In the Frame I: Ambitions

After a prolonged absence from this motley collection of tidbits, and faced with a prolonged period of inactivity known as 'unemployment', I have decided to embark on a bit of self-education.

The focus of my interest is going to be web frameworks, and I shall be describing my efforts at creating an application.

The trick is, I shall be investigating, not one, but three:

• PHP Cake
• Python's Django
• Ruby on Rails

They all purport to do the same things, and that is:

• Provide a 'Model-View-Controller' (MVC) architecture for your (web) application
• Provide 'Object-Relational Mapping' (ORM) by which your application can talk to its database.

While these are clearly useful and worthy things (after all, a number of people went to the effort of putting these things together, presumably for a reason) I am going to be taking a slightly different tack, and assess their friendliness, both to the seasoned developer, and to the newcomer who has to contemplate the height of the technological 'entry bar' that a proliferation of applications and their associated buzzwords appear to be doing nothing to keep low.

Tall order? Well, as a former supervisor once said to me, 'In order to develop, you need to exceed your comfort zone.' (It's a pity glass wall wielding recruitment agencies haven't heard that, but that's another story I will not dwell on here.)

My intention is that I shall be developing an application (the *same* application) using each of these frameworks, and describing how my attempts are going in these entries. How technical all this will get remains to be seen.

It may launch careers. It may peter out in an ignominious puddle of dazed confusion.

That is the nature of experiment! Finding out what works.