Get To Business.

Or at least my sanity. Friday afternoon, after several hours of intense development, my HP lappy decided to take a bow and go to sleep indefinitely. After an hour of pleading it to power back on, I gave up and moved to outfit my desktop as a replacement development platform.

I downloaded and installed the latest Windows builds of Apache, PHP and MySql, and within 15 minutes I had a fully operational development server without spending a dime. All that was missing was checking out our latest SVN repository revision (which unfurtunately was without the lost hours of today’s development effort), and then it hit me how I’ve been taking open-source for granted. What I’ve just been able to do - rebuild an identical development machine (minus some lost code) in minimum effort and zero cost, allowing me to get to work until my laptop gets fixed, is no small feat.

In honor of this small eye-opener, I give you some personal favorites:
Open Source Windows - Tons of great open-source software for windows.
Web development - Apache Server, PHP, MySQL, subversion, phpMyAdmin, Zend Framework, jQuery, Firebug

Now, if someone would just get that Windows thing open-sourced…

The new layout went online today. This might sound ridiculus, but the previous design was supposed to be a temporary placeholder for a couple of weeks (and stayed for over 5 months…). Either way, we are very happy with the new concept and hope you will like it too.

I’ll just leave a teaser and say that this facelift extends much further into the platform (though its not on the public server yet). Stay tuned!

So another day of intensive startup experience. Yesterday we chose our idea - to make time-bartering service. A person can chose to give some of his time for another with his expertise, and then later receive a service from another member with the time credits he accumulated (By the way I voted for another idea which I thought was better, but thats irrelevant now).

So today we split up into teams. Dev team chose their development language, and unfurtunately it was asp.net. There was only one other PHP dev there besides me, so I guess it was not meant to be. I decided to move to GUI stuff (javascript, css, html) where no one claimed any particular mastery, and rode the wave from there to join the user experience team (a group of people discussing UI concepts and working on interface mockups). The UE sessions were very interesting and I felt like I had a lot to five there. This in contrast to the dev group, where they had like 30+ people… the chaos was staggering.

Near the end of the day the development funneled to basic bottleneck in web, the graphic design. Somehow, we have only 2 designers compared to 30+ devs… how is that possible? someone told me that some of the devs got in with designers tickets… thats pretty incredible. Design was further delayed by all sorts of non graphic professionals trying to have to much input (they call themselves marketing ), and logo was finalized only around 9pm … actual page design wasn’t even started before we separated to our homes, Which tomorrow will be an impossible race to the finish.

Today was the first day of Startup Weekend Israel which a very interesting to attend. For those who are not familiar with the concept, a quick recap: Startup Weekend is a gathering / conference for entrepreneurs from all walks of life (technological, business, marketing, etc..) for 3 days of concentrated brain-dump and hard core development on one chosen startup idea, at the end of which a finished (or at least, working) product emerges. All the participants are then given shares for a company that is formed to drive this product to whatever future it is destined for.

The odds (in my opinion) of something really great coming from this are slim, but the process itself is very interesting and there is much networking to be had. It was very interesting to see the different types of entrepreneurs and attitudes, and plenty of good ideas for a potential startup were shown. Tomorrows is the first day of active development, and its going to be messy (think 60 developers, designers, marketers and even some project managers). But it will be a worthwhile experience I’m sure.

In other news, I am starting my own blog! (You are very shocked, I can tell. You, our only reader.) It will be called TechFounder and there I will focus on the my experiences as a technological entrepreneur and developer in the web world. Posts there will be much more technical, with plenty of PHP, MySQL, Javascript and CSS goodness.

In case you were wondering whats up with Octabox …

We are currently in the middle of a major upgrade and redesign. Based on feedbacks we have received from our private beta and ideas from internal brainstorming and review, we are building a completely new user interface. Simpler interactions, increased responsiveness (and more eye-candy ) and overall tightening up of the user experience.

In addition we will be adding two new work-modes to complement the basic data management tools.

One is a ‘planning stage’ (we like to call it a ‘Thinking’ stage), in which a user can create contextual information - by stating a goal and then planning the steps to completion with the goal as motivation. A goal can be anything from completing a work project, buying a new car, doing your homework or any context in which you might want to manage information.

After thinking of the steps for goal completion, a user will be using Octabox management tools to manage information related to the goal (this is the second stage, ‘Manage’).

This will be similar to the previous management tools supplied by the platform, however we are reworking and improving everything.

The third stage is a review stage we like to call ‘Learn’, in which expectations are compared to results and lessons are learned - and implemented for better planning for future goals.

We have no set deadline for the completion of this transition, however, based on current progress we expect to have a public beta version in a couple of months. Hope to see you there.

After another hang up from Zend Studio for Eclipse (the IDE formerly known as Zend Studio) in which about 10 minutes of unsaved work was lost, I threw in the towel and went back to good old Zend Studio 5.5. For those not in the know (ie, You The Reader), Zend Studio is a line of development software for PHP from Zend. Having recently revamped their product to combine it with an eclipse project named PDT (PHP Development Tools), they created what would appear to be better but is ultimately inferior product.

Having used Studio for Eclipse for over two months religiously (~10 hours a day) you could say I have gotten pretty used to it. However, there is no getting past the hangups, which are not acceptable for a professional developer.

Firing up the old Studio 5.5, I was shocked on the apparent difference in responsiveness. I was so used to Studio for Eclipse that I forget how much faster the old 5.5 handles.

No more will I see the dreaded ‘Building PHP projects: 0%’ hoping it will not hang yet again.. especially when I hit the save button only to find out it has been queued behind that cursed process (which of course, will never finish… forcing a manual shutdown and loss of code).

Zend Studio for Eclipse has some nice ideas - like a code analyzer and an integrated unit-testing with code coverage statistics. Too bad those features which sound great in theory are the downfall of this software product - it is the code analyzer that seems to be a big reason for the build process hangs (in response to a support ticket I posted to Zend, I was instructed by a support employee to turn off code analyzing.. It’s great to know that they are aware of the instability of this feature. However the Studio continued to hang up). And I spent several days (!) trying to make my unit-tests run from inside the IDE (ultimately failing despite some small successes).
You can say many things about me, but when it comes to making computer related things GO, I am your guy. The fact that I could not make Studio for Eclipse run the tests… Goes a long way for me as indication for the maturity of this software product.

If you are a PHP developer considering the move to eclipse, my advice is give this one a pass. At least until it matures enough to be a worthy replacement to the old Studio 5.5.

There’s a process philosophy called DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) that revolves around the notion that duplicate information is inherently bad. The thinking behind it is that duplicate information is harder to change, reduces clarity and is more likely to be inconsistent (since changes introduces inconsistencies between duplicates).
Such philosophy is the base for modern software engineering concepts, but apparently can be also applied to social networks.

An interesting experiment in social interactions has been attempted in an IRC channel (Internet relay chat) in which chat participants are not allowed to repeat any before said sentences. An automated monitoring system (called a bot) automatically mutes offenders for gradually increasing periods of time, forcing them to be original in what they say - or at least in how they say it.

I wonder if such philosophy could be applied in real life…

Needs to come up with better excuses

While taking a break from Octabox work, I came across John Resig’s blog. For those unfamiliar with that name, John Resig is the creator and head developer for the jQuery javascript framework (check the links if you’re unfamiliar with any of those terms either). I have read his book “Pro Javascript Techniques” a while back, and it was nice read though I skimmed through much of it since I was already familiar with most of the material. I wish it had more “Pro” and less common sense materials - which are still good but aimed more at beginners or non-programmers. I’ve read the table of contents for his next books which sounds very promising.
I did ‘read’ his more serious work, namely the source files for the jQuery library, which are a testament to his and his developer group vast mastery of the javascript programming language.

As I was navigating the posts, I came across this small flame war between a mootools dev and John regarding some comments made at a mootools introduction presentation. This matter was consequentially resolved, with both sides and other parties releasing apologies (of sorts).

Before I’ll iterate my thoughts on the matter, I’ll go ahead and say that at Octabox we use jQuery exclusively as a tool for javascript development. This is not a knock on mootools, from the little I tried it and from feedbacks I heard it’s a very good javascript library (and their site is absolutely gorgeous by the way). Choosing a software library is a matter of personal and design preferences, and is influenced to a large degree from what you hope to get out of that particular library.

A short recap of the story: Omlo Maldonado, a mootools developer at the time, was giving a presentation on mootools as a javascript framework. During the presentation, he made several references to other javascript frameworks, jQuery included, in a non flattering manner to say the least. John Resig, being the creator of jQuery, took offense and responded on his blog, adding further fuel to this rivalry. A small comment flame war ensued and the matter was later resolved with all parties (and mootools lead developer) issuing apologies.

Being a software developer myself, I sympathized with John’s feelings in response to the allegations that were made. He and the jQuery team were accused of ’stealing’ code, and their entire approach and design were being looked down upon. While I can’t condone his inflammatory response, I can certainly understand it (I probably would’ve written something much worse if I was accused in this manner. I’m a pretty cynical and sarcastic person). The allegations were serious indeed and detrimental to the whole approach of open source development and coexistence of multiple design approaches.
And while all sides eventually apologized, I got the feeling that the air hasn’t been completely cleared between the two teams. It’s too bad, since it’s exactly the diversity of such frameworks and the inter learning between them that continues to drive javascript development forward.

I’ll end with some insights I hold on jQuery, having used it professionally for over 9 months:

• jQuery lean packaging (15kb minified and gzipped) is a major plus. Previously we have been using Prototype at Octabox, and the switch to jQuery reduced our average page weight by over 50% (Here’s the original post I wrote back then. Seems like eons ago). The improvement to user experience with shorter page load times, the savings on bandwidth - those are all major benefits.
• jQuery has one the best user communities I have seen. Their approach to user contributions via plug-ins is a great idea, and it has proven an invaluable resource for adding functionality not provided in the core (for those knocking on jQuery feature reduction for size benefits - have you seen their plugin library?). The plug-ins being separate from the core also allows developers to hand pick their features, and not having those force fed in the official release.
• The use off CSS selectors as the driving scheme for selecting DOM elements is brilliant. Combining that with the chainable interface is the main reason I chose jQuery - It’s super convenient to use. All scripts I converted to using that interface have had size reductions of ~40% on average As a matter of fact, using the chainable interface has made me fall in love with fluent interfaces and has definitely influenced my design methodology.
• Their documentation is very good overall. I have used many open source projects that didn’t have the documentation to match the level of their code.
• Their UI component still needs work, and some libraries have more mature solutions (script.aculo.us, mootools and DOJO spring to mind). However they seem to be aware of that and have recently launched their UI specific project. By looking at their track record I don’t think this will remain an issue for much longer.

This guy and this organization share my sentiments. Also here and here

Can you tell I’m somewhat biased? I consider myself pretty hard to impress, but jQuery has earned my vote and I’m sticking by it (at least, until something better comes along )

The standards and requirements of web-based user interfaces have steadily risen in recent years, and heavy use of Javascript and sometimes AJAX is almost unavoidable in modern day web applications. However, developing with Javascript could be similar to pulling teeth - There’s a lot of bleeding and the pain won’t go away for several days (Incidentally, I had a tooth pulled out recently).

Javascript, unlike server-side languages such as PHP, are parsed by the browser, and is browser-dependent in its functionality and debugging process. As fate would have it, all browsers differ from each other in their implementations of Javascript parsing, often times even diverging on different versions of the same browser. And of course, there is also Internet Explorer, whose vile and unspeakable acts of Javascript terror are only surpassed by its level of adherence to Css standards.

For basic usage, plain old Javascript can still make do and create simple user-interface interactions. But when the user-interface requirements are high, and Javascript deployment is massive, other alternatives might be considered.
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