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I am hoping this doesn't get flagged as subjective since everyone's idea of "good" can be different. However, I know that you know what I mean, so, instead of flagging this question, feel free to edit the subject if you think it could be presented in a more objective manner. This is also not a duplicate of a good tutorial for .Net development with MVC, spring.net and NHibernate.
I come from WebForms and need to learn MVC. I came upon this tutorial on MSDN which has been great for understanding the basics of the MVC design pattern. However, it's just enough to teach someone the bare minimum so that they have everything they need to know to build a rudimentary ASP.NET MVC application. From what I've seen, the methods illustrated there aren't exactly what I'd put in a professional, enterprise solution which is exactly what I am about to start working on. I'd like to jump straight from the basics to advanced development, so I am interested in a tutorial/guide that has achieved popularity for being a solid resource for MVC development and best practices.
I realize that this question could have multiple answers, only one of which can be selected. However, there's still the upvote system, so answerers can still get points and the upvotes will still serve as indicators for helpful answers which is really what SE is all about.
I think a good starting point, it would be to check the www.asp.net site. it's certainly a good place to start. There would you find many tutorials for your purpose.
Furthermore, if you are about to buy a book, check PRO ASP.NET MVC 4 by Adam Freeman, http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-MVC-Adam-Freeman/dp/1430242361/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387461608&sr=8-1&keywords=Pro+ASP.NET+MVC.
It's really a masterpiece.
It's been a while since I've looked at it, but NerdDinner helped me out when I was getting started -
http://nerddinner.codeplex.com/
http://nerddinner.com/
I'd like to jump straight from the basics to advanced development, so I am interested in a tutorial/guide that has achieved popularity for being a solid resource for MVC development and best practices.
In my opinion, using a framework in enterprise level requires deep knowledge of every part of it. why a component/class is designed, what is the purpose of it, how do we use it, what's the best practice, etc.
In this way I have found the Programming Microsoft ASP.NET MVC by Dino Esposito very helpful. The book's aim is to explain the mechanics of the framework and effective ways to use it.
I am working on a presentation about RoR. It's looking good except I cannot really find anything for a "Problems" section. There seems to be none. :)
Particularly I am interested in:
What issues are there with maintainability/management when multiple developers are involved in large-scale RoR project?
What specific considerations are there for developers on such large-scale projects using dynamically typed languages versus statically typed languages?
Why might RoR not be suitable for large-scale projects?
I could not find anything on this googling the Internet. I would like to hear your thoughts about these points?
Thank you,
Arkadiy
I'm certain you can find a lot of this on the 'net, but I'm happy to oblige.
Maintainability: Ruby and Rails are all about creating more maintainable code at the expense of a little performance. That's why Ruby is a dynamic language in the first place. As far as developers/teams are concerned, Rails is great for creating and maintaining code that is easy to understand and maintain.
Dynamic vs Static: From the perspective of a development team, static languages have a the unique advantage of being very explicit. There isn't magic to confuse new developers, and there should be little work in terms of chasing down ghosts (in theory, anyways). That advantage is quickly outweighed by the ability of a dynamic language to really take advantage of OOP and get started developing quickly.
Suitability: I can't think of any good reasons. It's test-driven, proven, and extremely well designed. It was made to do the job, so it doesn't surprise me that this is the case. :)
Most RoR developer team works on MAC in my experience.
Using git or svn for version control. Most use TextMate or Komodo.
Special with Komodo Pro you can use it well in teams.
A good svn client there is Versions
I didn't worked in bigger teams then 5 developers, that isn't large scale I think :) But the framework itself is much easier to handle like most other I have seen. Mostly used in Scrum-Teams but if yo have a good organisation I don't see any disadvantage using RoR in large teams.
The code documentation tools are handy, splitting the models, controllers and views up in different sections for team members shouldn't be a big deal and setting up test servers with nightly builts is very easy.
We use RoR in linux and windows environments and have very good productive experience made with it. Technical it is as scaleable as other large frameworks, with sql_sessions and mem_cache you can setup easy a server farm to run it for thousands or millions of users.
So imho: It is capable for any size of team.
For scalability, if twitter can doit so i think you can do it too.
And Maintainability, like in any other programming language, you need use some kind of versions control, svn or git.
I want to learn a framework that promotes good programming practices and is respected by the programming community.
However, I also want a framework that I can use for a day job.
Which one would you recommend?
This question comes from my experience of learning the basics of Django because it was highly acclaimed by developers on Stack Overflow and Hacker News. However.. there's hardly any jobs in my area (NYC) that are asking for Django developers.
As a long-time ASP.NET guy, I've recently gone through a similar decision process to figure out what other web frameworks I should try. Here's what I learned so far which may apply to your case too:
framework/platofrm choices (and hence job opportunities) are highly regional-- the Bay Area job market differs alot from what you'll find in NYC, Chicago, Montreal, or London. Look at local job listings (craigslist and indeed are good places to start) to get a good sense at what's in demand.
similarly, usage varies alot based on the size and type of company. if you want to get a job in a large company, Spring MVC and ASP.NET MVC may be your best bets. In small companies, DJango and (especially) Rails seem to be on the rise.
usage also sometimes varies by industry. for example, many HR apps seem be to .NET based, while financial/banking apps seem to favor Java. if you want to work in a particular industry, check out what up-and-coming companies in that industry are using.
when investing your scarce time in learning something new, favor technologies which are on the upswing of the adoption curve (e.g. Rails) rather than frameworks with wider adoption which may not be growing as fast. Also be wary of very early or niche frameworks which may not ever gain wide adoption.
the one common thread between most (or almost all) frameworks gaining in popularity is that they're MVC frameworks and rely heavily on a solid understanding of REST. Learning those concepts in depth is a good idea.
before deciding to invest a lot of time in one framework, gain a basic understanding of several of them, so you can get a reasonable sense of what you like and don't about each-- and so if you end up applying for a job using a framework you haven't learned, at least you'll be able to talk intelligently about it.
If you focus on what you enjoy, you'll be more motivated to learn it. For example, personally I found Rails (regarless of employment opportunities) more interesting than Spring or Django, so I decided to focus on Rails first. Others may have different impressions-- follow your programmer instincts. That said, there are often few jobs using technologies you find fascinating, so try to strike the right balance: technology you like that many companies are actually hiring people to use!
once you answer the basic "what framework" question, there are many more questions lurking, including picking a javascript framework, validation framework, an ORM, etc. Don't worry too much about those choices yet-- when starting, just pick the default implementation for your framework. But as you get more advanced, the same argument about frameworks also hold for those other things-- e.g. it's useful to know a few ORMs.
Personally, I decided on this approach:
continue building stuff in what I knew best (ASP.NET) but transition all work to ASP.NET MVC, where I can better understand MVC and REST concepts which apply cross-platform
learn JQuery (again, platform neutral)
blow off the ORM choice alltogether for now-- too many other things to worry about
build a few projects in Rails, which is the framework I see used most in the newer SF-Bay-Area startups I've been looking at
learn the basics (e.g. read a book or two, try a few samples) about Python/Django, Java/Spring, and Groovy/Grails.
I've encountered real projects at cool, small companies using Django, Ruby on Rails and (eiuw!) even Zope. .NET is for teletubbies - I've only ever heard of it being used by big corporations that don't know better.
I would say that knowing two or three is better than knowing one that is widely used because you will gain a better understanding of how it works as a concept. For instance if you've only used Java, there is something probably missing in your understanding of OOP, because you're pigeon-holed into thinking about it in one way. If you already know Django though you Spring would probably be a good compliment to that.
i'd probably say ASP.NET MVC. I always see lots of .NET jobs around and this seems to be a solid framework which i think in fact powers all the stackoverflow family. As a PHP developer i must also make a mention of Zend Framework which is used by a number of big sites including bbc.co.uk and is now frequently mentioned in advertisements for PHP jobs.
I want to learn a framework that promotes good programming practices and is respected by the programming community. However, I also want a framework that I can use for a day job.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but those two desires tend to conflict. IMHO most business managers tend to go for (ugly) rapid development on top of CRMs or other higher-level 3rd party codebases. Building elegant websites from the ground up mostly happens in startups, or true web companies where the website is the sole product. There are not that many of those companies; and many of those that seem to fit are actually a mess on the inside, i.e. due to time pressure, messy legacy code and many other reasons you often don't get to write according to "good programming practices" anyway.
I agree with Kaleb Brasee that Java and .NET are the two main platforms when job availability is a priority.
Every job market is unique, so look at job openings in your area, or call a handful of recruiters and ask what they see a need for / could easily place you in a junior position for. What I'm seeing is that Microsoft Sharepoint is in demand, and a few other regional CMS'es are in demand (in Denmark I see Sitecore regularly).
I think ASP.NET MVC 2.0 together with MVC Areas and ASP.NET Dynamic Data will have a good story, a good solution, for many of those bosses who want rapid development. And I think the resulting code could be quite okay, or at least not bad compared to many of the "CMS beaten into something else" sites that exist. But this is a brand new thing for the .NET platform, and it will need to be sold to the decision makers first...
Bottom line: If you want job security first and foremost, then look at large CMS's like Sharepoint, and work on other technologies in your spare time. Optionally you could take a job at a startup / a web company later; but look before you leap.
Have you tried Spring MVC? Many companies do use Java for web-apps (or .NET) and web service based applications.
Since you mentioned Ruby on Rails, you might want to learn Ruby on Rails. It has got some good programming practices in it and a very well thought architecture. The Ruby community itself have also (in my personal opinion) created very innovative frameworks and highly favor testing and quality. You can see this by the innovative testing framework like Cucumber, webrat, shoulda, coulda, rspec, test/spec. Many startups also uses Rails as their platform, so it should be easier for you to get a job. You can start looking at Working With Rails and 37signals job board. So there is a good ecosystem inside Rails and Ruby community.
But the downside of Rails compare to Django is mainly there are too much magic (less explicit) and the docs is not as good as Django. If you want to get a Django job, try looking at several news site because Django grew up from a newspaper site so it is adopted alot in news based sites.
I would recommend ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails, or Python/Django, they all seem to be popular and successful, and based on the MVC paradigm which is definitely the right tool for the job when it comes to the web.
.NET and Java are by far the 2 largest platforms used by employers, and hence the most in-demand when searching for a job. Java has a few popular frameworks, with JSF, Spring MVC and Struts all seeming to be about equal in demand. I don't use .NET, but from what I've seen, ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC are the major ones.
I would say that most of the frameworks mentioned here promotes good practices. But that doesn't neccesarily mean that the companies using those frameworks are actually following those good practices! In fact most probably aren't. So don't expect too much.
You see, places like Stack Overflow, Hacker News etc. are a great way to connect with people who really care about their craft. Sadly this is a minority. There are millions of programmers in the world. Most of them suck. The code they write sucks. They don't care. They are not interested in improving their skills. They just want to learn the bare minimum required to collect their paycheck, go home, feed the dog, spend some time with the family, watch some TV, go too bed and do it all over again the next day.
Okay that was a bit harsh :) What I'm getting at is that you are probably better off asking this question to some of the managers at the companies where you would like to work. My guess is that most of them will answer .NET or Java. If you are up for a laugh ask them why they chose that particular technology over something else, and see how many buzzwords they throw at you ;)
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I have a boss who is convinced learning Rails is too steep a learning curve and not cost effective from a labor standpoint when straight Ruby running as a CGI app on Apache is available. He is proposing, for our rewrite, that we use straight Ruby w/ no framework rather than Rails (or Merb, Sinatra, etc.) I believe in my heart that this is a bad idea but I'm having trouble putting my case into words. Some ideas I've come up with so far:
Rails promotes better code reuse and better separation of concerns via MVC
A shop running rails will look more attractive to the qualified job seeker, since Rails looks better on his/her resume, is more fun to work with, etc.
(I may be wrong on this one) Rails will have better performance on Passenger because Passenger automatically pools connections to the database where as a handrolled CGI app would have to manage that itself or not at all resulting in worse performance.
Rails is a proven technology, at least certainly more than a handrolled CGI framework
Are there any reasons I'm missing or wrong about? Are there valid tradeoffs I'm not aware of?
There are occasionally good reasons for a company to roll their own framework instead of using a standard Rack-compliant framework. But "Rails has too steep a learning curve" is not one of them.
Doing it brute-force is actually more complex, rather than less. If your boss is really worried about learning curve, he should use the standard framework that has documentation and articles and screencasts and entire hosting companies dedicated to it.
Besides, Rails is dead easy to develop for. I've taught one-day workshops on Rails, and even people who have never programmed before have a working, deployed app by the end of the day. Experienced developers have an even easier time of it.
If your boss doesn't understand Rails, and rather than figure it out, he's giving you this line about Ruby over CGI...be careful. Technology left him behind 15 years ago, and he's no longer qualified to make technical decisions.
He should be moved into marketing without delay.
Does your boss have any reasons for his conviction? Other than "a feeling"? What are his real concerns - you won't have much success in changing his mind until you have worked out what his underlying concerns are. Don't be surprised if they turn out to be substantially different to what he's currently saying. He may have an irrational fear of Danes, for example.
Do you have any concrete reasons for disagreeing?
As a boss, I wouldn't be too swayed by the reasons you list so far: good design/coding practices don't need a framework, recruitment isn't your concern, performance optimisation? Don't do it? How more proven than CGI? (He might say, not me: I drink the Rails Kool-aid every day).
Is he technical in a current sense? I mean, will he be involved in coding the rewrite? If so, might he be open to a challenge? Pick a subset of features, buildable in a day or two and try it both ways. If he's not technical, why does he think your opinion is less valid than his?
If he's concerned from a cost/effort perspective, why does he believe that writing less code (and getting thousands of lines of useful, tested framework code for free) is more costly and/or more effortful than otherwise?
Someone else has already mentioned "managing up" - I suggest Googling for resources on ways to work on this.
Are there other members of a team involved? How do they feel?
Martin Fowler famously (in the Agile world at least) said something like "if your organization is not doing what you think it should, you should change your organization". There are at least two ways to read that...
I think a potentially great idea would be to use parts of RoR(Cough ActiveRecord) and roll your own stuff if it simplifies things... I'm not a framework kinda guy, I prefer libraries and a certain degree of code abstraction, which is why I could never be mistaken for a RoR fanboy... but I think getting him to use certain parts of rails, might turn into using all of rails.
Only other point I would like to make is that MVC isn't rails only and if you rolled your own then you could very easily follow that design pattern... besides rolling your own can have benefits... for one thing, you'll know exactly what everything does and how it works, self rolled would mean a leaner system, that you can modify more easily...
My final answer is meet in the middle... Ruby is EXTREMELY powerful in the hands of creative programmers... in fact, I'm in the process of re-rolling my 2 months of rapid "throw-together" php/jquery prototype into a erb/jquery site...
--Thinking out loud--
Not trying to crap on Ruby on Rails... but Rails are what trains go on... and trains do go fast... but they only go where the tracks take you. I'm more in favor of a "Ruby off Road" environment. Less speed, More control.
Using Ruby on Rails versus just Ruby is the difference between buying an automobile and welding a unicycle out of a single tire: both will get you where you are going.
At heart though, I think this is less a technological issue and more an issue of "managing up" as the decision NOT to use Rails is so laughably bad at this point as to be nonsensical.
I think you have two options:
Sort out a way to make it seem as if using Rails was your bosses idea all along. You might say something like: "Boss, I've heard what you've said and so instead of using full blown Rails, I'm just going to use it as a basic framework and do most of the work in straight Ruby."
Take the initiative to do a prototype of the development over a weekend, give your boss something provable that says: "This is clearly the way to go".
Good luck.
It's not a very steep learning curve. You might want to ask him to walk through a tutorial before making a decision.
Also, a big advantage is that RoR is a pretty popular system right now. Installing plugins is trivial, there are many deployment options already figured out--basically a lot of the work that isn't directly "Programming" will probably be easier.
And active record--it's so useful that it's difficult to imagine doing a web/database app without it any more.
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I'm currently learning to program, and I didn't take CS classes so I'm basically starting out on the bottom. I have been putting together code on and off for many years, but haven't really had a good understanding of essential concepts needed for enganging in bigger projects. Object-orientation is an obvious one, and I feel I'm beginning to understand some of the concepts there. Then there is a lot of buzz and methodology, such as MVC, UML, SCRUM, SOLID and so foth and so on.. I've looked at many of these but I'm always stumped as most explanations seem to require some understanding of other concepts.
I want to learn this stuff the "right" way, so where do I begin?
What are the overarching constructs I need to understand that enable me to understand all the underpinnings of software architecture/design/development?
What am I missing?
Are there constructs and concepts that can and should wait until I've cleared the foundation?
The SOLID principles are probably the most important.
From those you understand the motivation behind using a pattern such as MVC, why people think of persistence ignorance as important and so on. They are at the core of the majority of good practices.
Loose coupling, high cohesion.
And as for books, Code Complete covers almost everything at some level, at least.
Software development is a HUGE arena and you should be careful that you don't take on too much too quickly. Unless you're going to go in the direction of functional programming I'd suggest you start off by making sure you fully understand the concepts surrounding OO design and programming as this should be your foundation.
Once you understand that well you'll be able to understand design patterns a lot better and get a feeling for when to use them.
I'd suggest you try out a few languages till you find one you feel comfortable with, personally my favourite language is Ada which is a very pure OO language but in the business world I work in C# which still has a lot of issues but these are outweighed by the more vibrant job market.
I wouldn't worry too much about Scrum at this stage as you need to focus more on your dev skills before worrying about project management.
The most important thing is to work with as much code as possible, download lots of good reference solutions and work through the code till you understand it, and try and keep an eye on the development trends.
If its viable you may also want to considering attending some developer conferences too as these can be very inspirational.
Stay away from ACRONYMS (including those you've listed) and Methodologies(tm). At least in the beginning.
Read good books. Start with this one: Pragmatic Programmer. Learn algorithms and data structures, possibly from Introduction to algorithms by Cormen et al.
Write a lot of code. Practice is more important than anything else.
How to test software with unit tests. Being able to do that will solve 90% of all the other issue automatically since you can't test while they are around.
When you know how to test, you can start on advanced topics like design.
I'd recommend "Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications" by Grady Booch et al. The latest editoin has detailed explanation of concepts of OOAD including MVC, UML (which he invented), and discussions on how to manage the whole process of software development. The second part of the book exemplifies all this by developing 5 sample systems (with sometimes orthogonal aspects from the very core).
Another good one is of course Design Patterns by GoF which will give you an idea of loose coupling, ways to efficient encapsulation and reuse of code, etc
For what concerns the algorithmic part, take any book which is not bounded to a particular programming language. My favorite is Introduction to Algorithms by T. H. Cormen et al, it gets a bit theoretical at some points, but I especially like it when they are proving certain things and not just asking you to believe it.
When you are working with any modern general purpose language, it is probably a good idea to get a handle on patterns (MVC or Model-View-Controller is one). The book by the "gang of four" is a must read for this, or at least research a few and use it as a reference.
clicky
Refactoring is another concept that should be in your arsenal. The book by Martin Fowler on this subject is a very nice read and helps understand the aforementioned patterns better also a little explanation about UML is included.
Can't post more than one hyperlink so...
search on amazon for: Refactoring, Improving the design of existing code
When you want to communicate your designs UML (Unified Modelling Language) is the 'tool' of choice for many people. However UML is large and unwieldy but Martin Fowler (again) has managed to boil it down to the essentials.
search on amazon for: UML Distilled (make sure you get the most recent one)
SCRUM is one of many methods that is used to manage software development groups, I do not think there is much merit in learning that when you are just starting out or on your own. Especially not in detail.
Hope it helps...
PS: SOLID I haven't heard about yet, somebody else has to help you there.
You'd have a decent foundation if you surveyed basic Data Structures, Algorithms, and Algorithms Analysis.
I think that you should start coding real world problems to get a feel for problems in the programming domain.
Then you have a better background to understand why objects are important. Then, after managing objects, you will learn why patterns and OO principles are important.
Personally, I highly recommend the Agile Software Development, by Robert C Martin.
But it may be a long and tiresome read unless you have a feel for the problems being solved. I'm afraid that you may need 500-1000 hours of coding at the minimum before you get an appreciation that the problems being solved are real.
And it probably takes 7000+ hours before you develop an instinctive heart-felt pain from merely reading the problems, making this sort of book become the page-turner that it should be.
Regrettably, many of the sound practices that you should develop are only appreciated after having to live with your code over time. If you just do many excercises and abandon the code afterwards just "because it works", then you are missing out on the greatest pain of all. It is a luxury our industry does not have, and "technical debt" is a very very real and costly to those with large code bases.
I feel kinda silly answering my own question like this.. :) But one valuable resource I've found for learning to write code, is the Euler Project at http://www.projecteuler.net
It's basically a collection of mathmatical problems that you solve by writing your own solution to it. Once you've found the answer to a particular problem, you're allowed access to that problem's forum where different solutions are discussed. I was amazed at how much I was learning in a) solving a challenge, b) reading about other peoples approaches and c) how many programming languages there are out there! :)
The problems start out easy (you can tell by the number of people who's solved them) and progress to harder and harder problems.
Currently I'm working on problem #3, having solved the previous two... I recommend you start chippin' away at them, no matter your level!