craigsaboe wrote:
it can be a real pain in the ass.
At times, YES!
craigsaboe wrote:
Like it or not, at least in my opinion VS just gives you a better debugging experience, because it's integrated into the IDE, and Linux devs just despise IDEs on principle - they call them crutches. For debugging, you're going to be doing a lot of command line and plain-text config file work.
I agree with you so far.
craigsaboe wrote:
I know you're more asking for help to solve your pain problems on Linux, and it is great to be able to use a free OS on servers and match that environment on your desktop for testing purposes. And not invest in those heavy MS costs for licenses. But I think you might be looking at a weakness in the Linux world that just isn't going to be as slick as it is in the MS world. Good luck though either way, and hope this helps!
What?! No, "here, this is how you do it" *shining holy grail answer*?? :((
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
Sorry!:) I'm far from a shining knight in command line armor who can help you conquer the vagaries of Linux debugging. I know that Xdebug is the most common setup, and that's done on the PHP server you're testing on. Here's two articles that may help you if you haven't seen them: http://tech.blog.box.net/2007/06/20/how-to-debug-php-with-vim-and-xdebug-on-linux/[^] http://xdebug.org/docs/remote[^] Sorry I can't help much more than that!
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Sorry!:) I'm far from a shining knight in command line armor who can help you conquer the vagaries of Linux debugging. I know that Xdebug is the most common setup, and that's done on the PHP server you're testing on. Here's two articles that may help you if you haven't seen them: http://tech.blog.box.net/2007/06/20/how-to-debug-php-with-vim-and-xdebug-on-linux/[^] http://xdebug.org/docs/remote[^] Sorry I can't help much more than that!
Damn it Craig, damn it all to hell!! That first link looks REAL nice. I'm also investigating Intellij Idea's PHPStorm. How is the move working out for you? Better work? As in more interesting/challenging/pay?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
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Damn it Craig, damn it all to hell!! That first link looks REAL nice. I'm also investigating Intellij Idea's PHPStorm. How is the move working out for you? Better work? As in more interesting/challenging/pay?
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Playing Star Craft II. Don't bother me, eh? Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]? Food[]
It's interesting... in both good and bad ways. I switched platforms while at the same employer because it was in the best interests of the product I'm developing (solo, I might add). I'm also working on a startup that I hope to go full-time with soon, and it's quite difficult for me to decide which I'm going to use going forward there since I'm working from scratch. I did move to this current employer two years ago, and even today you're going to do much better at least here in Pennsylvania, USA with ASP.Net training due to both pay amounts (PHP will get you literally half of what ASP.Net will) and job openings (Ruby will get you close to ASP.Net, but there's almost no openings for it other than small startups in Philadelphia). My startup work at the moment involves some consulting projects, and those always seem to fall under Drupal-centered web-based stuff, or small businesses with Microsoft infrastructure. I find Drupal just irritating, as a developer - I won't go any farther than that here and now. The Microsoft stuff so far I like, mainly because a) I'm familiar with it, b) I like having GUIs to do my work, and c) there's not often a question of what the best practices are to accomplish something. The monetary cost of PHP, Ruby, and Linux development is null, and posting to the web via systems like Heroku or Linode is a lot easier and cheaper than Microsoft solutions. This is a part of the draw for startups. Time-wise, though, I get really frustrated trying to figure out when building something in Rails and ten people tell me ten ways/libraries to authenticate a user, and in PHP when there's seventy different frameworks that are different only when you go beyond a "Create a blog in 15 minutes!" level of familiarity. ASP.Net may be considered by some a dinosaur, or some slowly plodding platform that doesn't keep up with the times, but you get a solid platform, a solid database, a pretty comprehensive web framework that is incorporating (albeit slowly) popular ideas like MVC, and a very good IDE whose code editor (which I use exclusively, no drag/drop) is great. And there's no end to the documentation, books, tutorials, etc. that will help you get where you need to go - there's a lot of stuff in FOSS that has no or crappy documentation only available on their website. Microsoft's stuff has some issues, and some methods of configuration can be just stupid and obtuse. And you'll pay for the right stuff, either now or later if you grow. But frankly, for me at least, I think I'd probably go t