Fast prototyping, what to do? Which MVC?

red_ice

Hey guys

Right, so I'm coding (properly) on and off since about 2001. In the last few years it's been light stuff, more rejigging of frontend code if I'm honest. I feel that I've kind of slipped behind and over Christmas and for the first couple of weeks in Jan I want to dedicate myself to a new language, preferably something for fast prototyping, scalable, MVC. So a 4 part project of a website with static content, make it dynamic, add a blog, make a shopping cart - this should cover me to a point where if i can replicate this stuff Ill be comfortable working on more or less anything.

My area of 'expertise' when it comes to backend stuff is most definitely PHP. However I was working on a project and the developers were really pushing Python on me, and told me about Pyramid. Another team in the building had a lot to say about Ruby on Rails and then there's me sitting back checking out CakePHP and CodeIgniter. There is also FuelPHP, which I hear is great and a few other MVC's. However when I looked at python and ruby, it noticed a lot of work gets done from shell - I hate shell.

What's the point of this? Well, I guess I just want to talk to some people who may be using any of the above really, and fill me in on their skill level and how they found getting into an MVC. I've tried a bit of python, found it ok, have yet to try Ruby. I've played around with CakePHP and found it to be stubborn, I did however get results from CodeIgniter, but I was told that its not a proper MVC.

Can anyone offer some advise on where to go? Also, having good documentation is Vital to me, preferably concise, up to date video tutorials as I take things in better when I listen to the lesson rather than read it.

Cheers

Ballyv24

Give a look at Grails too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d1hp8n1stA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUJuGXZ9A0
Free ebook

GreeBo

+1
Was going to recommend grails, especially if you are doing any kind of CRUD app
you can get something up and running, pathetically quickly and then spend your time on UX if you want/need to.

croo

Ballyv24 wrote: »

Give a look at Grails too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d1hp8n1stA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUJuGXZ9A0
Free ebook

+1 for Grails from me.
Plus... and if this is for fun then seaside is very interesting. It's a web server written in squeak - an open source small talk. To build your website to effectively extend the seaside web server. It sounds like a strange way to build a website but it opens many doors... and is particularly powerful when debugging ... for web development anyway

red_ice

Just when I think I'm away from java...

I'll look into it, but I don't see myself enjoying this at all at all! It's all about the enjoyment factor!

GreeBo

I found grails very enjoyable (though the documentation was not as good as it could be in my opinion)
If you want to use mvn to build they dont always play nicely, Grails uses Ivy.

Its very quick to get a gui talking to a business/services layer and an ORM though and you get a gui for your domain objects for "free", which helps if you dont care about default presentation.

Colonel Panic

ASP.Net MVC. You are limiting your hosting options unless you want to get caught up in a Mono ball ache, but it's the best web framework I've used having done a few CakePHP sites and some tinkering with Pyramid and Django.

For my personal site, I use Flask, but that's pretty barebones as frameworks go so perhaps not good for prototyping, I used it as a learning experience.

GoneShootin

I'm a fan of CAKEPHP. When you have your DB setup, you can use the BAKE feature via the PHP console. It creates the M, the V, and the C based on your DB relationships. Really fast for prototyping I find.