Trent Richardson
Being a curious mind kills a developer with a timeline. This is half of my everyday battle. The other half is the financial situation to afford many tools we all love(Photoshop, ColdFusion, Apple). So we’re stuck with a small budget but need to perform at our best. This is why I love Open Source software. My question to other developers is this: What low budget solutions get you through the day creating a website from design to database and everywhere in between?
First off I have to say my current development computer is running Ubuntu and couldn’t be happier with that. My editors are Komodo Edit and gEdit. I will use CFeclipse when doing ColdFusion, but thats normally my 8-5 job. Since I’m not a stand out designer I use strong CSS and fewer images, but Gimp does most of my image work. I look to possibly buy Fireworks though as soon as I’m able.(I want to learn Photoshop, but I’m more comfortable with Fireworks). For databases I depend on MySQL, but since they were recently purchased by Sun, I am now exploring Postgres since I’ve always heard great things about them and I’ve been learning Django which also recommends Postgres.
Programming languages is never set in stone. Although very fluent in ColdFusion, I can’t afford a license, and no Open Source CF solution is up to par just yet so I have been doing most of my work with PHP. Django looks promising with the exception that a lot of their framework is changing(new forms), and server set up can be a booger. For javascript I like them all! jQuery, Mootools, Prototype, etc.. they all have their uses.
So a quick recap:
- Ubuntu
- Komoto Edit/Gedit
- Gimp
- MySQL/Postgres
- PHP/Django
Again these are my “at home” tools on a limited budget. What tools get you through the day?
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4 Responses
John Mark
28|Apr|2008I know this post is nearly 3 months old, but I just stumbled upon your site and have been reading along to see if I can glean any useful tips. I thought listing my budget tools would be fun, so here they are!
My distro of choice for now is Gentoo (I’ve been flirting with SourceMage, but haven’t gotten it up and running yet [no time really]). For writing the code I started using Geany just last week, it’s an excellent editor! I used to use bluefish, but Geany has stolen my heart! (speed, convenience, bells and whistles, project management, color selector). For artwork I use Gimp & InkScape. Inkscape has really simplified logo and site design for me, I draw what I want in InkScape, then export to PNG and do resizing and some effects in GIMP. MySQL so far is all I have used on the DB front, I’ve looked at Postgres but never actually used it, I have read some articles and such which say version 8 is making Postgres look rather mature, and has brought a lot of stability as well, so it may be time to start looking into it again. as for Server-side Scripting, PHP I think is the new commodity language, and who am I to break with defacto standards? I basically learned programming with PHP, now I am starting to branch out and learn other languages, but for server side scripting, PHP is all I have tried.
* Gentoo
* Geany
* Gimp/InkScape
* MySQL
* PHP
trent
28|Apr|2008Hey John,
Glad you stopped by. I generally post things I pick up here and there that I find useful, normally nothing groundbreaking tho.. I’ve not used inkscape much but would like to play with it more. As far as Postgres I’ve used it for nothing more than play so far, everything production has been MySQL, but I’m waiting on the opportunity do use it. Not sure what the future holds for PHP considering the frameworks gaining steam, but I find PHP to be the easiest to get up and running.
I just took a look at Geany and it looks pretty nice, clean simple with plenty of features. Definitely going to give it a go.
Derek
30|Oct|2009I know this post is now more than a year old, but I am wondering where you are with Django now that the release is fully stable. For me, although I have just started with it, its clearly a league above and beyond PHP and other tools that I was using. Using Python for everything (including server side scripting, small programs etc.) also has major benefits.
trent
30|Oct|2009Hey Derek,
I have slowed down on my own work and since started subing out work through an all PHP company who uses cakephp. I don’t get to play as much with django anymore, but i do miss it and I think it is a more complete framework. And I agree with you that python has major perks being able to use it for so many different tasks.
The only downfall I saw with it is that it is so powerful the learning curve is greater than that with many php frameworks, though just to pick up the basics are pretty straight forward.
I do miss one thing that with zend and code ignitor frameworks the wealth of “utilities” like ftp, image manipulation, file, and email helpers (unless django has added these since I’ve had a chance to play with it) These are everyday tools that always come in handy in my opinion, although I do understand the concept of the framework is to help structure your code..