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Introduction
Over the last few years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the
same projects, using the same tools, in the same languages. By
day, I’m a mild mannered .NET programmer. By night, I fly the Perl
flag, and spend a lot of time using Catalyst, one of the Perl
based MVC frameworks. While I’m not abandoning those technologies,
I think it’s time for something new.
They say you should learn a new programming language every year or
so, and I’m long over due. Why not learn three languages at the
same time to make up for lost time? :-)
The Challenge
The challenge is to build the same mvc application on all of the
frameworks listed below. While I’m comfortable with Catalyst/Perl
and ASP.NET, I’d like to be able to work on any project that comes
along rather than simply answering “Sorry, I can’t help. I don’t
program in that frameowork/language.” I started my career as a
Windows-only web programmer and over time, learned my way through
FreeBSD, Apache, Perl and Catalyst.
Will I be an ‘expert’ in Ruby or Python when I’m done? Surely not.
But 3 years ago, I couldn’t program in Perl either and 10 years
ago, I could’t even begin to get a *nix OS installed and
configured to run Apache.
The Frameworks
For this adventure, I’ve picked what might be considered the most
popular mvc framework for each language. These frameworks will be:
ASP.NET MVC: Preview 3
While my day job includes programming in ASP.NET 2.0 WebForms and
I have followed the MVC progress, I have not yet created an
ASP.NET MVC app. Just to be a little more challenging, I will be
doing this project in C# instead of the usual VB.NET that we use
at work.
CakePHP: 1.2RC2
I’ve read as much of the manual as I can at this point. This will
be my first CakePHP application and my first PHP programming since
PHP4 was released.
Catalyst: 5.7
Catalyst is one of the many MVC frameworks written in Perl. I’ve
been using Perl and Catalyst for about 3 years. While this could
be my strongest framework, I’ll be using none of my existing bag
of tricks.
Django: 0.96
I’ve never written a single line of Python before. After looking
at the Python and Ruby syntax on multiple occasions in the past,
Python seems to be the language furthest from how my brain works
now compared to Perl/C#.
Ruby on Rails: 2.1
Just like Django/Python, I’ve never written a line if Ruby in my
life. I’ve been through the screen casts and sifted around a few
articles and book excerpts. However, unlike Python, Ruby seems
to fit how my brain works with Perl a littler cleaner.
The Application
I’m sick of the usual blog demo applications so I’m going to go
with something a little closer to my heart. Those who know me know
that I’m a big fan of hot food: If you don’t sweat, it’s not hot
enough. So for this challenge, I’m going to build a site that
tracks lists of restaurants and a list of menu items for each
eatery hot dish.
The application will be built in stages. Each stage will be built
in every framework before moving on to the next step. After
completing each stage, I’ll post a new blog entry covering what
code needed to be created in each framework and the pros and cons
each framework provides. You can follow the source code progress
in my subversion repository:
http://github.com/claco/mvc-marathon/