Rob's Blog

Learning to use Zend Framework
Aug 9th 2010 13:08

I've been getting to grips with a bunch of new tools all day. Mainly Windows 7, Zend Framework, Zend Server, NetBeans and GIT.

Windows 7. Yes, I've traited away from the Mac. The simple truth is I can't afford to pay the premium that Apple put on their hardware. Yes, I know it's better. But so is driving a Ferrari, and I can't afford that either. Windows 7 is so much better than Vista that it's really rather impressive. They've not really 'added' much, but Microsoft have managed to streamline a lot of what was already there and somehow remove the ridiculous memory eating that Vista was so good at!

GIT seems to work well from the command line, but all the plugin's and GUI's seem to lack polish. It's very much a Linux tool that's been ported. Still, as far as a repository goes, it pretty much does what it needs to.

Zend Server CE is now running on my laptop so I can develop locally, and I have to admit it was a joy to install and configure. A few minor changes (all improvements) have been made to Apache's treatment of configuration files, and it all feels very at home on Windows (where, in my book, it really shouldn't feel very at home!).

Zend Framework has had by far the biggest learning curve. I think I've just about got to grips with the whole Model View Controller paradigm, but it's quite a challange to think so abstractly. There is so much more code required to write proper object orientated PHP, and I'm not yet convinced that the framework is worth using on smaller applications. Still, the better I get at using it the more I'm sure I will change my mind.

NetBeans is the biggest revelation, why didn't I find this earlier?! It's SO much better than Eclipse and more functional than Coda... yay!