Comments on: Rebuilding Pic of the Day https://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/2009/10/21/rebuilding-pic-of-the-day/ Thoughts, rants, and even some code from the mind of Barney Boisvert. Thu, 11 Sep 2014 09:58:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: barneyb https://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/2009/10/21/rebuilding-pic-of-the-day/comment-page-1/#comment-195659 barneyb Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:04:58 +0000 http://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/?p=1120#comment-195659 Thanks for the comments guys. I've been doing some playing on Google App Engine with Scala, Scala with Lift (which I also think is quite interesting), as well as Groovy and Gaelyk (a REALLY lightweight framework for Groovy on GAE). Having issues with DataNucleus and the non-Java languages, at least with the Eclipse tooling though, so that's annoying. I like Scala, and would definitely prefer it to Java in most cases. Not sure about Scala vs. Groovy though. Static typing is awesome, but Groovy feels far smoother to me. Granted, I've done a lot more Groovy than Scala, so I'm reserving judgment for now, but the number of places the documentation says "and X is to help the compiler" seems a little sketch. If you have to explain why something is there, and the compiler is the only reason, it sounds like you need to write a better compiler. I can understand some of it (like method arguments), but not all of it (like the equals sign for methods). And why can't I use .property and have it inflated into .getProperty()? Yes, I know, a subtype that defines a field matching a supertype's getter, but anyone who does that should be shot. I haven't tried Python on GAE, though that's obviously an option. I'm not a big fan of the language though; it's powerful for sure, but the semantic whitespace drives me NUTS. I spent a fair amount of effort customizing Trac a few years ago, and while I could get stuff done, I can't say I enjoyed it very much. As for RoR, I'm not much of a fan. Built a couple tiny apps with it, and while I don't discount the productivity you can achieve, you have to really like their conventions and really know them inside out. And I'm not a huge fan of Ruby or ActiveRecord, which kind of puts a damper on things. :) For the moment, I'm leaning towards Scala and Lift. I definitely need to build a couple larger projects with both of them before I commit to PotD, but to this point it seems attractive. And running the whole app on the cloud (GAE and S3) is also very attractive. Thanks for the comments guys. I've been doing some playing on Google App Engine with Scala, Scala with Lift (which I also think is quite interesting), as well as Groovy and Gaelyk (a REALLY lightweight framework for Groovy on GAE). Having issues with DataNucleus and the non-Java languages, at least with the Eclipse tooling though, so that's annoying. I like Scala, and would definitely prefer it to Java in most cases. Not sure about Scala vs. Groovy though. Static typing is awesome, but Groovy feels far smoother to me. Granted, I've done a lot more Groovy than Scala, so I'm reserving judgment for now, but the number of places the documentation says "and X is to help the compiler" seems a little sketch. If you have to explain why something is there, and the compiler is the only reason, it sounds like you need to write a better compiler. I can understand some of it (like method arguments), but not all of it (like the equals sign for methods). And why can't I use .property and have it inflated into .getProperty()? Yes, I know, a subtype that defines a field matching a supertype's getter, but anyone who does that should be shot.

I haven't tried Python on GAE, though that's obviously an option. I'm not a big fan of the language though; it's powerful for sure, but the semantic whitespace drives me NUTS. I spent a fair amount of effort customizing Trac a few years ago, and while I could get stuff done, I can't say I enjoyed it very much.

As for RoR, I'm not much of a fan. Built a couple tiny apps with it, and while I don't discount the productivity you can achieve, you have to really like their conventions and really know them inside out. And I'm not a huge fan of Ruby or ActiveRecord, which kind of puts a damper on things. :)

For the moment, I'm leaning towards Scala and Lift. I definitely need to build a couple larger projects with both of them before I commit to PotD, but to this point it seems attractive. And running the whole app on the cloud (GAE and S3) is also very attractive.

]]> By: Matthew Lesko https://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/2009/10/21/rebuilding-pic-of-the-day/comment-page-1/#comment-193924 Matthew Lesko Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:51:59 +0000 http://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/?p=1120#comment-193924 After reading <a href="http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529321" rel="nofollow">Programming Collective Intelligence</a> my suggestion is Python. This book provides a lot of depth around numerous data crunching algorithms that you are using to do the recommender, all of which are implemented in Python. And further to this end, I think there are several libraries in Python for this sort of work, NumPy comes to mind, which make life easier to do it. After reading Programming Collective Intelligence my suggestion is Python. This book provides a lot of depth around numerous data crunching algorithms that you are using to do the recommender, all of which are implemented in Python. And further to this end, I think there are several libraries in Python for this sort of work, NumPy comes to mind, which make life easier to do it.

]]> By: Sean Corfield https://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/2009/10/21/rebuilding-pic-of-the-day/comment-page-1/#comment-193901 Sean Corfield Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:45:41 +0000 http://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/?p=1120#comment-193901 It depends on what your driving motive is for maintaining the code base in the first place. If it's really entertainment value in terms of code learning / coding-for-relaxation - and it sounds like you're open to non-CF technology - why not use it as an opportunity to learn something fairly different? Marlon's suggestion of RoR is reasonable (but you already have that under your belt I think?) so I'd add a suggestion of Scala and the Lift web framework. It's quite 'different' to most of the stuff I expect you've built apps with before so it could be fun to learn (I just read Programming Scala over the trip to CFinNC and was very impressed by the language). I'm not convinced about Lift but it's definitely a very interesting approach (it just seems a lot of work). It depends on what your driving motive is for maintaining the code base in the first place. If it's really entertainment value in terms of code learning / coding-for-relaxation – and it sounds like you're open to non-CF technology – why not use it as an opportunity to learn something fairly different?

Marlon's suggestion of RoR is reasonable (but you already have that under your belt I think?) so I'd add a suggestion of Scala and the Lift web framework. It's quite 'different' to most of the stuff I expect you've built apps with before so it could be fun to learn (I just read Programming Scala over the trip to CFinNC and was very impressed by the language). I'm not convinced about Lift but it's definitely a very interesting approach (it just seems a lot of work).

]]> By: Marlon https://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/2009/10/21/rebuilding-pic-of-the-day/comment-page-1/#comment-193826 Marlon Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:00:48 +0000 http://www.barneyb.com/barneyblog/?p=1120#comment-193826 Ruby on Rails :) Mainly because even though I've used CF since 1997, I've found Ruby and RoR to be much faster to develop and much more fun in general....I'm betting that you won't share my enthusiasm though :) Ruby on Rails :) Mainly because even though I've used CF since 1997, I've found Ruby and RoR to be much faster to develop and much more fun in general….I'm betting that you won't share my enthusiasm though :)

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