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So like I was saying before I have been playing around with CakePHP, and I thought that it would be a lot better if I could simply install a development server/set-up on my own desktop, rather than installing Cake on a domain that I have had parked.

To do this I installed WinLAMP, I am not sure what would have been the best LAMP, but I have used this one in the past so I gave it a shot. If you have a standard set up on your Windows machine it is a very easy process to set up the server.

Then I installed the ALPHA installation since I figured that the apps that I am currently developing will not be released into the wild till well after the current Cake development cycle.

I think that entire set up took me about an hour, and then I fired up phpmyadmin and started to build my database for my first CakeApp

If you have used cakephp or starting to play around with it, let us know what set you have for testing. Or if you know of a better LAMP set up for windows post a link here to point us in the right direction

A friend of mine does ROR programming for a living now and after going on a IEEE related trip with him I started to think that MCV programming was definitely the way to go for devloping new web applications. It makes the development very fast, and the plugins to do all of the cool, but mundane to code stuff, very easy. On top of that, it makes adding new funcionality easy, as there is a ready made framework and that limits the necessity of moding a lot of code, and if you want to hire someone to do work on the app, there is very little learning curve as all apps are built in the same way. Something like a carpenter not needing to review the complete construction of the house to install a new vanity in the bathroom.

However, learning a new method of coding/framework while learning a completely new language is not easy. Especially when you only have an hour here or there to learn it. I have been incredibly busy with the day job, and my other existing and on going projects. It actually meant that I have learned the SAME “hello World” multiple times as I forget what I have learned as I go. This gets very frustrating, very fast.

That is when Rami told me about his success with CakePHP. He used it to design ScienceHack in a very short amount of time.

So that got me thinking, there is a app that I would like to have for myself, and I estimated that it would take about 2500hours to do the old way, and then if I liked it and wanted to make it available to the public, another 500 hours to make it user friendly and secure. So I decided to give a try to MCV programming again.

So far so good, it is very hard to get away from my old database management and get into model management, but it is coming. Last night I scaffolded a bunch of my databases and so far so good. As I find some neat tools and cool tricks I will link them here.