MOTM

I wasn't asked, but since it's a subject near & dear to my heart, I'll jump in too.

I agree with what Moe said: all commercial web development software *is* crap. His description pretty much describes my setup.

Historically, I've used MS FrontPage, and then gone into "code" view and 'fixed,' cleaned, and extended everything. Or I go into Notepad, because Notepad just says, "Yes, boss" and does what I tell it to without adding anything or moving anything when I close the file.

You might be amazed at how often I use Notepad, and I do this for a living. I even code ASP.NET in notepad... at the end of the day, if you know what you're doing, there's nothing you can't do by directly manipulating the code. (If you don't know what you're doing, then, well, I guess it's a different story.)

But I'm an old curmudgeon; I absolutely abhor any software that tries to second-guess me, or wipe my... well, let's say I detest software that tries to help me across the street like an old lady. I have more people trying to shove expensive 'does it all for you' software at me, and stuff that requires plug-ins just turns me right off.

Also, I'm frequently called in to repair web sites that were created by other people who do not know what they're doing, but consider themselves web designers because they bought an expensive "automated" program. What a nightmare. The bloated code is unbelievable, and things like variables are given cryptic names because they were created by a machine and not a human. I usually start completely from scratch when I have to repair a site created this way. I won't name the packages that are the biggest offenders, because I don't want to offend someone here who may love them, but let me assure you that you can code anything by hand with no bloat in ways these applications can't even 'dream' of.

At work, however, my [younger] assistant rides me about doing things "the hard way" so we're switching to VisualStudio.NET/SourceSafe; but I'm only doing it because we now need versioning-control software, not because I think that I can't continue to use a text editor forever.

So that's the cranky old man answer. ;)

(What did you expect? I'm spending years soldering together a gargantuan synthesizer that uses patchcords and technically only makes one note at a time! If I were a 'take the easy way out' kind of person, I wouldn't be here!)

Mr. T

-----Original Message-----
From: mate_stubb [mailto:mate_stubb@...]

> OT, Larry, Moe and Paul... which software do you "prefer" for

> creating your web site...

This answer probably won't help you much...

IMO, all commercial web development software is crap. It either

produces horribly bloated nasty code, or produces pages that run only

on one type of browser.

At work I use XML to define the contents of a page, XSLT stylesheets

to control the presentation, and a server side xslt processor to

combine the two which produces the clientside javascript and HTML

that actually gets downloaded to the browser. These run on Apache web

servers and Tomcat java servers.

I laid out the hotrodmotm.com website using Microsloth Front Page,

then had to go in and fix everything up by hand so that the pages

would display on Netscape and other browsers.

Moe

Ken - 

You can continue to check your "cranky old man hand-written" code in 
and out of SourceSafe without using VisualStudio. We use it at work 
to do just that. It's actually kind of a nice tool. We have a plugin 
that allows us to update our Linux servers from a Windoze server 
running the SS database.

VisualStudio is evil. It was bad enough when it was Visual C++, but 
it's way worse now. Push a wizard button and watch megabytes of code 
get generated, using templated classes that nobody can understand. I 
escaped two years ago and revel in my (comparative) freedom from 
MicroSloth.

Moe
--- In motm@yahoogroups.com, "Tkacs, Ken" <ken.tkacs@j...> wrote:
 
> At work, however, my [younger] assistant rides me about doing 
things "the
> hard way" so we're switching to VisualStudio.NET/SourceSafe; but 
I'm only
> doing it because we now need versioning-control software, not 
because I
> think that I can't continue to use a text editor forever.
>

--- In motm@yahoogroups.com, "mate_stubb" <mate_stubb@y...> wrote:
> Ken - 
> 
> You can continue to check your "cranky old man hand-written" code in 
> and out of SourceSafe without using VisualStudio. We use it at work 
> to do just that. It's actually kind of a nice tool. We have a plugin 
> that allows us to update our Linux servers from a Windoze server 
> running the SS database.

SourceSafe is evil too; CVS on Linux is both better and free.  (And if
you want something that is better still and you don't mind paying for
it then check out BitKeeper).
 
> VisualStudio is evil. It was bad enough when it was Visual C++, but 
> it's way worse now. Push a wizard button and watch megabytes of code 
> get generated, using templated classes that nobody can understand. I 
> escaped two years ago and revel in my (comparative) freedom from 
> MicroSloth.

I actually rather like VisualStudio - it's about the only really good
bit of software that Micros~1 ever wrote.  It's arguably the best C++
environment around, though I realise that this isn't saying much; C++
is itself a manifestation of purest evil and for technical reasons you
can't write a decent IDE for it.  (See IntelliJ-IDEA or just about any
enviroment for LISP for an example of an *advanced* IDE).

I agree that the Wizards are evil and should be avoided.  I get the
impression that Ken would agree with that too :-)

(Currently I'm in the stone-knives-and-bear-skins environment of gcc,
gdb and vi: it feels like I'm living in the 70's, but at least I can
debug a remote app on the servers over a slow modem link.  Visual C++
would seem like heaven right now, though).

Harry