Web 2.0 Entrepreneur

Google’s Campfire One: Introducing OpenSocial

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on November 6th, 2007 filed in Web App Development, Web2.0


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Google says:

“The Web is better when it’s social”.

OpenSocial has been the hype in the Web 2.0 industry for a few days now. What it does is basically providing a common set of open APIs for developers to build social applications across different sites. This is not something that revolve only around Google apps, but it is more of implementing a standard that developers can adapt so that their application will be able to support the OpenSocial initiative.

Ahh.. what am I doing here explaining all these. Why not just let Google themselves explain what OpenSocial is all about in their Campfire One - Introducing OpenSocial.

Web 2.0 developers…. take note!

CakePHP vs Ruby on Rails. And the battle continues…

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on September 12th, 2007 filed in Web Programming, PHP, CakePHP, Web App Development, Thoughts


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When the funny guys at RailsEnvy.com published a video comparing RubyOnRails with PHP, they received a lot of criticisms from the viewers for making an unfair comparison between jets and cars, when they should be comparing jets with jets. The viewers were right. PHP is a language. RubyOnRails is a framework. If they wanted to compare RubyOnRails with something, they should be comparing it with another “framework” instead of a language.

So here is the video commercial I’m talking about (I find these guys to be very entertaining):

Soon after they realized their mistake, they created another video comparing CakePHP with RubyOnRails to be fair to the PHP community. While it’s not really a “comparison”, I still find it so hilarious. Check it out

LoL. These guys should seriously consider becoming movie actors Anyway, it’s true that CakePHP functions the same way RoR works, and I don’t think any Cake Bakers would deny that Cake was initially designed to work like RoR, only in PHP. In fact, there were times when CakePHP used to be nicknamed as “PHP on Rails”. But the way I see it, CakePHP is starting to move on its own way now and becoming more independent the more it grows. Bravo to the CakePHP developers!

CakePHP vs Ruby On Rails. Which is the better framework?

It’s not for me to judge since I never fiddled around much with RubyOnRails before.. at least not as seriously.

What I do know is that both of them follow the MVC design pattern. Both adhere to the “Convention over Configuration” philosophy and Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) concept. Both of them also support AJAX. They have an almost identical directory structure. They’re built with testing in mind. They are very OOP-like. They have their own shells for command-line interface stuffs. They both support caching. They support different databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc…). And they’re both released under the MIT license.

The reason why I’m sticking with CakePHP instead of jumping into the RoR bandwagon is because I know I’m already fluent in PHP, so why would I want to learn a new language (Ruby) and a new framework (Rails) when I already have a very Rails-like framework written in PHP? If you strip off “Rails” from Ruby, you’ll realize that Ruby is just another programming language. Sometimes I keep wondering myself why some of those hardcore PHP-ers would migrate completely to RoR and go through the hassles of learning the new syntaxes & built-in functions of Ruby all over again when there’s Cake that does almost entirely the same thing. Even the 37signals guys (the brilliant minds behind RoR) uses PHP in many of their sites. Get real.

To set things straight, RubyOnRails is an awesome framework and I have nothing against it. CakePHP is also an awesome framework. I am no way saying that one is better than the other. They both have their own place and strengths in the web development scene. What I’m saying is unless you want to learn all the programming languages that exists out there, why not just stick with the language you’re currently strong at and use the available framework which works with your favorite language to build the applications of your dream. Save “learning a new language” for your next spare-time hobby.

Neat slide on Cake 1.2

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on September 9th, 2007 filed in PHP, CakePHP, Web App Development


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CakePHP 1.2 has never ceased to amaze me ever since I started my romantic journey with her. Even though it is still marked as in “Alpha” development stage, I find it to be too interesting that I have left the 1.1 branch for good. Cake 1.2 have so many useful functionalities, “bundled” components and that little useful touches which makes it so practical to use and so much easier to implement. In fact I am currently converting most of my existing apps (where some of them were written like spaghettis) into CakePHP for the past two weeks and I just love every minute of it.

Recently, gwoo (one of Cake’s developer if I’m not mistaken) gave a talk on the Orange Country PHP group regarding the ins and outs of CakePHP as well as the latest development on the 1.2 branch. Here are the slides that all Cake lovers should read (also available in PDF format here).

With all the cool new added features that Cake 1.2 has to offer, why would anyone needs to jump to another language/framework?