TechToolBlog: Ruby, PHP, ASP.NET Job Comparison
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On the TechToolBlog, there's an interesting little post where Tim Boland has taken three of the major web programming languages - PHP, ASP.NET and Ruby - and compared the number of job listings for each in three different places and on three different sites.   Here is a 30 minute research into the jobs out there for RoR compared to Asp.Net & PHP. I searched for the phrases "Ruby on Rails", "PHP", "ASP.NET" and radius of 100 miles from the zip code. There is no doubt some overlap of job posting but this is pretty clear indication of where things are.   The three locations he picked were Cincinnati Ohio (his hometown), New York City and San Francisco and the three sites were Monster.com, Career Builder and Hot Jobs. Overall, the postings varied from place to place - ASP.NET cam out on top in Ohio, ASP.NET in New York and PHP over in San Francisco.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Symfony Project: Book preview: read the Unit Tests chapterWebCheatSheet.com: Secure File Upload with PHPMichi Kono's Blog: The Best PHP Book Out ThereThe Bakery: Basic User Authentication in (CakePHP) 1.2.xPHPBuilder.com: Dynamic XML with PHPDavid Coallier's Blog: Zend_Db Without PDO part #3 (SVN Repository)?Community News: PHPLondon Conference 2007 AnnouncedMatthew O'Phinney's Blog: Overloading arrays in PHP 5.2.0Ilia Alshanetsky's Blog: 5.2.1 RC3 Released for testingJob Posting: Telio Telecom AS Seeks Senior Web Developer (Oslo, Norway)The Bakery: LightTPD and CakePHP setup in subdirectoriesJob Posting: Yahoo! Seeks Address Book Front-End Engineer (Sunnyvale, CA)HowTo Forge: PHP Programming BasicsJob Posting: Blue State Digital Seeks PHP/AJAX developer for politcal/tech consulting (Boston, MA)Zend Developer Zone:  AJAX Chat Tutorial Part 7 : Usability Improvements
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPBuilder.com: AJAX and PHP Part 1Developer.com: Threads Versus The Singleton PatternNick Halstead's Blog: Google Gears Caching of WordPress in PHPDevShed: PHP, MySQL and the PEAR DatabaseDave Dash's Blog: Installing a PHP that can do symfony+doctrine on DreamhostChristopher Jones' Blog: Upgrade PHP with Oracle Application Server on LinuxPHP.net: PHP 5.2.3 ReleasedPro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for May 31st, 2007Secunia.com: PHP Integer Overflow Vulnerability and Security BypassPHPBuilder.com: PHP and Regular Expressions 101
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A lot of things are happening in the Ruby world right now, and I wanted to highlight a few of them here:  At FOSCon this year, Amy Hoy has asked people to start writing more instructive articles about parts of Ruby or Rails so that newbies would have more "fine manuals" to read.  I've tried to do my part with two short series (so far), one on RubyInline and the other on ruby-prof.  The RubyInline articles are: RubyInline, making making things faster easier, and RubyInline: Going a bit Further.  The ruby-prof articles are:  Profile and ruby-prof, ruby-prof and call graphs, and Profile and ruby-prof:  getting specific. Another blog related event is the current blogging contest being run by Ruby Inside.  They're offering $100 US to their favorite informativ, ruby related blog post this week (Aug 14-20).  There have been a lot of interesting entries so far.  It would be pretty cool to see more contests like this crop up. We're getting close to a couple of Ruby conferences, I wrote about RubyConf*MI in my last post.  RailsConfEurope is also comingu up quickly.  If you're reasonable close to either of these, you should consider registering. O'Reilly has released the Ruby Cookbook.  It's a massive tome, chock-full of Ruby goodness.  I haven't had time to read the whole thing yet, but what I've read looks good, and I'm hearing good things from folks I trust.  Looks like another good book to add to your Ruby bookshelf. APress is getting ready to jump into Ruby and Rails in a big way.  They've got ten titles listed on their 'Rails Roadmap', and have lined up some well known Ruby names to write for them.  They're still looking for some Ruby authors according to this blog post. No Starch Press is also starting to make some Ruby related noises.  I can't be specific yet, but there's a good looking Ruby book on its way into their catalog.  If the book is half as good as what they've talked to me about, it's going to be another 'must have'. The Pragmatic Programmers also look like they're set to add some more titles to their Facets of Ruby line.  James Gray has said that he's writing a book for them that should be announced soon, Ezra Zygmuntowicz also has a book on the way, and I've recently signed a contract with them for a Ruby related book.  It looks like the PragProgs aren't going to be content to sit on their Ruby laurels. Finally, Developerdotstar is close to announcing a couple of books about programming.  Neither of these is Ruby specific, but from everything I've heard I think they're going to be solid, language independant books about becoming a better programmer.  Just the kind of thing you'd expect from these guys.
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Going to the php|works conference and in the middle of a job search? Keep an eye out for Clay Loveless then - he and his company, Mashery, are looking for a few good developers and have a tempting offer as an incentive:   The company I had pleasure of co-founding last summer is once again on the prowl for top-notch, Zend Certified PHP developers. We're taking the hunt for these folks to php|works in Atlanta. Whenever possible, Mashery will be luring the quality developers with free beer. That's right: free beer that is free, as in beer.   They're also having a drawing for an 8GB iPod Touch for anyone that can prove they have recently taken the Zend Certification Exam.   Company description: Mashery is the leading provider of web services and API management solutions enabling software-driven companies to unlock and accelerate their web services channel. With its on-demand, fully hosted solution, Mashery takes away the cumbersome process and plumbing around managing web services. Mashery provides all the ingredients required to get web services up-and-running quickly, easily and successfully while ensuring that they will scale: usage/access management, tracking, metrics, commerce, performance optimization and developer/community tools all come pre-packaged. Mashery enables web services providers to focus their time, resources and capital on building their core software, not on creating web services management infrastructure.
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DevShed continues their series looking at some of the fundamentals of working with PHP in this new tutorial posted today. It looks at one of the flow control statements the language has to offer and a very useful data structure - the switch statement and arrays.   In our last exciting adventure (back in early November), we braved crocodiles, ravenous editors, most of the PHP statements, and beginning loops. In this edition we'll cover the final statement, the Switch, and discuss arrays. So sit back, order your R2D2 robot to bring you a cold, frosty Jolt Cola, and let's get cracking.   They start with a simple example of a switch statement (to echo out strings) and follow it with a detailed description of the different sorts of arrays - numeric indexed, associative and multidimensional versions.
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Over on the Zend Developer Zone today, there's a newly posted interview with Chris Hartjes a developer and speaker in the PHP community.   I first met Chris Hartjes at php|works in Toronto where he was giving his What Can PHP Learn From Ruby on Rails talk. As I described him in one of my blogs from php|works, he looks like a biker with a laptop. He's large but he's always got a smile on his face and is always available to help if you've got PHP questions. Chris was kind enough to sit down with me and spend some time talking about PHP and his work at VerticalScope . Here's how our conversation went.   They talk about how Chris got into programming (including his first computer), his work with vBulletin, a little MySQL discussion, and some thoughts on PHP6.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Community News: Namespaces in PHP6Mike Potter's Blog: Sample Code From PHP / Flex e-SeminarThe Bakery: PremierMarinas.com, ScienceHack.com and an iPhone AppPHP F1: PHP Session TutorialCommunity News: GoPHP5 Official SiteCommunity News: jPOP Framework - Javascript & PHPTim Koschuetzki's Blog: Composing Methods: Remove Assignments to ParametersAlexey Zakhlestin's Blog: YAML: Syck for PHP is not read-only anymoreMatthew O'Phinney's Blog: File_Fortune refactoredSite News: Popular Posts for the Week of 07.06.2007
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Chris Shiflett has posted his own recap of the (just passed) php|works conference up in Toronto over on his blog.   I've been traveling non-stop since php|works, so I haven't had a chance to reflect on the conference, what I learned, who I met, and things like that. (Zak has been doing a good job of this lately, and I'd like to follow his lead.) I've probably forgotten more than I remember, but this is my recap.   Included in the things he mentions are:  The people he was able to meet (like Joshua Eichorn and Sebastian Bergmann) The talks he gave ("Truth about XSS" and "Agile PHP Testing") His interview with Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone The PHP 5 Certification and Wez Furlong's "Not PDO" talk
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The International PHP Magazine has posted results from their latest PHP community poll as voted on by visitors to their site. The question for this poll asked developers what they thought, of the choices on the list, was the most common mistake that PHP developers make.   Coming in at number one by an overwhelming lead was "Not escaping entities and SQL input" (a definite problem indeed) with the next highest option, "Not using a Framework" a full twenty percent lower. The next two options were closer (descending) - "Using old PHP versions" and "No or little use of Object Orientation".   There's a new poll this week for your consideration - this time asking which stage, of the five options, should come first in the development cycle of a typical content management system. Head on over and cast your vote today!
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHP-Coding-Practices.com: Try-Catch Syntax WeirdnessPHPBuilder.com: Cross-Platform Database PHP DevelopmentIBM developerWorks: Java and PHP technology on AIX - Integrate the Java business application w/ DB2OpenSourceCommunity.org: What do you think makes a good CMS?Jonathan Snook's Blog: Elemental: Conditional Content with CakePHPDevShed: The Basics of Using the Factory Pattern in PHP 5Builder.com.au: PHP exploit code plants itself in GIFJohn Cox's Blog:  Linux.com Now PHP PoweredNick Halstead's Blog: Solving Programming ProblemsPHP-Tools Blog: Testing FIT
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In this post on the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans takes a look at an article published in a recent php|architect issue from Chris Hartjes about how several recent advancements in the PHP community have helped developers think more in "the Rails way" of development.   Chris does a good job of laying out his points. As with any article of this nature, you are going to agree with some of them and you'll disagree with some of them. However, to get to that point you'll have to consider all of them. That's really the point of the article; making developer sit back and think for a minute. It's well worth the read.   Cal also mentions some of the topics presented in the article including more conceptual ideas like "Convention Over Configuration" and "Rapid Should Mean Rapid".
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In this new post to his blog, Richard Heyes talks about an example he's come across of PHP being used as backend behind a large marketing project:    I recently read an interesting example at Neil Shearing's internet marketing strategies blog of combining .NET desktop software with a PHP backend.   We all know PHP is often slated by "real programmers" as a scripting language only useful for kiddie's home pages, and its nice to see a serious marketer choosing PHP to power the backend to a serious piece of viral software with the potential to go load-mad.    Richard also points out some of his experience trying to market his software and which of his customers are the ones that would provide the most return (the ones looking for updates) and how he can gather their information more productively to further his project's goals.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Ian Selby's Blog: Uploading Large Files With PHPONLamp.com: Quick and Clean PHP FormsDotVoid.com: Reordering nested sets using PHP and JavascriptRob Allen's Blog: Zend Framework Book Coming SoonCommunity News: php|works Daily Summaries (Day 2)Community News: Sara Golemon & Christopher Jones - First Day Summaries of php|worksJob Posting: University of Wisconsin, Department of Medicine Seeks Web Developer (Madison, WI)Zend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Podcast Episode 19: Glue Frameworks vs. Full Stack FrameworksStefan Mischook's Blog: Installing PHP and MySQL on the Mac with MAMPSecurityReason: Three Advisories for PHP 5.2.4 (dl, iconv_substr & setlocale)
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Gerd Schauffelberger writes on the PHP-Tools Blog today about the contents of the latest issue from the German PHP Magazine, specifically an article covering the PEAR package HTML_AJAX.   This article's target is (1st) to give a brief introduction to AJAX and how things work from Javascript an PHP side in contrary. Also (2nd) I wanted to show that you actually don't have to muck around with a mess of Javascript (browser compatibility issues and such) because it's it is all done by the Joshua Eichorn's HTML_AJAX framework.    The article doesn't build up an entire application (as Gerd mentions) but it does provide you a good base to work from and gives you a good direction to head from to learn more about this powerful package.
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A few more of the International PHP Conference slides have surfaced for your enjoyment:  Sandro Zic - A comparison of PEAR Installer, Phing, and ZZ/OSS Installer alan@akbkhome.com - PEAR and PHP 5 (blog entry)
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Hasin Hayder has started up a new project that he's documented in a new blog entry - the creation of a new jobs website in PHP.   I was involved in making a job site few days ago. During the development, I have studied how easily anyone can develop a job site using PHP (language independent in true sense) . So I decide to write a blog post about my experience and here it goes. But note that this article is not about scaling or balancing the load on your site during heavy traffic, heh heh.   He comments on the startup process surrounding this type of site and makes suggestions about something to consider for your careers site - pulling job content from other sites in two ways - screen scraping and using the job search APIs out there.