Today I did lots more back end work that really isn’t fun to talk about. So instead of talking about that, I thought I’d mention the technology I’m using for development of the different parts of the application.

The web pages I’ll be serving up will be PHP and they will be hitting a MySQL database. I chose this option mainly because it’s free and finding a web hosting solution offering this combination is really easy (and cheap). At my day job I use Java currently (developing in the WebSphere Application Development environment). Java is pretty cool, and I thought about how developing a J2EE solution would be better for me personally because I would be expanding my Java experience.

My previous job was at a pro-Microsoft shop, so I used created .NET web applications there. It was a small company, and I probably could have chosen whatever I wanted for technology for web apps. I bought into the “.NET is going to take over the world” propaganda back then, so .NET seemed to be a smart move.

I actually prefer to build fat-client applications, and I’m pretty darn good at it. I prefer it because I feel I can design and build an application that requires no user training, no user manual, and actually very little computer experience at all. I used to build all my applications with my grandmother in mind. “Would Grammie be able to figure this out?” was what I was always asking myself. I could make a screen that was extremely simple to understand, looked pretty and still had lots of functionality built in for advanced users.

Web applications expect you to know how to do certain things that my grandmother would not understand. Things just aren’t self evident, heck even hyper-links expect you to know what a hyper-link is. Oh, don’t get me started…

But the world has moved towards this web application approach and it has taken me with it, kicking and screaming. I’m determined to make my web application easy to use and still fully functional. I’m recognizing that the guy who collects model trains or coins could very easily be a retired gentleman who doesn’t understand why he has to download the latest version of Flash…

Okay, I got off topic a bit there. I develop on a Windows box, not because I prefer Windows, it’s more because that’s what I use at work. And for a local web server, I use Apache, again because of the price and availability. When I first set it up on my old laptop, I installed and configured all the pieces individually. But when I had to install on a newer laptop, I instead downloaded the WAMP installation (Windows, Apache web-server, MySQL database, PHP). Holy smokes was that a slick install! I highly recommend it, especially if you are new to web programming and want to start plugging away without a lot of configuration headaches.

For web page development, I use Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and for image editing I use Macromedia Fireworks 8, both which I had purchased years back. I’ve never become very good at image manipulation. I tried using Photoshop once, but I didn’t have the time to learn that complicated software. I’m sure some of you would say that it’s not that hard, but I haven’t found the time to sit down and learn it.

And finally, the laptop I develop on is a Dell Latitude D600. I got it a couple of years back and it’s been a good development system. Oh yeah, and we have a wireless network in our house so I can check emails while giving the kids a tub. All of the above software also works fine on my older desktop PC, which is only a P1000. I just prefer the laptop because I can work on it in bed at night. And that’s it!