Tech stuff
Jul. 29th, 2012 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexbayleaf in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
growstuffSo, how are we going to build this thing?
A bit of background: from, oh, 1996-2007 I was a full time web developer on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl). I've had experience building and working on quite large websites with those technologies. However, I stopped around 2007 which, of course, is five years ago, and five years is a long time in tech. So, whatever we do, I'm going to have to refresh my skills.
Since I'd be doing that anyway, I feel like it's a good idea to consider using other tools/languages/platforms. To that end, I'm strongly considering doing this thing in Ruby on Rails. Why RoR? Well, it's easy for people to learn, and I want to get people involved who might not have previously worked on this sort of thing before. I know that one other project (AO3) has been successful in this (they've had problems with scaling, but I suspect with my previous web dev experience and the help I know I can pull in, we may have less trouble with this than they did). Ravelry is also built on Rails, so I know that similar sites can do it well. And it's a modern, marketable language which means learning it is good for people's resumes if that matters to them.
That said, I could be convinced to go with something else, if someone has an idea and can address the points I've mentioned above (especially the ease-of-getting-started issues). I presume Python has a comparable web framework, so that would be one possibility.
Needless to say, there'll be a bunch of frontend stuff, which will be in Javascript, presumably with JQuery, and lots of design/UI/UX work to do. My housemate and co-gardener is a UI/UX person and has expressed interest in working on this, so I feel reassured that we have some skills in that area already, since I'm not great at it.
Apart from that, I'd like us to keep our code on github, one of the most popular version control platforms around. (AO3 already does this, and Dreamwidth is planning a move to git, so it's likely to be a handily transferrable skillset for those who've had experience on either of those projects or any of the squillions of other open source projects that use it. It also has good transparency and community features in place, which I think matches our ethos.)
I'd also like us to use test-driven development methods, and generally take an "agile" approach to the whole project. My background in that regard is in Extreme Programming, so I'd like to bring in as many of the practices from there as possible. That means short iterations (aka "release early release often" as they say in open source), flexible/lightweight planning and design (not trying to specify the whole thing up front), constant refactoring, and yes, if we can manage it, pair programming! Or at least the closest we can get to pair programming in a distributed, (mostly-)online dev community. I think XP (as it is also called) is a great match for a project that wants to be sustainable and inclusive.
So that's where my head's at and what I'm thinking of. As with everything (and you'll hear me saying this a lot especially at first) all this is up for discussion, and I promise to listen carefully to any suggestions you make.
So what I'd like to ask at this point is...
1) Roll call! If you would like to get involved in a technical way, please comment and say what part interests you. If you have existing skills in any of the areas mentioned above (or any others you think might be relevant), please mention them. If you don't know yet or would like to learn, that's fine too.
2) Tools and resources! If you know of something we should be using or looking at, whether or not it's listed above, let us know. For instance, if you know a good learning resource for new Rails developers, have opinions on database backends, or know a good web app for managing distributed XP projects, let's hear about them.
A bit of background: from, oh, 1996-2007 I was a full time web developer on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl). I've had experience building and working on quite large websites with those technologies. However, I stopped around 2007 which, of course, is five years ago, and five years is a long time in tech. So, whatever we do, I'm going to have to refresh my skills.
Since I'd be doing that anyway, I feel like it's a good idea to consider using other tools/languages/platforms. To that end, I'm strongly considering doing this thing in Ruby on Rails. Why RoR? Well, it's easy for people to learn, and I want to get people involved who might not have previously worked on this sort of thing before. I know that one other project (AO3) has been successful in this (they've had problems with scaling, but I suspect with my previous web dev experience and the help I know I can pull in, we may have less trouble with this than they did). Ravelry is also built on Rails, so I know that similar sites can do it well. And it's a modern, marketable language which means learning it is good for people's resumes if that matters to them.
That said, I could be convinced to go with something else, if someone has an idea and can address the points I've mentioned above (especially the ease-of-getting-started issues). I presume Python has a comparable web framework, so that would be one possibility.
Needless to say, there'll be a bunch of frontend stuff, which will be in Javascript, presumably with JQuery, and lots of design/UI/UX work to do. My housemate and co-gardener is a UI/UX person and has expressed interest in working on this, so I feel reassured that we have some skills in that area already, since I'm not great at it.
Apart from that, I'd like us to keep our code on github, one of the most popular version control platforms around. (AO3 already does this, and Dreamwidth is planning a move to git, so it's likely to be a handily transferrable skillset for those who've had experience on either of those projects or any of the squillions of other open source projects that use it. It also has good transparency and community features in place, which I think matches our ethos.)
I'd also like us to use test-driven development methods, and generally take an "agile" approach to the whole project. My background in that regard is in Extreme Programming, so I'd like to bring in as many of the practices from there as possible. That means short iterations (aka "release early release often" as they say in open source), flexible/lightweight planning and design (not trying to specify the whole thing up front), constant refactoring, and yes, if we can manage it, pair programming! Or at least the closest we can get to pair programming in a distributed, (mostly-)online dev community. I think XP (as it is also called) is a great match for a project that wants to be sustainable and inclusive.
So that's where my head's at and what I'm thinking of. As with everything (and you'll hear me saying this a lot especially at first) all this is up for discussion, and I promise to listen carefully to any suggestions you make.
So what I'd like to ask at this point is...
1) Roll call! If you would like to get involved in a technical way, please comment and say what part interests you. If you have existing skills in any of the areas mentioned above (or any others you think might be relevant), please mention them. If you don't know yet or would like to learn, that's fine too.
2) Tools and resources! If you know of something we should be using or looking at, whether or not it's listed above, let us know. For instance, if you know a good learning resource for new Rails developers, have opinions on database backends, or know a good web app for managing distributed XP projects, let's hear about them.
no subject
on 2012-07-30 03:52 pm (UTC)I like Ruby and I'm fairly current on it; on the other hand, the Rails stuff I've done is well in the past now, back in the 1.6-1.8 days.
Know my way around both MySQL and Postgres; slight pref for the latter, but I'm not sure how well Rails plays with it, so.
I'm ok with the mechanics of HTML & CSS but my design-fu kinda sucks. Similar story on Javascript: I know enough to fix busted things in existing code, but I haven't written whole swaths of JS myself.
Git's what I've worked with most as of late for version control, and I like it in spite of how arcane some aspects of it seem to be.
I've written browser-driving tests with Selenium in the past using Selenium-RC. Nowadays things have moved onwards to Selenum-Webdriver, so I'm a bit out of date, but I'd be interested in coming up to speed and getting a UI-based test framework going if that's something we'd like.
Finally, yeah, I'll work with whatever distro, but I'm a Debian user at heart; I grok Debian/Ubuntu best.
Resources:
IME, remote pairing using voip + screen can work very well, though you need to agree on a terminal-based editor to make a go of that. Graphical desktop sharing might be workable on a fast connection, but I've found it's often laggy enough to be distracting.
I've found the book Pro Git to be v.helpful when it comes to squaring away "intermediate" topics in my head -- things like working with multiple remotes and branches, how git thinks about merging, etc, as well as clearing up some of the concepts about how git works behind the scenes. The online version is broken up into tiny little pages, but you can download the whole thing for free as a PDF, mobi, or ePub.
One last thing when it comes to committment -- free time around here is pretty tight around here right now, primarily because of two little kids =) but also because of work + some other stuff I'm trying to do after hours. Hopefully I'll manage to get better at it and free up some time in the near future...but in any case, I'd really like to contribute to the extent that I can. ^_^;