We’ve picked our company product, and have 2 days to finish it during Startup Weekend.
The dev team inventoried its skills and discovered the expected diversity of platforms, skills and languages for the 30+ back-end developers - PHP, Python, Ruby, and .NET. What strategy do we use to merge our skills and get the product developed?
I suggest Django for its easy of adoption possibilities among a very diverse technical crowd, and I provide a bit of rationale for others to consider:
We’ve setup a Linux server which likely means LAMP development (PHP, Python, Apache, MySQL) or Ruby on Rails for the final platform this will run on.
All developers could get setup and be running quickly on all major operating systems with a standard install of Python, Django and any SQL server one wanted, such as the quick-to-install SQLite. I plan on developing completely on my laptop, and getting code to the server via subversion updates.
I’m a strong Python developer who spends my time primarily in Zope and Plone - and haven’t yet used Django - but there are experts in the room, and anyone who can write an object class and learn some basic Python can get something up and running - or at minimum could read someone else’s code and become productive. I gained some quick familiarity by reading a Django book on the bus ride home tonight!
There are no technology majorities in the group – but I think everyone ramping up on Ruby on Rails, .NET (if someone brings a Windows Server) or Zope/Plone seem slim for a 2-day event. Django seems like only an hour or two away from general productivity. Plus documentation is on the web.
PHP could also be possibility, but not sure what framework we’d use.
Ruby on Rails may also fall into the camp of non-Ruby developers being able to hack existing code setup by Ruby on Rails experts, but I still think it may require more learning than we have.
I’ve been enjoying all the conversations, idea brainstorming, and seeing some familiar faces (such as Josh Livni and Brian Dorsey) while also meeting many new people!
What do you think? Have a look at Django here: http://www.djangoproject.com/
I look forward to seeing what direction we take tomorrow when coding commences!
And special thanks to those who stayed late to setup the server, trac and subversion.