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Functional Tools

Entry 554, on 2007-06-14 at 19:10:29 (Rating 1, computers)

My latest creation is a web application (or a web database) to store, search for, and manipulate graphics. My aim was to produce a web site which works like a real Mac application more than a conventional web site, and I think I have basically achieved this.

The tools I used to create this system are all open source Unix programs: Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ImageMagick. None of these programs are what the average user would call particularly flashy, but they are all particularly functional. For example, PHP is a poorly structured language and lacks a lot of the consistency of other languages I have used, but its extremely functional, reliable, and provides great general performance. Its nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

So all of these tools interacting with Unix on the Mac platform can produce an extremely impressive outcome, even though superficially they don't look that great themselves. Maybe there's some real merit in these older tools which trace their origins back many years and which perform their specific functions extremely well.

I'm also working with a more modern database platform: FileMaker Pro. Now I know that the Apache-MySQL-PHP platform is aimed at a totally different target than FileMaker but the difference in a scripted, command line interface and a modern graphical GUI couldn't be more obvious. For simple databases FileMaker can't be beaten but as the complexity increases the Unix tools rapidly overtake the more "modern" approach.

Call me a geek if you wish, but I enjoy typing SQL queries into a command line interface. I enjoy typing obscure Unix commands to make things happen, and I love writing PHP scripts which just get things done efficiently and reliably. I can build a pretty graphical interface using HTML, Javascript and CSS and the end result just works beautifully. And not only are all the technologies I use free, but they also have excellent support from other users on the web.

I use a graphical interface Mac text editor (BBEdit) and a conventional graphics program (Photoshop CS3) so I can appreciate modern programs too. So old and new, simple and sophisticated all work together - that's the magic of the Mac Unix environment!

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