The source code for this part can be found here: /articles/mvc-marathon/tags/part1-creating-a-new-application/

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://svn.icantfocus.com/articles/mvc-marathon/

Step by Step

1. Part 1. Creating a New Application
2. Part 2. Creating/Configuring a Database
3. Part 3. Creating Site HTML/CSS Templates
4. Part 4. Creating the Restaurants Model
5. Part 5. CRUD Restaurants w/Scaffolding
6. Part 6. Adding Menu Items w/o Scaffolding
7. Part 7. Adding AJAX
8. Part 8. Adding Atom Feeds
9. Part 9. Adding Unit Tests
10. Part 10. Adding User Tests
11. Part 11. Adding REST API
12. Part 12. Adding User Authentication
13. ...

They also had a preview for the new Batman movie, which also looks kick ass.

I really wanted a Bluetooth mouse, but nobody carries them. Not Best Buy. Not Circuit City. Go figure.

How fun. Two days off work. Might go back tomorrow. Sigh.

Great place for a getaway weekend. Castle rooms. Cottages. Out in the middle of nowhere. Great food without being too cheesy. :-)

Here's what I read now a days in between tech sites:

• The Gavel
• Crooks & Liars
• Daily Kos
• TPM Muckraker
• Reddit
• Boing Boing

The first four are what I think are some of the best sources or real news, now that shit that FOX molests and twists and claims is news.

Today, the House has just approved H.Res. 982 by a vote of 223-32-1, which provides for the adoption of H.Res. 979, recommending that the House of Representatives find Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel, and Joshua Bolten, the White House Chief of Staff, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the Judiciary Committee. These subpoenas were issued as part of the Committee's investigation into the firings of a number of United States Attorneys and matters concerning the politicization of the Justice Department. This resolution also provides for adoption of H.Res. 980 - Authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas.

Now that the Democratic Senate has proved itself spineless, the House steps up. Finally, some contempt charges for people who don't testify. They also declinde doing anything with FISA, read Condi the riot act on WMD reports. Finally, that's what we want to see. Them not taking any more shit from this administration.

An Endless List

Now, we have telco immunity. Illegal wiretapping, on US citizens, not just foreign connections. Water-boarding. A new Attorneys General who refuses to even acknowledge that it's torture. Refuses to investigate water-boarding and wiretapping. Refuse to investigate and lay down the law on just about everything. We have Gitmo. Holding anyone we call a terrorist forever, without trial. Secret trials. CIA erasing tapes. Electronic voting machines that clearly don't work. Medial decisions being made by the insurance companies and not the doctors. The TSA/Borders copying peoples hard drives and hone lists. And that's all just the tip of the iceberg.

When does it end?

This is country is going to shit, and it's apparently in a hurry from the looks of things. It's depressing at best. And to make things worse, not matter who we vote in, nothing changes. I personally think we're in for a future with one of three possibilities.

1. People rebel. Mass protests the likes of which we've never seen, to the point that entire industries shut down.

2. People revolt. The electronic way. The tech generation, the blog generation make like so difficult for old time news media that they have to put these issues on the front page day after day.

3. People vote. Early indications are that the youth vote is off the charts this year. This may end up with someone in office who is finally tired of all of the bullshit, and becomes a great leader, and a sever pain in the ass to Congress and Big Business.

When I am King

Thus quoth Adam Carolla: When I am king:

1. Congress will no longer get free health care. Let them also feel the joys of rising premiums, denials for pre-existing conditions, and paperwork hell when the insurance company thinks it knows better than your doctor. Sure I'd prefer government guaranteed health care because, if it works for Congress, it can work for everyone, esp. children. But the spineless bastards won't even fund children, so that will never happen.

2. Paper ballots are mandatory. I take a pen, and mark a checkbox. That system worked or centuries and still works now. No dangling chads, no crashing voting machines. Every vote needs to count.

3. Everything that a public servant does on our time and our dime, needs to be open. No secrets. If you work for the taxpayer, you need to answer to the taxpayer. No sealed records. No executive privilege. No closed door hearings.

4. No more pork and hidden bills. Every bill is separate. No tying funding for one thing to approval for another. Every person in Congress must read what the are voting on. EVERY member must attend votes, and must vote yes or no.

5. Congress shall not be allowed to receive ANY money or gifts from any person other than their direct family (like xmas, bday), nor shall they be allowed to accept or earn any income other than what we the people, pay them to do their jobs. Yes, no stock options either.

6. No person, US citizen or otherwise, shall be held indefinitely by our government, without charges, without lawyers or without trials. Water-boarding IS torture and shall not be used. Ever. No exceptions. If it was good enough to convict a Japanese officer for using it on our troops, it's good enough for us not to be able to use it on anyone else now.

7. The US shall remove troops from foreign countries and mind our own fucking business for a change. No one is trying to bomb Norway are they? No. Because they mind their own fucking business. People want to bomb us now because we keep picking a side, sending weapons, abandoning that side, choosing another, sending weapons, then invading eventually leaving nothing but ruin while we sit back and suck down McDicks and Cokes and watch the Simpsons.. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

8. The government shall hence forth stop being the copyright police and making laws to protect [failing] industries business models. I'm looking at you RIAA and the BSA. File lawsuits if you want. Take people to court. But stop buying our Congress just so you can get special treatment and laws. The FBI has more important things to do than execute your raids on someone selling bootleg CDs or someone reported to have unlicensed software. Other industries don't get to use the FBI as their personal police force and neither shall you. The government shall also stay the fuck out of sports investigations. It's sports. If someone's doping, it's the leagues problem. Get back to work.

9. The government shall put up or shut on nuclear issues. With all the money wasted on the Iraq war and all the rhetoric on Iran, we could've easily went into Iran and built them a nuclear power infrastructure, negating and worries and excuses of them making weapons just because they're researching enrichment. Be part of the solution, not the problem. If no one else should have WMDs, then neither should we. If we must have them for defense purpose, then so should everyone else. We weren't responsible when we invented them, so let's not inspect other fledgling countries to be that way either. IF you're worried about them using them to attack us, see rule #7.

10. Revoke the DMCA. No longer shall any industry be able to tell people what they can and can't do with products they've purchased as long as they are in their own homes.

11. Repeal all tax breaks for businesses. I can't get a 5 year no-tax break for moving into a city and neither should they. No longer shall the individual have to pay increasing taxes to cover the tax breaks of corporations.

12. Place a cap on severance, salary and options packages that CEOs receive. No longer shall corporate fat-cats get $35 million to leave a company that they just drove into the ground after firing 10,000 employees.

13. There is no such thing as executive privilege. You do what the law says. Period. See rule #3.

14. No government contracts shall be given on a no-bid basis, nor shall they be given to any company that the President, Vice President or any member of congress owns, used to own, or is on the board. Non of said contractors overseas shall be immune from prosecution, nor shall those case be dismissed as 'state secrets'.

That should do it for starters. :-)

P.S.

Yes, I have ATT DSL. Like we actually have a choice. Thank you telco dereg act of 96; also worthless.

You get the idea. Add your own. :-)

I love the internet. :-)

At home, I use Catalyst, the best MVC framework for Perl. At work, I loathe ASP.NET and all of the hacking one has to do with its page lifecycle just to get some good combination if events, dynamic controls and control reuse. It's a slow form of torture in my book.

Much to my joy, The new ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions coming out have a nice shiny new ASP.NET MVC Framework, and it actually doesn't suck too bad. As such, I need to tinker with it and the code from work to see if it fits into our plan, breaking m lost fast rule about never working on $work code @ $home.

But I digress. One of the biggest problems Microsoft had in the past was that the development tools were too damn expensive for the home programmer. Lucky for us, they got wise and started release the "Express" editions of VB.NET and ASP.NET IDEs.

Sure, I have to do my core stuff in VB.NET Express, and then switch to ASP/NET Express to work on pages, and testing/source control isn't integrated.

Oh well, Thanks MS either way. Nice free powerful tools. Now you're starting to get it. :-)

This was a nail biter right up to the end. Even some of the very last hail mary passes in the last 60 seconds had a really good chance at putting the Patriots back on top. That's a good game in any book.