Coding
First Beta of Microsoft’s Visual Studio LightSwitch
Microsoft released the first beta of the Visual Studio LightSwitch IDE earlier this week. It’s designed to allow non-programmers create business applications and allow programmers of various levels to create applications quickly. It simplifies the process and allows doing many common functions like coding a database interaction to be done from a visual perspective. If you need to code anything, you can choose between Visual Basic .NET or C#. The overall goal seems to be allowing one to focus on the business rules and policies while creating an app, not the syntax.
Experiences with Three PHP Frameworks in Brief
I’m by no means a PHP developer but I do like to tinker around with it on the side for fun projects on my own and very rarely if something comes up at work. (A lot of my work involves filling in the gaps. Why just last week I was a Visual Basic 2008 programmer again.) Before embarking on my next project, I decided to check out some of the PHP frameworks I’ve heard about to look into learning those for all the benefits that a framework provides. Over the past few nights, I’ve tried CodeIgniter, Yii, and Kohana.
404 Page Not Found, but Kids Found
I randomly landed onto a page that presented a novel idea, making 404 Page Not Found errors more useful by showing information about missing children. Since I got distracted between opening the page and actually reading it, I had to sit for a while and think of how I got there or if it was a message from above. Once I divined that it was indeed a page that I had opened earlier, I was very intrigued by the concept and thought it was worth finding out more about it.
Hidden Easter Eggs in Software and The Security Implications
With Easter yesterday, it got me thinking about Easter Eggs. Are you aware that there could be hidden little gems in the software you use every day? Some applications, video games, DVDs, and others include little intentional tidbits of code that people might randomly stumble into that shows off some cool feature, display the credits, or are part of some inside joke by the developers.These tidbits are called Easter Eggs and the practice has been around for a long time but at the same time it might be a dying habit for security reasons.
Aptana Studio – An IDE for Web Development
Aptana Studio is an IDE, Integrated Development Environment, that specializes in making it easier for web developers to organize and find resources for their projects. Microsoft’s Visual Studio and Eclipse are two popular examples of IDEs. Aptana provides a lot of the same type of functionality the Visual Studio does, but specializing in web development. Aptana, now at version 2.0.2 (though I did most of my developing in version 1.5), natively handles PHP, HTML, Javascript, and more web app languages.
Friendstaurant – A PHP/MySQL Exercise
I was recently inspired to refresh my PHP and MySQL abilities, so I assigned myself a little bit of a programming challenge. Part of my inspiration also stemmed from never wanting to choose a place to go out to eat with friends, so I crafted the challenge to create a web application that would allow me to randomly choose a restaurant that would please all members attending. What I came up with in the end, I like to call Friendstaurant.
Friendstaurant allows you to:
- Add Friends and state any restaurants they dislike (or don’t want to go to)
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