Well, I had thought that I was going to go with JSF due to popularity and such, but I have had a change of heart. Partly due to my own devices, but mainly cause I am not worried about what is popular, but what works best. Instead I am going to go with Wicket.
Wicket may not be the most popular framework, but it melds with the way I think, and since this is code that I am going to write and maintain, well I am going to go with something that I like. If I wanted to get it done super quickly I would go with PHP, but then when it comes to maintainability I would be lost. There are people out there that might disagree, but for me and my way of thinking Java works better. This is not to bash Microsoft’s .NET implementation, but I do not have those tools or services at my disposal.
I have a project at work that I have to implement. It is a web based site that I have to put together. Technically, I could use almost any technology that I want, provided that it will run on a Linux/Solaris platform. So I could write this app using PHP, perl, Python, or Java. For reasons that would take to long to explain at this moment, the option was chosen to go with Java.
Now like PHP there are about 9342 different frameworks that could be chosen for developing a web application in Java. Of all the technologies out there wee are mainly looking at JSF 2.0 using JFaces or some other tech to add AJAX support. From the looks of it there are both pluses and minuses to using JSF. One main factor in the decision was dealing with the popularity of JSF. Once the prototyping starts we will see.
It seems that there is never enough time in the day to do all the things that I would like to be able to do. Between work, family, and sleep, it is hard to find time for much of anything else. To be honest the first two take up the most time, while I strive to survive on as little sleep as possible. Luckily for me, I can survive on 5-6 hours of sleep a night for about 2 weeks before I need a good 8 hours of sleep.
Most people that know me, understand that I have an almost unhealthy addiction to mountain bike riding. The unhealthy comes from the fact that I am almost always more than willing to share with others thoughts and ideas or recent rides when it comes to mountain biking. The funny thing is that I am not the fastest or the best rider out there by a long shot. The truth of the matter is that I am faster than the slow group, but not quite able to hang with the fast riders. Sure, I can keep up for an hour or two, but on longer rides I lag while they keep punching away at it.
Oh man, I had something I was going to write about, and then this classic movie Weird Science came on. Classic movie from the 80’s that got me completely distracted. Now, my wife thought it was kinda silly and stupid in some spots. Overall I think she liked it.
That was not what I was going to talk about. What I was going to mention was the state of a certain section of the site. One thing that I do way to much is read. While I tend toward the Fantasy and SciFi stuff, almost any book will suit my fancy. The problem is, I want to be able to share these books that I read with others, by reviewing and listing them. I am sure that it will take me a good 15 – 20 books to review before my English gets to a point that is worthy of reading, but I will try.
For that last couple of days I have been sick. Not sure how to classify it other than to say that I have had a fever and body aches. I made it to work on Wednesday, but yesterday I ended up staying home. So much for going to work while being sick.
The funny thing is that I would have thought that if I was sitting home sick, maybe I would get some stuff done on the site or on some of the other projects that I happen to want to work on. Haha, that is a very funny thought. To bad my head is pounding so much that clear thought is not always possible. Heck, even looking at the computer screen is sometimes a painful experience.
As I move forward with the design, more issues pop up that have to be dealt with. Not all of them have solutions. In an ideal world (my ideal world) the software that I want/need would be readily available, and would do exactly what it is that I want it to do. If this were the case, I think that I would either move onto other projects or would quickly grow bored with computers and never touch them again.
That being said, initial configuration of a site can be an awful drain on a person. It probably does not help that I have been sick the last couple of days with a headache that is not severe enough to send me straight to bed, but bothersome enough that there have been times when I could not stand to look at my monitor for fear of being sick. Even if it was not for that, I am sure that I would have issues with the layout and design of the sight. On the plus note, the design phase has been going much faster this time around, and that is making me glad.
In the process of switching hosts I failed in all of my planning to pull down the database that contained all my nifty articles. Well crap. What is a guy to do?
In the name of giving things a go, I tried out a couple of different Content Management Solutions. None of them were any easier to maintain, so I opted back to an old favorite. So now I am in the wonderful game of putting everything back together. Found a nice template to start with, lots of configuration options. There are also some different plugins that I am looking at adding.
Gotta Run.
I could think of nothing better to say.
Please come back later when I do.