"Must have" tools

[mx2k]

Why are dual monitors so useful for development by the way?

keeps you from having to switch windows when you excute the code in the browser, its more handy if you are doing things that have an impact on user end stuff like the GUI, there are no current programs, even DW that can handle things like floats with div tags very well other than browsers.

(ps instead of the typical using hacks for the box model issues, try using overflow:hidden, I've managed to get two webpages to work with out hacks in both IE and foxfire using this sparingly)

i always have a couple of programs co-running between phases. or it even helps with things like research, copy and paste, and etc. if you have alot of data that has not been put into a table before that is written out, this is also helpful.sd

[laura2005]

SimpleTest, Subversion, Xdebug (for occasional profiling).

Don't seem to need UML diagrams much. If I do I'll just use Freehand. Some interesting comments here: Is Design Dead?.

Regex Coach is handy.

Hello, interesting article. Although I'm used to UML, it's true that its objective of unification is not so obvious: there are 9 different diagrams to cope with, redundancies between them and so lack of traceability, tools are immature - argouml is mentioned above I prefer Jude. Now it's not really UML against XP, UML is a tool or language not a methodology, UML can be used with XP, if one really wants to oppose XP it's against RUP, Rational Unified Process from IBM.

[Dr Livingston]

RUP is only really useful if your involved within a team from the very start and that the whole team and the team leaders really understand the whole process.

I've had no need for it but it'd be interesting to know just how well used this is in the PHP world? UML is one thing, RUP is entirely more complex

[lastcraft]

Hi...

Now it's not really UML against XP, UML is a tool or language not a methodology, UML can be used with XP, if one really wants to oppose XP it's against RUP, Rational Unified Process from IBM.

We use UML all of the time, but the diagrams rarely get further than the whiteboard and a digital camers (Google for "whiteboard photo"). We are mostly XP/Scrum. A few permanent UML diagrams are recorded in Dia. though.

RUP is a collection of best practices and you are supposed to tailor it to your environment. Unfortunately you don't get much advice on that tailoring without spending money on consultants . You can tailer it to look like XP though (called "dX"). I could never get to the bottom of it and have become disinterested after hearing about Alistaire Cockburn's scalable Crystal system.

My essential tools? Opportunity to code, opportunity to talk to fellow developers and opportunity to read and research. With these three in place you will always get better.

My nice to have tools? Version control, index cards (for CRC and Scrum backlog), unit/web tester, wide desk with a big screen (for pairing), whiteboard, XDebug (for the stack trace), ab (for end to end benchmarking), another whiteboard, Rephlux, simple editor with syntax highlighting, Whiteboard Photo, plenty of books nearby, yet another whiteboard.

yours, Marcus

[DarkAngelBGE]

Marcus, when you use the word whiteboard, do you mean the original English word meaning or more something like the sourceforge project "Whiteboard", which seems to be something like a forum software package?

[Dr Livingston]

Whiteboard as in the tradiontal sense I think

Lastcraft,

I'd be interested to know more about Alistaire Cockburn's scalable Crystal system? From what I can remember (very briefly reading a paragraph an age ago) this is based on RUP, is it not, or in that sense, very close to it yes?

[Archbob]

PHP Manual
Notepad(or editpad)

Thats all I use.

Brain is also required.

[OfficeOfTheLaw]

Oh yeah... I forgot the biggest, most often used, most essential, and often overlooked tool of all...

Google.

[lastcraft]

Hi...

Marcus, when you use the word whiteboard, do you mean the original English word meaning or more something like the sourceforge project "Whiteboard", which seems to be something like a forum software package?

Nope, I mean the big thing on the wall permanently covered in all sorts of gibberish. I hadn't even heard of the SF project...

yours, Marcus

[aeporia]

Oh yeah... I forgot the biggest, most often used, most essential, and often overlooked tool of all...

Google.

I'm a big fan of Clusty

[Snecx]

All I needed was a good editor with syntax highlighting and auto indent, etc. and also a sketchbook for me to sketch everything out.

[DarkAngelBGE]

Hi...



Nope, I mean the big thing on the wall permanently covered in all sorts of gibberish. I hadn't even heard of the SF project...

yours, Marcus

Thanks for the clear up. What do you put on the whiteboards all day long? UML diagram first drafts?

[sweatje]

What do you put on the whiteboards all day long?

If Marcus is anything like me, it is a lists of tasks to be completed a mile long

[lastcraft]

Hi...

Thanks for the clear up. What do you put on the whiteboards all day long? UML diagram first drafts?

Most often, yes. Actually we often write some code first, get stuck , and then have the design session. We also scrawl in big letters notes to everyone such as "I BROKE THE TESTS LAST NIGHT - ADD xxx TO YOUR CONFIGURATION", minor todo lists and other odds and ends.

Regarding the backlog, I am just writing an article on this for php|a. A never ending TODO list is actually a good idea .

yours, Marcus

[baze22]

Saw this thread and thought I'd ask. Is there tool out there that will take care of some of the more tedious tasks when writing a database app? For example take a table and spit out a class or group of functions for selecting, inserting, updating, deleting a record? I've written my own little addon to phpMySQL for this, but it isn't very flexible. Thought there might be something out there with a little more development behind it.

thanks,

baze

[Dr Livingston]

I think Propel would be a great help to you?

http://propel.phpdb.org/wiki/

For PHP5 only though, which is a good excuse to upgrade if your still using PHP4

[DmS]

Saw this thread and thought I'd ask. Is there tool out there that will take care of some of the more tedious tasks when writing a database app? For example take a table and spit out a class or group of functions for selecting, inserting, updating, deleting a record? I've written my own little addon to phpMySQL for this, but it isn't very flexible. Thought there might be something out there with a little more development behind it.

thanks,

baze

I built this:
http://dmsproject.com/test/dao_generator/
toss in a ddl (create table sql) for your complete db structure and you'll get a db abstraction layer, input/output sanity checks and DAO/VO classes for all your tables. It saves me a ton of time...

/Dan

[graedus_dave]

TrayIt is a really neat tool for Win32 platforms - http://www.teamcti.com/trayit/trayit.htm

When the utility is running, right-clicking on a windows 'close' button will minimize it to the system tray. Really useful for keeping taskbar clutter to a minimum (I just installed it on my work PC to get the xampp window out of my way).

BTW, there are a lot of good UML modeling tools here, but what do you use for database modeling, if anything? Do you pretty much just do that on scratch paper or a whiteboard?

[Dr Livingston]

I use DB Designer 4, which is pure open source and a free download, here is the link

http://www.fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/

Worth having a look, and it's only a 2 minute download

[king_cobra]

For those who don't have money to buy Zend Studio, there is PHP designer 2005. Its free and its super, take my word for it. This little download will never let you down.

http://www.mpsoftware.dk/phpdesigner.php

[graedus_dave]

I use DB Designer 4, which is pure open source and a free download, here is the link

That looks great! Thank you.

[OfficeOfTheLaw]

I use DB Designer 4, which is pure open source and a free download, here is the link

http://www.fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/

Worth having a look, and it's only a 2 minute download

I've always had a problem with DBDesigner... I cannot, no matter how hard I try, to get it to export SQL queries from the schemas I generate. Also, apparently there is some kind of option to reverse engineer an existing database, but I can't seem to get that to work either.

Anyone else?

[Ren]

I didnt get on to well with DBDesigner4. Seemed to have a few quirks, which really slowed me down. Like the table designer seems to get partially disabled preventing further columns being added, and have to apply the changes first, and reopen the window to continue.

MySQL's own MySQL Administrator is nice. And so is the MySQL Query Browser, once get used to the er, "unique" UI.

Thou lately been pretty much using command line tools, mysql, sqlite, and sqlite3.

Other things whch havent seen mentioned yet, are Dia, AutoDia, Dia2Code. Havent used them extensively, but they look like they could eventually be useful.

[JJM]

I’ve got a great list of tools I’ve found over the years that really work for me. I know some of these are a bit outside the PHP development question but I hope you’ll find this useful.

PHP Authoring – Zend Studio – http://www.zend.com

Text Editing – Ultra Edit - http://www.ultraedit.com/ - simply the best text editor ever created

Regular Expression Development – Regex Buddy - http://www.regexbuddy.com/ - this is a real time saver of a tool and produces great documentation to go with complicated regular expression statements.

Diff Tool – Araxis Merge - http://www.araxismerge.com/ - amazing capabilities to diff whole tree structures and merge files

Screen Capture – Snagit - http://www.techsmith.com/products/snagit/default.asp

Color Picker – pixie - http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

FTP and SCP – SecureFX - http://www.vandyke.com/products/securefx/index.html

SSH – SecureCRT - http://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html - Putty is also a good choice and is free - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Diagram Drawing – Microsoft Visio – http://www.microsoft.com

Graphic Creation and Editing – Adobe Photoshop – http://www.adobe.com

Flash Creation – Macromedia Flash – http://www.macromedia.com

PDF Creation – Adobe Acrobat – http://www.adobe.com

Demonstration Creation – Macromedia Captivate (formerly known as RoboDemo) - http://www.macromedia.com/software/captivate/

Video Capture – Cam Studio – What a great tool this is for capturing video and sound on your PC and creating avi, flash or other popular formats. It was distributed for free by RoboHelp until they were purchased by macromedia. If you search for it you’ll still find downloads around. Camtasia Studio is another good option - http://www.techsmith.com/products/st...asiaStudioHome

CD Auto Run Software – AutoRun - http://www.typhoonsoftware.com/unlock.htm - makes it easy to create self launching interactive CDs

PHP Source Code Protection – Source Guardian - http://www.sourceguardian.com/

Icon Creation – Icon Cool - http://www.iconcool.com/ - if you make any windows exe and need to make nice icons to go with them this is a great tool

I’m looking for two things these days that I haven’t had much luck with. A good low cost web site link checker and a folder synchronization tool for windows. If anyone knows of any good options for this please let me know.

[lastcraft]

Hi...

... a folder synchronization tool for windows.

Why?

yours, Marcus