Web development future
As you may already know I work as a web developer. This means I encounter a lot of (X)HTML, PHP and JavaScript. There is no doubt that those are the most widely used tools for small/medium websites as well as there is no doubt that with all the new trends, with the increasing will to build the "Web 2.0" the developmet becms harder and harder. There is a tremendous amount of ways to implement things, a huge number of frameworks out there than say "Hey, use me! I am the best!". Obviously, this is very stressful for the developer. And what is more stressing is the complexity of the code.
Remember how you used to write those small pure HTML pages without caring about whether it passes the validity tests? Remeber how you didn't care about Mozilla, Opera and Safari? You only had to make sure that this will work in IE and put a small text on the front page - "This site was made for IE6".
After that came PHP, which was overwhelming. It is a great tool designed to make scripting pages with ease. Then came databases and object-oriented paradigms. That is the time when I first started to feel frustrated. The code did not fit into my head anymore. I had to review the classes I have, the functions that they have, members, deal with connections and other crap.
And the latest thing - AJAX. This thing has been terrorising every single web developer. When I hear AJAX I always have two conflicting feelings - it is cool and it is very unpleasant to make it happen. I mean JavaScript was so simple (and mostly unnecessary) until AJAX hit the internet (and Web 2.0, of course). All you did was getElementById and validate forms with it sometimes.
Where am I going with this? Well... It is simple. At the moment the whole web development process with HTML/PHP/JS is quite complicated if you want to make something exceptional. As I work I keep seeing that I am performing repeating actions now and then. And I think that now it is time to make something new. A new way, a new tool, tailored for the specific needs of the web developer community. I will be not surprised if it will be something ASP.NET-like. Let it be. It is time to either dramatically improve the web development tools we have now or to create a new all-in-one tool that takes the concepts of HTML, PHP and JS/AJAX together and puts them into a universal form.
Web development tools I use and recommend
Ok, not being original here, but still... a web developer's blog is never complete without this. Maybe somebody will find at least something useful here. So here goes:
Tasks
- slicing designs into images and cobining it to (X)HTML/CSS
- script writing (PHP / JavaScript)
- debugging
- testing IE compatibility
- quick editing
- database handling
- OS: Microsoft Windows
- others
ORM for PHP – Doctrine
I have been always dreaming about some magical component for PHP developers that would free us from the pain of handling databses. And I have mostly seen useless wrappers for native database functions of PHP. Those always tried to claim that the will make it all better. No luck. Until recently (well, a bit more than recently) I looked into a thing called ORM (Object-relational mapping). Specifically - an ORM for PHP called Doctrine.
A bit of MODx CMS criticism
Today I am going to talk about MODx CMS again. Now, the first post on this topic covered my first impressions of this product. And now I have something else to say.
This time I am going to go a bit deeper into minuses of MODx. Why? Well, all the pluses are available on the official website and I do not see the reason for repeating those. This post does not in anyway mean that MODx is a bad product! It just has some bad sides that I would find very useful to read about before starting to build a website based on this system. This post is healthy citicism and maybe a precaution for those wondering what can't you do with MODx.
MODx CMS overview
Some MODx related post discussing MODx cons is also here.
0. Intro
Today I am going to say something about MODx CMS.
At the moment I have used it to make one website as well as I am using it right now to make another. This is mainly the suggestion of the client, so I am using it not because I like it so very much, but just because of circumstances.
So far my experience with it is, actually, quite pleasant. MODx CMS has a lot of fine features. At the moment I can tell that it at least has the minimal things that are required to make a website. So far I have understood, that most of the MODx functionality relies on the following things: templates, template variables (TV), chunks and snippets. All the other things are quite auxiliary.
So, let us take a look and see what those are.
New blog theme
Today I decided to remove pretty much everything from the site except for the blog. Also, I chose a new theme for the blog. I hope you like it 
Just to announce - I will be filling About and Portfolio pages soon enough. Maybe in a week or two when I have free time. This is because I have quite a lot of work to do lately. But bare with me - I am going to make it up in future.
Hello world!
Welcome to my blog.
I finally made the theme for WP and installed it. Obviously, WP is my choise in blogs Anyway, soon I will start posting some useless crap. As for now you can still read my old blog, which is jefim.wordpress.com.
Dissappointed in WP anti-spam
Today I was really dissappointed by the WordPress anti-spam protection. I would guess that they are still using Akismet (?), but it does not matter - I still get a lot of spam-comments like "hey, we got stuff, come and buy".
Of course, this can be explained by the fact, that all of those undetected comments are in Russian and are not supported by WP's defence. No, it cannot be explained like that. Why? Come on! It is 2009 and I expect such well-known brands as WP to support and protect both English blogs as well as all the other languages. I do not care how they do it - they simply have to do it somehow. Why do I have to come here and see tons of new spam-comments turning my blog into a dump of ads? There is, obviously, no answer to that. And not to mention the famous bug of WP spam protection, when it could mark the author's comment as spam too. Been there, done that
On the whole I really thought that the times, when people had to mess around with configurations and come up with hacks to get Russian language to work were gone. Looks like it is too soon to celebrate 
Finland Part 2: The Arrival
So, it is already the 16th September. I guess that it is time to write some new information about my adventures in Finland (Tampere to be exact).
I went to Finland by ferry with a friend of mine. Andrew was very helpful during the day, since I had no trouble with luggage and there was always someone to speak with (== !boring). So, when we were on the road about 20 minutes from Tampere I called one of my tutors (tutor - a person, who is assigned to evey new international student, who has to help you in every way) to inform him about my arrival. He offered to meet me on the train station and so we did. It was a nice Finnish guy called Kristian. Anyway, the first thing to do was to go to TOAS and get my dorm key. It was nice, but very slow. I mean we waited for 20 minutes even though there was no queue. Anyway, I signed the contract and got a place at Keskisenkatu, TOAS location 700 (code name "Sepontalot"). They gave me a key and even a key holder for it (the key holder had "TOAS" written on it and on the package it said "Made in Taiwan Made in Taiwan Mad...." ). My tutor left at this time and me and Andrew headed for Keskisenkatu street. Found the dorm quite quickly. The location was great - right across the road there are S-Market, Nordea bank, R-Kiosk, a pharmacy and a bus stop. Everything very close. We got the luggage from Andrew's car and went to the third floor of the G block. Opened the door and saw a corridor. Two other guys were already living in the place - I arrived last. The apartment is really nice. One toilet (toilet + basin), one bathroom (shower + basin), kitchen and a balcony - those are the shared areas. Each of us has an own room, which is approx. 12-14 sq. m. big, which is quite roomy for me. In every room there is a bed (+matrace), a chair (a really crappy one ), a desk, a small book shelf and a dresser. There are 6 power plugs in total in my room, which is quite nice.
All-in-all, the TOAS dorm is not a luxury one, but still a very decent one. Next time I shall tell you about registration at the university and the orientation week we had (25.-29. Aug). Stay tuned.