"Must have" tools

**mx2k** · Mar 31, 2005, 12:05

Dr.L, he was saying that he missed your wonderful comment about jedit on the first page, but someone should reinterate how wonderful a tool it can be =)

**sid egg** · Mar 31, 2005, 12:39

http://img228.exs.cx/img228/1936/ncnevn8qq.gif

Nice and even!

Edit, it breaks the forums so I made it a clicky.

**ghuytro** · Apr 1, 2005, 13:17

For Firefox users, the ViewSourceWith extension is handy. It allows you to right click a web page and choose the application to the view the source with instead of Firefox's built in tool:

link [site: mozilla.org]

**Ren** · Apr 1, 2005, 13:33

A reminds me of
HtmlBar for viewing source.

Also to see exactly whats going back and for IE and a server HttpWatch is indispensable.

**davro** · Apr 1, 2005, 16:08

Hi,

Seems alot of this links to tools are very microsoft based.
Personally i use http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ so here goes with some linux related tools

GEdit = Tabbed Editor http://www.gnome.org/projects/gedit/screenshots.html
MonoDevelop = IDE like ZendStudio http://www.monodevelop.com/screenshots.aspx
Etherape = Graphical network monitor http://etherape.sourceforge.net/images/

**lastcraft** · Apr 1, 2005, 16:35

Hi.

Everyone seem sto be suggesting pretty minor tools now, one by one. As a lot of these tools are covered by other equivalent tools, and some are frankly of diminishing worth, how about people describe their toolsets as that - a set. Tools are like programming practices, they form a web and support each other.

Also worrying is the lack of people mentioning version control. It really is the first step. !00% of people on an "advanced" forum should be using version control. It's the first of the big three: version control, testing and automated builds.

Hm, I feel a poll coming on...

yours, Marcus

**davro** · Apr 1, 2005, 17:18

Totally over looking the very fabric of a sane php development enviroment.

Version Control.
CVS http://www.gnu.org/software/cvs/
Subversion http://subversion.tigris.org/
Arch http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/
...

Testing
SimpleTest http://simpletest.sourceforge.net/
...

Automated builds
Rephlux Continuous Integration http://rephlux.sourceforge.net/
...

Tools usable in a pair programming session.
GEdit = Tabbed Editor linux http://www.gnome.org/projects/gedit/screenshots.html
MozillaFirefox = Browser http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
CRC Cards = Bit of paper/card for class responsibilities and collaborators notes http://c2.com/doc/crc/draw.html
...

**laura2005** · Apr 10, 2005, 05:31

Originally Posted by lastcraft

Hi...

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

.

yours, Marcus

I know by experienceS

but IBM's a big name and very good at marketing it in corporates so I follow

.

Now RUP is valuable but I think it also depends on available tools. And they of course sell tools with RUP unfortunately they are not perfect so the need for consultants continues (hey isn't IBM's business plan targeting more consultancy and less materials). My job has been in some missions to conciliate between these consultants who reason in pure abstraction and the client's programers who want to see concreteness sometimes I felt like I've been taken by the two parties like in a sandwich

**Jonathan** · Apr 11, 2005, 07:45

adoDB: Handles multiple databases, completely OOP with several nice functions such as building UPDATE and SELECT queries with ease. I can run a while loop that builds a SQL statement from an array with data passed through POST.

Dreamweaver MX 2004: For a coder, it's nice to build both W3C complaint HTML templates and code within one environment. What's lacking is basic IDE functionality that what makes Eclipse really nice. I've started looking at Xored (based on Eclipse), but their HTML designer is still not as robust as Dreamweaver yet.

Smarty: Great tool to seperate business logic and presentation layer. Provides greater flexibility with postfilter functions.

XAMPP: Great way to test your programs locally.

Subversion: Great for code versioning. I'm building a Trac like application that will be released soon written in PHP. v1.2 will be released in May, hopefully the "LOCK" methods will play nicely with DMX 2004 so that it's completely integrated.

Other frame works of interest:

Mojavi http://www.mojavi.org/
BinaryCloud http://binarycloud.com/
MVCnPHP http://www.tonybibbs.com/index.php?topic=MVCnPHP
Prado http://www.xisc.com/
Phrame http://phrame.sourceforge.net/
Propel http://propel.phpdb.org/wiki/
Phing http://phing.info/

**laura2005** · Apr 20, 2005, 02:48

Originally Posted by lastcraft

Hi.

Everyone seem sto be suggesting pretty minor tools now, one by one. As a lot of these tools are covered by other equivalent tools, and some are frankly of diminishing worth, how about people describe their toolsets as that - a set. Tools are like programming practices, they form a web and support each other.

Also worrying is the lack of people mentioning version control. It really is the first step. !00% of people on an "advanced" forum should be using version control. It's the first of the big three: version control, testing and automated builds.

Hm, I feel a poll coming on...

yours, Marcus

Well what I would find worrying is people mentioning only version control

It's not really that important to check in / check out versions, what is important is CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT which allows you to trace who, when, why

**jplush76** · Apr 20, 2005, 06:37

Here's a tool that I can't live without anymore... the Venkman Javascript Debugger!
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/

its awesome, having a full fledged run time debugger for javascript makes like alot easier 4 me.

**that_tim_fella** · Apr 22, 2005, 09:48

Text Editor = HomeSite+ (includes TopStyle Lite for CSS)
MySQL manipulation = EMS MySQL Manager Pro

and PHPTriad to make it all do something locally.

**bermi** · Jul 5, 2005, 11:18

I think that nobody mentioned trac, an integrated system for managing software projects, enhanced wiki, a flexible web-based issue tracker and an interface to the Subversion revision control system.

**BerislavLopac** · Jul 5, 2005, 12:58

Originally Posted by bermi

I think that nobody mentioned trac, an integrated system for managing software projects, enhanced wiki, a flexible web-based issue tracker and an interface to the Subversion revision control system.

Trac is really a great concept, and I was excited by it until I saw what is required for its installation. Unfortunately there seems to be no simple way of installing it.

**McGruff** · Jul 5, 2005, 15:49

What about a touch-typing tutor like Mavis Beacon? Anyone who does a lot of typing really ought to learn to touch-type. I can't, but I know I should learn.

**Kilroy** · Jul 6, 2005, 23:33

For any project with multiple programmers... Basecamp.

**Galo** · Jul 7, 2005, 03:06

To start off with any project do NEVER forget the old-school tools like your friendly neigbourhood pencil and paper.

I always start up mocking up use case's on paper, making sure the specifications and requirements are theire in big lines as well.

When finished i move to my computer where i use

Visio
Zend
LeapFTP
Regex coach
TopStyle lite
DW
PS
Flash
PHPMyAdmin

and dont forget to take a look at this new Java based exiting UML editor which i discovered on CEBIT this year http://www.magicdraw.com/

cheers,
Galo

**BerislavLopac** · Jul 7, 2005, 05:04

Originally Posted by Galo

To start off with any project do NEVER forget the old-school tools like your friendly neigbourhood pencil and paper.

Even better: flipchards and whiteboards. Nothing beats them for collaboration, and you can even store the drawings using a digital camera.

**astericks** · Jul 7, 2005, 08:49

Mac OS X DBMS tool: http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/

**KeithT** · Jul 9, 2005, 01:04

I only do casual PHP coding, but I run Linux, with of course a localhost setup, PHP documentation downloaded to my harddrive, phpmyadmin to manage the databases (soon to install vhcs -- cpanel like web app), and Quanta Plus for editing and managing (best application imo). That's all I really need.

**Luke Redpath** · Jul 9, 2005, 03:39

Originally Posted by BerislavLopac

Trac is really a great concept, and I was excited by it until I saw what is required for its installation. Unfortunately there seems to be no simple way of installing it.

I found it really simple to install on Linux - installing it on Windows is a nightmare I'll give you that.

I use Ubuntu which is debian-based so the first step was a simple apt-get install trac, then (using Apache2 here), setting up a new virtual host (trac.mycompany.com) and testing - if all is good you should get a python error (because you haven't set up any trac sites yet).

Next, create your trac enviroment using trac-admin, configure users/permissions and any other settings you need, add a few lines to the apache virtual host config for that enviroment, then you are away.

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