1. Because sometime in the future you might have to go back to the code and fix it. It’s always nice to know what the initial idea was. And with years and years of programming, you now know a better way to do it. If you don’t have the comment, you have to analyze your own code much more thoroughly.
2. If someone else is going to work with your code, it is always nice for them to read your comments. It makes it easier for them to understand the code and to get into it.
3. It can be fun looking at the comments you’ve written. I recently looked over some code I did back in 2005(ish) and here I write: “This part is done in an amazingly stupid way” or what about: “I must do this to keep the string value (line break and some code)Really…????“.
   I posted this on twitter and I got an answer from Frank W. Zammetti (fzammetti): “The person that wrote this is a grade A a**hole… oh wait, it was me!” I wrote that one once.
   I just couldn’t stop laughing.

This is my style of commenting (example in PHP/C/C++/C#-style)
My first line in the file is always the name of the file. This is a habit I’ve grown to use. It is smart when you are editing code in e.g. VI where you not necessary get the name of the file in the titlebar.



// name-of-file.php

Next comes a general description of what the code in the file shall do:

/**
* This file is used to create and edit blog posts
*

Eclipse, Komodo-IDE and NetBeans (And probably other IDEs) supports @todo in the comment. By adding this "tag" you add tasks to your tasks list.
I tend to add tasks in the beginning of the file.

* @todo: This file need some work.
* @todo: Fix the code related to creating blog posts

In the same area I also write out bugs that I have fixed, or tasks that I have completed:

* FIXES:
* 01.01.2010: Fixed a bug related to updating a blogpost
* 17.05.2010: Translated all of the comments from Norwegian to English
*/

(note/suggestion) I wouldn't mind if the IDEs could have a @fixed element that I could add to the end of the line so that the IDE could mark out the task as completed.

Then in the code I can comment like this (note that PHP-example is just as an example here):

// Fixing the string so that it is ready for SQL-input
$string = mysql_real_escape_string($string);

// Creating a string for a dropdown-menu.
foreach ($this as $that) {
$string .= $that;
}


I also sometimes use comments to clear my head or to get a clear overview of the task at hand. This is especially important when you feel that the task is complicated.
An example could be:

/**
* In this section we shall create the tree-view.
* We must remember that all nodes starting with W shall be at the top
* And that we shall mark posts with pictures with a (p) or a small icon
* Also remember that no lines can be longer than 25 characters. Check the left syntax in mySQL...
*/


This is also good practice when you sometimes do not return to the code in a couple of days. An example could be:

/**
* continue here on Monday.
* The idea behind the following section is ... .... .. . . ..
*/


Hope this post regarding commenting your code is of any help for you. If you have any great examples of self criticism in your code, please do post them as comments... (No pun intended)

And I must admit. It is nice to not think about viruses and such, not that this is something that worries me when I am using a computer with Windows installed. It is also nice to have a stable computer that does not show me the blue screen from time to time; and lastly: It is very nice to not reboot every time you have installed a new program or updated your system.

How ever: There are reasons for not using Linux for me anymore:

• I am developing in more than just PHP. I am also doing some C# development for the Windows operating system.
  Yes. I can use Mono for this type of work, but as the .Net framework is more known and better distributed (aka: Installed) on most systems, it is better to use native .Net and use Visual Studio.
  Also. When it comes to PHP-development I am moving from writing directly on the test-web server (aka on the laptop) and in stead write in the defined workspace of the IDE, and then move the code to the test web server. This because I don’t want to clutter my test web server with SVN-directories, nor do I want to accidentally upload SVN-directories to the production web server.
• Better PHP development tools
  If I move back to Windows I can choose from a wide range of programs. Like for instance PHPed or the PHP Delphi plugin which is a Rapid application Development tool. PHPed shall work on Linux under Wine, but I haven’t installed Wine, and I am not sure if I want to install and run wine.
• I need access to a clients network which is using a closed VPN-system.
  My client is using CheckPoint VPN which there was a Redhat (RPM) package for back in the days. Now there isn’t any such thing. And if you search for it, you’ll see that I am not alone here. To fix this I have borrowed a computer from this client which is a tad bit older than this one and quite a lot slower.
• Limitations in Open Source software
  As I am working on a database project that is soon to be launched, I need more than one type of export/import into this one. Currently the importing is CSV-files, but as Excel can export in XML, this is a serious alternative. This is also something that I can instruct partners on how to do. This way I can normalize external data.
  The alternative in Open Office is creating an XSLT document and transforming the sheet. The benefit with this solution is that you have more control on the outcome.
  And it would have been an option if most partners out there used Open Office. They aren’t. They are using MS Office.
  I’ve also read that the XSLT-support in Open Office isn’t really that easy to work with. There are very few messages that shows if something is wrong, and the only way to find out that there is something wrong with the XSLT-document, is that the program freezes. Now that’s user friendly… Not that XSLT document transformation is user friendly to begin with…
• I need accounting software and invoice software that supports Norwegian standards. I have found a Norwegian invoice program, but has failed to find accounting software.
• Quality: I really don’t think that the quality on Open Source software is that great. Yes, it cures and itch – mostly for the developer(s), but that’s pretty much it. (I believe I have written posts regarding the “business”-model behind Open Source Software before, please check).
• Linux based Desktop OS isn’t really that stable.
  I have had a few hard freezes and I have had soft freezes. Hard freezes is where the LEDs on the computer is blinking and everything is either black or frozen. Soft Freezes is where there are parts of the OS that works, while other things have stopped working. Like when I am writing this: The mouse pointer is frozen to the side of the screen – and it is impossible to move it around. So X or Mouse support has frozen… sigh.

As I am looking at my list now, there are less reasons for me to stay on Ubuntu and more reasons for me to move back to Windows. But I’ll give this a few more weeks and months and then we’ll see what happens.

That is, is, is … awesome (Again, I never really believed that I would ever write this in a blog post)

There are of course cons related to .Net web application development.
Configuring the IIS-server isn’t quite understandable, and you cannot go to the IIS.conf file to see what has been done to it in order to make it work like it is. So I would give Apache the victory here!

I have been working/maintaining/fixing on some websites that has been depended on .dll-files. One we recently had to upgrade from 1.1 to 3.5, and making it work under 3.5 wasn’t all that understandable – well at least not for me – but then again, I am still a Noob when it comes to .Net Web Application Development.
Again, I’ll give PHP the advantage here as it is much easier to understand what has been done. the PHP.ini-file and such is easy to either go through or diff against the default PHP.ini to spot differences.

But for rapidness, especially when you start a project from scratch – ASP.Net gets one point.

This is where PHP must be heading. Yes it is easier to start with PHP. Or at least that is what used to be the best argument to start programming your dynamic web solution with PHP. But dragging, do some coding, and so on, will mean that .Net development will narrow the gap between PHP and ASP.Net.

According to websites PHP is still the most popular language to use when it comes to web development.
A search on PHP and asp on GoogleFight returns:
301.000.000 (301 million) results for PHP and 98.800.000 (98.8 million) results for asp
ASP.net returns 30.400.000 (30.4 million) hits.

TIOBE Programming Community Index for January 2010 tells us that PHP is on the rise. It’s on third place behind Java and C, but in front of C++. VB is in fifth while C# is on 6th place. I believe I would put those two together to get some ASP.Net figgures.
The two/three languages below:
3 5 PHP 10.071% +1.19% A
5 4 (Visual) Basic 7.354% -1.81% A
6 6 C# 5.767% +0.16% A

PHP is still my language of choice, but I will follow ASP.Net closely. .Net 2.0 is dated and so I need a book for 3.5… (and probably 4.0) to see what’s new.

• Komodo
• Aptana
• Eclipse / With Aptana “plugin”
• Netbeans
• Round up

Komodo

This IDE is created by Active State and in their commercial text they write: «Code smarter and faster with Komodo IDE 5, the award-winning professional development environment for dynamic languages and open technologies.»
You maybe code smarter, but faster? I found the autocompletion in Komodo slow – at least for PHP which is the only language I have used it for.
Also: It was impossible to create a new Subversion repository for the project you were working on. The whole Subversion deal was one of the reasons for me to stop using this IDE – which I have paid $295 for since I liked it in the beginning.
I also became annoyed of the things disappearing when I started up the IDE. I have reported this to Active State and it seamed to be related to the HTML-renderer of that first page.
For the price of this IDE I am also expecting more. I would expect it to be able to do drag’n drop web development, but Active State has no plans on implementing such a feature.
Yes. I have asked.
Last thing: The application is still in version 5.2 and has been so for quite some time. And I don’t know if development has continued.
Up

Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio is based on Eclipse and I started to like this one in the beginning. I also paid $99 for the license for this software.
Six months later Aptana INC decided to let the application be free – and the only things you’ve really had paid for was SFTP-support.
That annoyed me so much that I decided to remove it. Also: Auto completion in this application wasn’t as good as I expected.
Overall an OK IDE, but I think it’s to much to call it a Studio.
Up

Eclipse

I decided to use Eclipse after it became available in the Ubuntu Repo, and after som intallation of needed packages I can now do PHP development in the IDE. Since Aptana is based on Eclipse I didn’t expect any big surprises and I didn’t get any either.
I did how ever hope that the Code complete that comes with the PHP Development Package would speed things up. Nope. It could be that my Dell D420 is not as powerful as it should for these types of applications.
Up

Netbeans

I tried Netbeans from Sun (now Oracle?) after I saw a videocast from Zend where one of the developers used the IDE. It seemed as if Codecomplete was fast, which it might be, but I didn’t find it as fast as I want it to. Nor was it stable. Sometimes code complete worked, and sometimes not.

I didn’t use it as long, and it has been a while since I tried it, and so I don’t remember if it had SVN support or how it worked. Maybe I should install it again.

I got a suggestion that I should try the latest 6.8 version, and so I have. And NO, I don’t like Netbeans. Word Wrap is lacking, and dialogs are not native. Also some of the fields in dialogs are way to small.
Up

Round up

I don’t want to conclude here. All IDEs works and does their job as expected. Codecomplete is a feature I am a big fan of, and sometimes it worked in these applications, sometimes not.
It could be reasons for this, and so I shall dig through my code and see why it happens. Maybe start with a clean application just to see how things are working.
I’ve written it before, and I’ll write it again. All IDEs must step it up a notch. The future is in building websites in WYSIWYG then adding advanced code like PHP, Perl, Ruby or Python. That way designers and developers can work hand in hand.

It’s the idea behind Visual Studio – an application that lives up to the word Studio – not like Aptana Studio.
Of the ones available as Linux tools, Eclipse is the one that has the greatest potential. Not only can you code in almost any of the languages available, but you can also create Android applications.
It’s quite an impressive piece of software.

I know that Zend Studio is now based on Eclipse, and I hope that with the Zend Framework it can be possible to start doing Drag’n drop development in Eclipse / ZS.
With a price tag of whooping $575 (Euro 399) Drag’n Drop is a feature I very much expect to see. It’s the most expencive IDEs of them all out there, so it should stand out more than it does at the moment.

I hope to see that in the future, maybe even in 2010 although that is a bit optimistic.

Coming from the Windows side of things and being used to Visual Basic (I probably have the 1.0 floppy somewhere if I start looking!!!), Delphi and now lately Visual Studio (It might seem weird that I’ve just recently been introduced to VS, but I have mostly coded in PHP and classic ASP for the last 8-10 years, and then you sort of don’t need VS), I have been accustomed to drag’n drop + double click to add code to the application. I have yet to write an application for Linux, but I have made a few attempts. My first attempt included being introduced to the Glade application which is/was used to create the layout of the application – aka GUI. Then you write the code in another IDE.

This was (hm) a while back – not writing year here, but I can write years if you like…

The Good

With the introduction of MonoDevelop, Real Basic and QT we don’t have to open one application to create the GUI and a second one to attach code. It is all being done (and taken care of) in one development tool. This is, and I’d like to emphasize on this, the best way to write applications (my humble opinion – hey my blog!). The tool and GUI-designer is implemented and things can and should work smoothly. Also: You don’t have to learn two applications and probably also two “languages” – although I am all for having knowledge in as many programming languages as you can. I can now code in C#, VB.Net, Delphi/Pascal (although somewhat very rusty), Perl (briefly, by no means an expert and more or less a novice  and PHP (if that is considered a programming language).

I have tested QT, MonoDevelop and Real Basic. As I am no C++ developer (but I wish I was!), QT would be my choice of  development tool to use when learning that language. Real Basic has only been tested a few times after listening to Bryan Lunduke (Linux Action Show / Computer Action Show) speaking highly of it. MonoDevelop is as of now the tool I use when I’m now doing some C# stuff on Linux and trying to get the grips of  GTK-development.

I do want to check out Python as a programming language as I have heard so much positive things regarding the language. But writing an application where you use Glade + editor of choice is not something I want to do. Not in 2009/2010. I think I’ve read somewhere that it can be possible to write applications in Python using QT, but I haven’t spent to much time getting this to work – as I don’t know that much Python – yet…

One thing though: By using Glade and similar applications you separate logic with presentation which can/is a good thing. But there are also drawbacks to this way of designing and developing applications. More below.

The “Bad”

I have also tried Android development in Eclipse, and it seems promising. But again: If the only way to create a GUI is to write XML-code, then no thanks. To the developers of development tools out there: Look at the calendar. It is – as of writing – saying December 19 in 2009, start creating drag’n drop applications.

This also goes for creating Web applications (as this is the new term for web pages). DreamWeaver alternatives for Linux? Not even close. Visual Studio + PHP under Linux. Nope.

Two years ago I attended a class to get a jumpstart on C#-development. And I was shown how to create a zebra-striped/styled datalist in VS. The teacher showed me how to do this in three ways: the first one without using any code, the second way with some code and placing the “plugin” and the last way by creating the object and so on.

So let’s say you have never programmed anything in your entire life. Which one would you start using to get going and to be inspired to code more? First one, most likely – until you understand that it gives you some restrictions and/or problems down the line. But at least you get inspired. You get the application out there to impress friends/boss/yourself quickly.

There are of course drawbacks to this type of applications. No one can argue that DW and such applications creates optimized code. And I am my self a user of Notepad-like applications to generate PHP-code – that is – I have moved from Bluefish to Aptana/Eclipse. Sometimes I do wish it was a faster way to create forms than the way I do it now – even though it doesn’t take that much time.

I have checked out Zend Studio – which is now an Eclipse plugin, and I was hoping that ZS would be the way to do the same thing for PHP under Linux/Windows. Nope – not as I have found out – yet. It saddens me. Especially because they market this as “Zend Studio 7.1 is the next generation of our professional-grade PHP application development environment. It has been designed to maximize developer productivity by enabling you to develop and maintain code faster, solve application problems quickly and improve team collaboration.”

I don’t think they are close to be a next generation professional-grade PHP application development environment. This is 2009 (soon 2010) and 7.1 should’ve had drag’n drop datalists, form creation in place. I hope, how ever, that ZS will in the end turn out to become a drag’n drop Rapid Web Application development (RWAD – Coined by Trond Husø on December 19, 2009!!!) tool for PHP.

My Dream!
Maybe, in 2010(not likely) we could have a universal Rapid Application Development tool to be used to develop Linux applications that supports Python, Java, Perl, C, C++, PHP (if you want to!), C# and any other programming languages you can think of. And most importantly: The RAD tool should work out of the box. No spending much time on plugins and so on.

Some links:
There are some RAD applications out there and here are some links:
Python
Dabo

Visual Basic

Gambas

MonoDevelop

Pascal

Lazarus

(more links to come – obviously… – please do suggest some!)

Another discussion regarding development under Linux:

Putting the Squeeze on Python Application Development

(more links to come)

Quite a few Open Source software on the Linux platform is in version 0.x.x., and after listening to the episode I started to wonder why. Why is InkScape in version 0.47, when I think that the software is way beyond the 1.0 mark?
Reason: The specifications for the 1.0 version is to extensive. I think the developers of InkScape should change the version number to 4.7 which is a more likely number.

So when is a software ready to be called 1.0? Depends on the software really, but as a general rule I think that the main features for the program should be in place. I’ve long wanted to create a photo organization software based on the idea and design of FotoStation – the defacto standard among Media companies in Norway – and other countries. So when would I say that this software is in version 1.0?
Let’s analyze: This will going to be a photo organization software, so the program needs to be able to import and index photos. You should also be able to view thumbnails of the photos and when clicking on one picture, you should be able to view a bigger version of it. That’s pretty much a raw description of a 1.0 version of the software. It does what’s intended. It’s the core version. This is the self-tested, friends-tested version. And it is the 1.0 version of the software.

So then I publish it. And maybe some will start using it and I get bug reports in return. I start fixing the bugs and you are in version 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and so on. Then I’ll probably get feature requests. I will consider these closely. And I start building up a roadmap for version 1.5 (maybe), 2.0, 3.0 and so on.

I think the Linux distributions should start creating some guidelines when it comes to version numbers. And I think they also should start having a policy that no versions below 1.0 should be in our repository. Those that are below 1.0 should be in the development-repository.