As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 11 years ago.
I want to start learning HTML and AJAX using a Linux distribution.
Can anyone recommend a distribution that has these requirements:
Local Host Admin interface (like PHPmyAdmin)
IDE for Javascript... etc
There is no real best distro for web development.
All tools you need will run on any linux distro.
Pick something you have experience with.
If you don't have any experience I'd recommend one of the 'user friendly' distros like Ubuntu or SuSe.
First question - Why do you want to do this on Linux? You can do basic AJAX requests from any platform, simply drop in your JavaScript framework of choice (JQuery, Prototype, or even MooTools and you can be up and running on your existing development platform.
Get familiar with a decent editor, one that will provide basic syntax coloring for you. One tool you may want to look at is the Aptana web development IDE that is based on Eclipse. This will give you the capability to write and debug any AJAX work you do as well as provide you some documentation and access to other dynamic languages like PHP, Rails, Python as well as a basic HTML editor.
That should square you away more than enough for what you're looking to do.
I just setup my first linux hosting to do the same thing. I did a lot of looking around and was recommended by articles and friends to use Ubuntu. So I did and everything has been working just great.
I'm using slicehost They have lots of tutorials to get you going.
http://articles.slicehost.com/ubuntu-gutsy
I can't think of many distributions that won't do what you need. I'd suggest something that has a good package manager, and, works well on your hardware. There will be plenty of choice for your requirements with all the major distributions.
What are you currently using ?
Andrew
Ubuntu should get the job done but you might consider a slightly more server oriented distro. In my shop, we use CentOS 5 which is more of an enterprise-oriented distro.
It exists specialized distributions:
The best one for me: Noys
http://www.noysweb.net/
Other one is Excelixis:
http://excelixis.wordpress.com/excelixis/
Cheers
HTML and AJAx don't need to be on any particular distribution, Ubuntu makes it pretty easy to install all the required features. I like fedora personally.
Try http://www.eclipse.org/webtools and http://www.zend.com/phpide although screem http://www.screem.org/ may well do what you need if it is purely html, javascript and css
Related
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I'm trying to learn ruby for web from scratch. I know PHP and I'm new in ruby. I don't want to use any framework at beginning. Trying to create simple 2 - 3 pages for practice. I search a lot but not got any example to create webpage from ruby and racks and to run it in any browser.
Guys please share if you do have any URL or online material to get start.
Writing a simple CGI in Ruby is easy, however, explaining how is beyond the scope of Stack Overflow.
To start, read Wikipedia's Common Gateway Interface article so you have a basic idea of what a CGI has to return. Pick apart the Perl example; You should be able to figure out what's going on easily enough. Read through the article and compare what it says to what the code example is doing.
Next, look at Ruby's CGI module, because it will help you parse incoming form information, and encode/decode URLs and HTML. Look at the table of environment variables, and you'll see the same things passed in that are mentioned in the Wikipedia article. Next, notice the params() method, which is how you access form variables. Follow that by reading the "Writing output" and "Generating HTML" sections, and nose about in the examples. You should be on your way then.
Once you've done that, you should take a look at the Sinatra gem. It's a very nice, easy to use, framework that is well suited for general web use, and, after getting an understanding of how a CGI works, you'll be in a good place to appreciate what Sinatra does for you. Additionally, I highly recommend using HAML with Sinatra. It's a short-cut language for generating web pages, similar to ERB, but less verbose.
You'll find that PHP has shielded you from a lot of the knowledge needed to write a "normal" web application using a CGI. That's OK if you already know that stuff, but it's bad if you have never done lower-level code, or are trying to use different languages, because knowing the CGI layer provides a lot of knowledge that is needed to understand the whole HTTPD stack. Once you know the CGI layer, things like Sinatra, Rails, Django, Mojolicious and all the other frameworks out there suddenly make more sense, and you'll know when to take advantage of them or roll your own. And, PHP's place in the HTTP server will be clearer too, allowing you to pick and choose your tools better for the job at hand.
Something like this should do it:
http://www.editrocket.com/articles/ruby_apache_windows.html
Check out Ben Scofield's talk from RubyConf 2008 - Building my own Web Framework Should give you some idea about what is involved in building a web app with ruby from scratch without using any frameworks.
The answers to this previous question should be helpful as well: Complete web apps in Ruby without using any frameworks - how difficult? Pitfalls?
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 11 years ago.
I'm a relatively new person to programming, I've read the first half of SICP until I thoroughly ingrained it into every cell in my body, took a class implementing basic data structures in Java, and made programs in Mathematica. But that is about as far as my knowledge goes, which is my problem.
I'm trying to play with Clojure via netbeans/enclojure and, to be honest, I don't know how to get anything beyond constructing functions and manipulating data structures in the REPL.
For example, I want to use Incanter for statistics stuff, but I don't know how to install it since I have never really used a terminal (I'm using windows vista), and don't know where to begin. When I search google, all the tutorials seem to assume knowledge with Unix, or they assume knowledge of how emacs works, etc.
I suppose what I am looking for is an online tutorial that covers the very basics of how to set everything up for a programming environment that doesn't assume previous knowledge.
Thanks,
Bryan
I'm relatively new to programming as well. My suggestion is that Unix or Linux are easier environments to program in. I know you said that you don't have experience with it, but you can pick up the basic commands in an afternoon. Learning basic Unix commands are going to be much, much easier than learning Java or Clojure, for example. The advantage is that once you have some basic familiarity with Unix/Linux then the rest of the environment becomes much simpler. This is a guide to Unix for someone who has never used it before:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
A quick way to try it out would be to download Cygwin, which is a Unix emulator that runs in Windows. You can install this and then try out Unix. Also, when you install Cygwin, you get a list of languages and text editors that you can install with it, so setting up that environment becomes fairly easy:
http://www.mcclean-cooper.com/valentino/cygwin_install/
I wouldn't suggest using Cygwin forever though, it'd just be a way to start out and see if you like programming in a Unix environment.
You can take some book that describes Clojure - for example, Practical Clojure first, and than - The Joy of Clojure - these books give you understanding of language.
About installing of plugins, etc. you can read on following page. Projects are usually maintained with Maven or Leiningen (I gave links to my articles). Dependencies, like Incanter are found through clojars, and put into project's files.
And clojure mailing list - good place where to ask questions...
Clojure is really fun, and managing the dependencies is not.
I think that using leiningen to create and build the project with its dependencies will help you skip to the fun part :) Leiningen from windows works just fine from what I hear though I dont see much advantage in trying to get away from the CLI. You should be fine sticking with windows and perhaps spending some time with the windows shell (or powershell) I hear a lot of good things about it.
ohh and another vote for the joy of clojure :)
If you are strict about using a windows environment, then I can recommend clojure box.
http://clojure.bighugh.com/
If you are flexible, I'd recommend setting up a virtual machine (with Virtualbox) and work in a *nix environment. Luckily, you may not have to do much since there are turnkey solutions with an editor, dependency management, and other tools configured and installed.
See
http://technomancy.us/150
Some examples include:
http://github.com/notifymd/vagrant-clojure-box
http://github.com/Seajure/emacs-clojure-vagrant
A caveat, though, is that these do seem to depend on gem.
As a bonus, if you are willing to spend time learning a *nix, then I can also recommend my dependency management software. You should be able to use any editor for this, but I'm only familiar with emacs. If you tell me what you use, I should be able to help you set it up.
http://github.com/bmillare/dj
I like to keep it simple. For Netbeans, you need to import the Incanter JAR files as they are merely Java libraries. Do a search on how to add libraries to Netbeans. Once that's done, then you can use Incanter in Netbean's REPL.
Once you feel like learning more, follow the other people's advice here and learn Leiningen, command line interface, Linux, emacs, etc.
Unfortunately, setting up a development environment for Clojure is just about the hardest part of learning it. There is no single, canonical way to do it, as shown by all of the other answers to this question.
Another option you might consider is LispCabinet. Despite its name, one of the options it provides is to set up a Clojure programming environment. A couple of advantages of this approach are that 1) it works in Windows, 2) its an Emacs environment, since a lot of the tutorials you find talk about how to do things with that editor, and 3) it makes it easy to explore and play with other, more traditional Lisps like CLISP and SBCL.
I too started with NetBeans and enclojure. I dearly love NetBeans for Java and PHP, but enclojre just doesn't seem stable. It's constantly breaking. So I gave up on it.
There are also plugins for IDEA and Eclipse if you prefer those environments.
But really, I recommend LispCabinet. You can see a slightly longer rationale on my blog at http://clarkonium.net/2011/02/getting-started-with-lispschemeclojure/.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I am trying to get started with some SQL software. I would like to know the best webhosting provider to go with. The software is called "OS Commerce" its quite terrible but I am used to working with it from work. It needs C-Panel and so on. Any recomendations?
Pretty much any webhost which runs *AMP (Apache, Mysql and PHP) will be able to run osCommerce.
When choosing a webhost I'd reccomend you steer clear of any host that offers any kind of "unlimited" bandwidth / diskspace. If you read the small print you'll see that it's not actually unlimited, so chances are they're overselling their resources (Cramming as many people on to one server as possible).
When I'm looking for a host I always check to see if they have a public forum, and if they do have a look around to see the attitude of the community & how quickly (if at all) staff respond to support requests. As Stephane said, Webhostingtalk.com is also a good resource for finding out a host's reputation.
Another good technique is to google "COMPANY_NAME sucks" or "COMPANY_NAME downtime". The results can be very interesting.
I've personally had good experiences with Unitedhosting.co.uk & webfaction.com
Stay away from 1&1, Godaddy etc. 1&1 are notorious for their poor support and it's very hard to cancel a contract with them.
EDIT: osCommerce won't require cpanel - pretty much every host will provide you with some sort of interface for managing databases etc.
EDIT2: Also, from what I've heard the original osCommerce project is no longer maintained properly, you might be best going with the new osCommerce project
WebHostingTalk.com. It's the best discussion forum I've seen where people review and talk about the various web hosts
The requirements for OSCommerce are here http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/osCommerce/Installation_and_Upgrades/46 all that is needed is php and access to a mysql database.
right now im using http://www.justhost.com/, things seem to work fine.
osCommerce should run on any LAMP stack so pick whichever host you feel comfortable with.
You could run it on your own computer for private development (XAMPP is popular). If you still want to find a host, look for one local to you and keep regular backups!
I've used ASmallOrange in the past, give them a try if you want. Everything worked great when I used them.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
When it comes to scripting the Mac, are there alternatives to Applescript? Its API seems awesome, but the language itself, from what I've read so far, seems aimed more at non-programmers.
Insights into this would be greatly helpful.
(At the moment, I'm thinking of writing a tiling window manager for the Mac.
Yes, I know some exist, but this will be open source.
Yes, I know of Xmonad, but it only does X11 windows.)
Thanks!
When it comes to scripting the Mac, are there alternatives to Applescript?
Depends what you want to do. If you want to send Apple events to other applications, yes; for running scripts from OSA-aware applications (Mail rules, folder actions, etc.), not really.
The best technical alternative is appscript (my baby), which is available for Python, Ruby and Objective-C on 10.4+. (There's also a MacRuby version, but I've yet to do a public release of that.) Feature-wise appscript's slightly better than AppleScript and its application compatibility is very nearly as good. Third-party project, so you'll need to install it yourself (but that's easy enough as long as you've got Xcode) and MIT licensed so you can redistribute it as needed (e.g. included in your application bundle). Fairly decent tool and documentation support, including an online book by Matt Neuburg, with mailing list support for the Python and Ruby versions and direct email support for the others.
The 'official' alternative is Apple's Scripting Bridge. The API looks very Cocoa-like, but that's really just a lot of smoke and mirrors which ultimately makes it less capable than AppleScript and significantly more prone to application compatibility problems (and tricky to troubleshoot when it does go wrong). Tool, documentation and community support is not so great either (appscript's is better; AppleScript's is better still). SB's main advantage is that it's included in 10.5+ so requires no additional installation to use. I wouldn't recommend it for heavy-duty automation work due to its technical shortcomings, but for modest automation tasks involving obliging apps it may suffice.
Other bridges do exist (e.g. Perl's Mac::Glue, RubyOSA), but they are not as capable, popular and/or actively supported.
All that said, if you want to do any serious application scripting, you will still have to learn AppleScript as that's where you'll find the vast bulk of literature, sample scripts and community expertise. All of which you will need, since the great majority of scriptable applications are notoriously under-documented.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 11 years ago.
I've been using vim, but after reading this question was wondering what is being used in the linux world.
There's also Netbeans: http://ruby.netbeans.org/
If you'd rather be using a light text editor instead of a heavy IDE, then I'd highly recommend going with GEdit with some additional plugins.
Here's an excellent guide on how to turn your GEdit into a "Linux Textmate":
Pimp My GEdit
If you want more of a IDE, then Netbeans is the current benchmark for Ruby IDEs.
I have used and really like Ruby Mine from JetBrains. It's been around since around 2008, here's the link for that: http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/index.html
I use Diakonos. Written in Ruby, you can script it with Ruby, and manipulate text with Ruby. No dependencies (except Ruby itself).
I use Eclipse with Aptana RadRails: http://aptana.com/rails
but if you need only Ruby you can use RDT instead: http://rubyeclipse.sourceforge.net/
I'm surprised no one has mentioned jEdit - it has a whole slew of plugins for Ruby, and unlike many other editors with Ruby support, it is very stable. There are edit modes + syntax coloration for erb, rb, javascript, haml, etc. etc. I have it set up basically to mimic TextMate, with some Eclipse-isms. It doesn't do code completion to the nines, but it does at least try to complete from the current buffer. It also has very extensible key stroke configurations and the ability to record/playback macros.
I'm assuming you be using Ruby for the web? Aptana IDE with the RADRails plugin would have to be the best choice.
I really like using Geany for ruby and rails work.
I wouldn't affirm an IDE is better than other. Everyone has its pros an cons.
When I'm lazy I'd use Netbeans because it's comprehensive. An overkill in computer resources, but usefull if you are learning.
I've had bad comments about Aptana... maybe some of you that recommend this may have to convince me otherwise.
GEdit + Rails plugin may be a good alternative. And VIM is awfully powerfull but the learning curve is steeper (but once you get the taste of it, productivity will increase for sure).
It all depends on what you want.
I personally use vim as an editor as the default ruby tools as the rest of my IDE.
If you are looking for a more "heavyweight" IDE look at Eclipse (http://rubyeclipse.sourceforge.net/) or netbeans (Google for link).
There are a number of in-the-middle options which behave differently and have different features. Google is your best best when it comes to these.
Also - please see Ruby and linux, preferred setup?
and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59968/best-editor-for-ruby
If I could close this question for being a dupe - I would.
komodo Edit is the best choice.