29th May 2005
FAME, AJAX, & LAMP
A diagram of core web development interests, with a few comments …
I’m in the midst of winding up a contract, and am closing the door on future Tcl/AOLServer gigs. It’s nice that I am very good with those technologies, but it also ties me to a very small set of opportunities. I’m interested in being out in the world, where there’s a critical mass of mind-share. I’ve been involved with these technologies off and on since 1996, and have never enjoyed working with them like I do with PHP, Perl, Apache, MySQL, C++, etc.
I’m posting an overly simplistic diagram of the client and server side bits of tech that relate to straight-ahead web browser application development. In my perfect world, this is where I want to focus over the next year. I’ve deliberately left out a bunch of tangents that I’d love to pursue (Dashboard, SOAP/RSS/etc). I often get calls from recruiters, and wanted to be able to point to a diagram that helps illustrate “this is where my core interests lie”. LAMP, FAME, and AJAX developers (a highly overlapping set) will look at this and say “yes, yes, of course!”. Windows developers still clinging to the Microsoft Sanctioned View won’t “get it”, and that’s ok.
Some obligatory notes:
FAME (Flashout, ASDT, MTASC, Eclipse)
- See OSFlash.org for an overview of Open Source-based Flash Development.
- See Eclipse.org for the top level view of this IDE
- I didn’t mention Flash Remoting (such as to AMFPHP), but am certainly interested in that aspect.
- I’m also interested in Flash Communication Server, which is something we talk about at FlashCodersNY meetings.
AJAX
- I think we’re going to see an avalanche of AJAX plugins for WordPress and other packages before too long. Lots of people going through the learning curve right now.
- Good jump-off points are:
- Ajaxian.com
- Apple
- ONLamp.com article (A Simpler Ajax Path)
- AJAX Matters
- Don’t assume that AJAX and Flash are mutually exclusive. A Macromedia example shows communication between the two.
ServerLand, LAMPville …
- I don’t mention a specific Linux distro. I like Ubuntu on the desktop, and Debian on the server, but am open to other distros that have mind-share.
- I don’t mention Panther/Tiger, but in fact, it makes up my daily development environment. I can treat Mac OS X as LAMP.
- Most of my personal experience leans towards PHP (though I was working with Perl 4 a lot in the early 90’s). I’m anxious to start making use of PHP 5
- But, nonetheless, I love Perl :-)
- Python looks like a lot of fun, and I enjoyed hearing Guido van Rossum speak about it as OSCON 2003. I just haven’t had call to use it in a project.
- I mention Ruby because people are getting great results with Ruby on Rails. I like the “everything is an object” aspect of Ruby.
- I don’t mention XML, because to me it’s a transport container – a heavyweight method of schlepping values and attributes around. I can handle Tdom with Tcl, so other forms of dealing with XML will be easy in comparison :-)
- There are other bits of tech that could complicate my diagram, so I’ve left them out. Some examples are Wikis, SVN, WebDAV, all manner of Web Services, BugZilla, etc. They’re other pieces of the puzzle that I want to use in my environment when relevant.
