E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

The Zend Framework

The Zend Framework was released a few days ago. This is a PHP5-only web application framework from Zend, "the PHP company." It has been in development for a long time, but if that had a chilling effect on the development of other PHP frameworks, it's hard to see.

I'm going to go straight for my grim conclusion here: I think many of the other PHP web frameworks in development have no long-term prayer against Zend. It's not about technical merits, it's about the business case that Zend is a safer bet than five random guys with a Trac install and a cool logo.

This is kind of too bad, but I don't think PHP is the platform for the next wave of web innovation anyway. It has set its sights on being Serious Enterprise Business and gnawing at Java's ankles, and I think it will probably meet with a lot of success.

Who knows, in three years PHP may be the big bad enterprise technology that everybody loves to hate, and Io on Ice or somesuch will be the hot ticket. I can't wait.

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
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Some related posts: Ruby on Rails 1.0 • TrimPath Junction: a pure Javascript clone of Rails • Locomotive: Rails for OS X • Controller freaks • YAPWF: TurboGears • Django progress • Django, Rails, and PHP • Railing • Everything on Rails • Cake

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