Binary Thinking – Karol Sójko's blog

Not long ago i came across this cool Java framework for building your own web applications. Actually I think someone posted it at Twitter ( @playframework ). At first i saw the invitational presentation which you can find here or at the framework’s page.

First Impression

This looked like fun and was very similar to what I’m used to in Symfony based web applications. So I said “what the hell” and started off with the tutorial, most of the things seemed obvious and I was pleased with the concept of writing in Java and having the ability to use any Java library I would like to.

IDE

But wait, it gets even cooler. The guys developing this framework prepared some tasks to make your project integrate with your preferable Java IDE. If it’s NetBeans, like it was in my case, or Eclipse this is a matter of typing one command in your console.

All the keys you need to use …

The coolest thing about it I think is that while developing a web application in Play you get to use all sorts of solutions like Hibernate, OpenId, JUnit, templates based on Groovy and integrate them easily with your project.

Fresh prince

Although this framework seems to be a reasonably “fresh” thing on the web (version 1.0 wright now), it has quite a good looking portfolio to speak for itself. I think this will aspire to be an awesome lite Java framework for all agile projects and web applications. Good luck and congrats to the Play team.

I thought I might put in a few good words for Symfony to all of you wandering which PHP framework to choose. Because there’s a whole bunch out there some of them worth mentioning are f.e. CakePHP, Zend and Symfony.

Why Symfony ?

The tutorial

First of all, the main reason that appealed to me when I started was that there is a whole 24 day-by-day tutorial which will teach you all you need to know about Symfony to get you started. Of course you won’t get a good grip of the framework after finishing the tutorial, but it should encourage the desired way of thinking in you. The Jobeet (set of 24 tutorials) covers everything you would want to know to build a basic website, from setting up the project, through forms, to f.e. having fun with AJAX .

The documentation

This is the first place to go whenever you feel you have doubts about writing some snippet of code. This is practically the holy book of Symfony where all the laws are writtend down. Symfony’s documentation is written in a not complicated language and when you’re looking for something in particular it’s made in a way that you won’t spend hours searching the desired topic. So basically this and the jobeet tutorial are the pros which make Symfony a framework reaching out a hand to the developers.

Plugins

Writing about plugins is basically the point where the Symfony community should get the needed applause. Whenever you’re searching for a functionality or thinking on a way to design one, go here first. There are a lot of useful ones there f.e. a plugin for Twitter, Facebook or a plugin for user authorization. And most important they are lively developed.

ORM

I’m using at the moment Propel as my primary ORM but the default choice in near future will be Doctrine. Anyway, forget about writing long and pesky SQL statements. You’ll just love the object methods that handle all the stuff for you. All you need to the is focus on your applications goal and Symfony will handle your database in neat objects, ain’t it fun ?

The tasks

This is where the fun part is as well. Building symfony and integrating it with your database is just a few words typed in the command line away. Just type ./symfony in your project’s directory and you’ll get the list of all the tasks that’ll help you on your way to finish your application. The more confident you’ll get with symfony, the more fond you’ll find yourself of those sneaky little bastards that make a developers day easier.

Because It is fun to learn !

Yeah, that’s wright. And you should check it as well. Take it for a spin, spend time with it and you’ll see that after each day you’ll get more anxious to learn new stuff and after a few weeks you’ll wonder why didn’t you find it earlier . Of course it is hard to mention all the great stuff about Symfony, but i think I’ve drawn the picture for you, why it is the best one to start with. Have fun and good luck !

A lot of people are searching for it so I thought I can write a how-to for installing Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

1) First of all you need to add the mozilla-daily repository:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and append at the end of the list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

save and close the file.

2) Now add the key:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE

3) Update

sudo apt-get update

The "True" Firefox

4) Install

sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5 firefox-3.5-gnome-support

5) Replace symbolic links
At this point you can run firefox 3.5 just by typing firefox-3.5 in the command line. But if you’re sure you don’t want to use firefox 3.0 anymore go to /usr/bin/ and remove the symbolic link:

rm -r firefox

and make it point to firefox-3.5

ln -s firefox-3.5 firefox

The Firefox-3.5 codename on Ubuntu is Shiretoko so don’t be suprised when you see your browser is named Shiretoko. That’s all, hope it helps feel free to comment .

Today i’ve heard for the first time about Google’s new project called Google Wave. Basicly it’s a new tool for collaboration and communication on the web. As i was watching the presentation some of the things totally blew my mind.

I’m very excited to see the e-mail functionalities, where you’re going to be able to put some “reply” part’s of your text inside the recieved massage instead of editing it by hand like it was so far. Then again the live-chat which was already there but now it looks so nice and tasty and it is full proof “real-time” so you just want to start using it . The third thing that i’m interested in is the very cool looking spelling tool which hints and corrects the word instantly. This woudl be a great benefit for people all over the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Larry Ellison (Oracle) the Devil himself ?

Today I’ve read that Oracle has bought out the Sun company. That’s a big issue in the IT world. I personally think that a lot of things are going to change, and not really for the better outcome.

IBM was interested in buying Sun as well but they eventually lost, and they are the company who is more into OpenSource than Oracle. I don’t want to sound like “Oracle is the devil incarnated”, but they’re known for takin the best solutions from open source projects, making it proprietary and making gazillions of $ out of it. Read the rest of this entry »