PHP Development - lot of (newbie) questions [closed]

Question

I'm a Engineering student and I'm attending a Database and Information Systems class this semester. It's required that I produce a website/application that uses a database, using PHP/PGSQL. My questions are:

• which IDE would you recommend?
• does anyone have good tips and advices for a new developer?
• it would help me (a lot) to develop this project attending some more "academic" aspects of the subject, such as the Entity/Association Model, etc. Are there any good tools to help structure my work?

Thanks!

EDIT: A few notes:

• I forgot to ask one last thing, I tried installing BitNami's WAPP Stack. Does anyone know how good and/or reliable it is?
• I'm actually working under Windows Vista Business (new laptop :S ). Would you recommend develloping under Linux for any specific reason?

Answer 1

• which IDE would you recommend?

Anything that supports remote debugging. You will save yourselves hours and hours and learn so much quicker if you can actually step through your code. It always amazes me that more people don't use good debugging tools for PHP. The tools are there, not using them is crazy. FWIW I've always been a devotee of Activestate Komodo - fantastic product.

• does anyone have good tips and advices for a new developer?

  1. get test infected. It will stand you in good stead in the future, and will force you to think about design issues properly. In fact the benefits are many and the drawbacks few.

  2. learn to refactor, and make it part of your development "rhythm".

  3. related to this is: think ahead, but don't programme ahead. Be aware that something you are writing will probably need to be bubbled up the class hierarchy so it is available more generically, but don't actual do the bubbling up till you need it.

• it would help me (a lot) to develop this project attending some more "academic" aspects of the subject, such as the Entity/Association Model, etc. Are there any good tools to help structure my work?

Learn about design patterns and apply the lessons you have learned from them. Don't programme the "PHP4" way.

• I forgot to ask one last thing, I tried installing BitNami's WAPP Stack. Does anyone know how good and/or reliable it is?

No idea, but if you have the time I'd avoid a prebuilt stack like WAMPP. It's important to understand how the pieces fit together. However, if you're running on Windows, you may not have time and your energy could be better focused on writing good code than working out how to install PHP, PostgreSQL and Apache.

• I'm actually working under Windows Vista Business (new laptop :S ). Would you recommend developing under Linux for any specific reason?

Yes I would. Assuming you are deploying on Linux (if you are deploying on Windows I'd be asking myself some serious questions!), then developing in the same environment is incredibly useful. I switched for that reason in 2005 and it was one of the most useful things I did development wise. However if you're a total *nix newbie and are under tight time constraints maybe stick with what you know. If you have time to try things out, you'll find it pretty easy to get up and running with a good modern Linux desktop distro and the development work will fly along.