Of ANTs and builds

The software zoo is not complete without a mention of ANT and maven. Now that we have talked about setting up LAMP as our server and used AJAX to titillate the end-users, its time for the ant brigade to march you through everyday routine tasks. A build system is a crucial part in software development, this is the part that will free your precious time from thinking about how to build and package your latest earth shattering bug parade.

If ANT bought a lot of sanity and predictability to the mystic world of writing makefiles, Maven goes a step further with the abstraction asks you to describe the project structure instead of defining tasks as in ANT. Sounds great?, oddly enough, it also prescribes a project directory structure. Maven is best suited for newly created projects which do not have a deep hierarchy of source code already in place. Once you setup the project, there is this little .pom file that has to be defined for each module, and you're done.

AJAX

A kind of rare beast that is hard to spot, let alone grabbing one by it's horns and squeezing it into a browser. But it seems that if you manage to do that, it can do wonders to your website's usability.

Asynchronous Javascript And XML

This technology allows one to design a website which does server interactions in the background, while the enduser reads your webpage blissfully unaware of whats happenning behind the scenes. A beautiful example is Google suggest.

Now don't ask me where to download it, its build right into your browser and available as an object called XMLHTTPRequest. The rest of the technology is all about how to use asynchronous requests to make you site more dynamic and usable. Its called the rich user experience. Which is literally true, if your ISP is charging you for volume of traffic.

Adaptive path has a nice article on the technology.

Check the Ajax Showcase at the Ajaxian.

126 AJAX tutorials, need I say more?

LAMP

Not the light emitting kind, But turns out to be an acronym for existing technology.

Linux Apache MySQL Perl/PHP

LAMP is all about putting it together and building web applications. All of these technologies came up as great individual products, but the real value lies in putting them together to create applications.

Lampware.org is a community site for all lampheads. Hold on, we're just getting warm, if you're into server frameworks you should also check Zend.

Now let me try JACKASS - Java Apache KDE ANT SSL Struts

Comfort for the overly confused

Dont be misled by the title, Where I lack in knowledge, I make up in humour. Yeah! you're right, now you can read the whole site as a joke, and If you're not laughing then its probably knowledge.

There was a time when reading a book made sense, its not mandatory anymore. Especially in the field of computers, where the authors biggest challenge is to come up with a combination of letters that is not claimed as somebody's acronym. If you think its easy, try any four letter combination in google. To make it worse, the author has to address an audience whose sole purpose is to search for exotic code that can be compiled. Now how does he get across a message, void main(){println("Hello World!")}. Now please dont start about syntax errors, its not code, its supposed to be a greeting.

This blog will serve as a launchpad to more detailed interesting articles elsewhere (How original!). And if that doesnt tickle your fancy, you can read some random ramblings from the bowels of my minds (or was it depths?).

Cheers!