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Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:41 pm
by Eran
How would Zend benefit this project over symfony? How would Zend decrease development time over symfony?
From my experience, they are both on equal terms as far as source-code quality is concerned (though I like the ZF coding standards more). I think it's more about using our available expertise to the best effect - I personally have a lot of experience with ZF, and I know there are others here with similar experience. How many of us have experience with Symphony?
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 8:25 pm
by Benjamin
I posit that Symfony is a far more advanced and more suitable starting point for this project. My reasoning includes decreased development time, better caching and template subsystems (which is needed due to the hardware we are working with), it's ability to pre-write base classes for database objects and forms, built in unit testing and numerous other reasons.
Please read
this article which does a side by side comparison of Symfony to Zend when writing the same application.
I do have to disagree that Zend and Symfony both have high quality code. If I were to give Symfony an A, I would give Zend a C+/B-. There are many improvements that could be made to the Zend code. I'm refering to interfaces, methods and algorithms used in the code base.
I also disagree that familiarity with one framework over another is a valid argument. Both frameworks make use of MVC and hence finding your way around the codebase should not be a problem. If one were to say that we should write this entirely in procedural because that is what we all know and are familiar with it would not be considered as a realistic comment.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:08 pm
by Eran
I've read the article you provided. The writer was comparing software he was well familiar with (symphony) with something he only has basic knowledge of (ZF), and was also somewhat biased. Basing conclusions on the tutorial code (which granted, is not good) is not a good base for comparison.
I have some familiarity with Symphony, having considered it for one of my recent projects. There are some conventions there I don't like (some coding standards that deviate from the PEAR format so common in most libraries) and I personally am against ORMs as they are somewhat inflexible and require learning a new DSL (I use the Data Gateway pattern predominantly in my projects).
But all those grievances are relatively minor.
I also disagree that familiarity with one framework over another is a valid argument. Both frameworks make use of MVC and hence finding your way around the codebase should not be a problem. If one were to say that we should write this entirely in procedural because that is what we all know and are familiar with it would not be considered as a realistic comment.
On the contrary, I think this is
the key point. Comparing it to procedural programming is apples to oranges, since its a completely different methodology. We're talking about similar projects that implement the same patterns in slightly different ways and have somewhat differing conventions. If more people are familiar / experienced with one or the other it could very well save significant time on this project, both getting up to speed and helping others familiarize themselves with the platform. Most of us have also built our own stack on top of our chosen framework (helpers, base classes etc) which can be utilized to further speed up the process.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:31 pm
by Benjamin
Well that was my 2 cents. I'm not going to push it any further. I do genuinely feel that symfony would be a much better choice.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:42 pm
by Eran
would you be reluctant to work on the project if ZF would be chosen?
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:47 pm
by Benjamin
I wouldn't say reluctant, but I wouldn't be as excited about working on it or what the end result would be.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:24 am
by Eran
Do you have significant experience developing with ZF? cause in my opinion it's the best framework available.
Regardless, the end source should be as framework independent as possible, so it could be ported without much effort to any MVC based framework.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:45 am
by Benjamin
No I don't however I have studied it. I can certainly understand why many developers gravitate towards it. It's very popular and used for all sorts of different projects. Once you get familiar with it, you're likely to stick with it.
This is why I very carefully evaluated all the different frameworks before choosing one. I studied the documentation, downloaded and reviewed the code and read the tutorials. I can see that there definitely is more code writing involved with Zend as compared to Symfony, especially considering the database models.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:47 am
by Jonah Bron
pytrin wrote:I just think that using a framework might alienate people who aren't familiar with it
Well, some would alienated if we were forced to start everything from scratch. this would probably mean the project will be three to four times as long as otherwise. and there the other benefits, as I've said in the beginning and Darhazer mentioned too.
Everybody not familiar with a framework should consider this a great chance to learn how to use one, and especially since he'll be working with people with a lot of experience with it. you get to find out what the hoopla is all about

Excellent point. This is a great learning opportunity
On a side note, Ollie Saunders,
here, suggested a label system for categorizing threads, something like Gmail labels. I think this is wonderful idea. It gives more freedom in deciding what your question or comment is related to.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:34 am
by Eran
Stack overflow uses something similar, which works well. They also have a fuzzy search on thread titles to prevent duplicates. Both could be very useful features
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:48 am
by Jonah Bron
Hey, would it be cool to make it allow OpenID? (that's a real question, not an expression)
I've never been anywhere that took it, so I've never used it.
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:57 am
by Eran
I think having an API that allows integration of separate social profiles (including openID) would be great. People could then develop those as separate plugins
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 2:02 pm
by Jonah Bron
Another thing that would be cool, would be sub-moderator permissions. Like, suppose you've been on the forum a while, and you are a trusted user. An administrator can then give you permission to, say, move a post to a more appropriate forum. After a while, you've been around longer, you get something more advanced, like the ability to edit posts. That sort of thing.
I'd say make it automatic, after 1000 posts or something, but there might be potential problems there. Or maybe not?
The more power
responsible, trusted, proven individuals have, the easier it is on the moderators, and the better the forum

Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:43 pm
by Darhazer
Jonah Bron wrote:Another thing that would be cool, would be sub-moderator permissions. Like, suppose you've been on the forum a while, and you are a trusted user. An administrator can then give you permission to, say, move a post to a more appropriate forum. After a while, you've been around longer, you get something more advanced, like the ability to edit posts. That sort of thing.
I'd say make it automatic, after 1000 posts or something, but there might be potential problems there. Or maybe not?
The more power
responsible, trusted, proven individuals have, the easier it is on the moderators, and the better the forum

What about 1000 lame questions... or just 800, but all useful posts

By the way, just to show that post-based reputation sux, a friend of mine posted 700 posts in a forum, in one night, while the moderators were sleeping
On the same topic, on another forum trusted users have the ability to disapprove (make invisible for regular users, but not delete) posts and topics. In this way they remove spam as it arrives, moderator then deletes the post, but if someone removes posts which should not be removed, moderators can restore the post
Re: DN Forum project - development process and standards
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:45 pm
by Eran
I think reputation can work if implemented correctly (again, check out stack overflow's system). All of those features are nice to have, but not really core features - they can be added after the basic product is complete in my opinion. We should probably start a new thread on a list of features for the core forum system.