Day One

I want to learn new technologies and i want to improve my english, so i start to write this article as a log for a new project : table soccer calcetto balilla project.

This name is not very cool but i neither known if “table soccer” is the right translation of “calcetto balilla” so this is the last of my problem :). Thinking about the project, i want to learn much more about web services, database optimizations, web applications and mobile (android) application. I love to learn new informations and it will be better if those are related to the technologic world, but i also love table soccer game. So now the idea is : why not join those loves to learn new skills trying to create a new applications?

Oh, sorry for my poor english, i’m trying to improve myself.

What about project? the initial idea was to create a system able to record score of players, store it inside database, reading and writing data with restful api and finally create a web application  with responsive layout, that will be usable by desktop or by mobile. In a second time, android app will be a good improvement. Now i’m in trouble : should i use good and well known technologies or try something new? I wish to learn new tecnologies as for example angularJS, ReactJs or Google Polimer to build web interface, i wish to use different database instead of mysql,mongodb or postresql, and i wish to use a different scripting language from php, but reality want that using php and mysql is a good idea for sharing work with other developers and make life easier to find a server. Php and Mysql are so much used that you will find a free full stack of those software everywhere. i would to write restful api using java or python or ruby on rails, but this choise will make harder future installation. Maybe I would to use node technologies to makes interconnections by players (or to build restful api itself) or google maps api to show where table soccer players are gaming at the same times or severals others things. Google Developers also gives databases and other resources for free, maybe there will be something interesting there. The only sure thing is about the economicity of the project : this is not a work, so i would not pay software to obtain this.

Now, i’m installing lubuntu on a virtual machine. I think i will start looking in the GnuLinux world searching for a new ide, a new server, and so on. Ubuntu gives good compatibility, and lubuntu gives also resource optimization. Ubuntu Server without a minimal graphical environment will be too hard for me, so i choosed lubuntu.

I will makes some research now. See you soon.

Day Two

i leave lubuntu. I have added third party software repository, but i’m not able to understand what of 5 packages handler i should use to install my sofware. There are also three command line tool, and several other instances of the same thing. I’m downloading ubuntu and i’m ready to set up another virtual machine. Ubuntu and Lubuntu share sames repository, but i hope Ubuntu gives me a better user experiences. I think i will keep developing with php and mysql, but tomorrow i will ask for advices some collegue.

 

Day Three

I start to recognize that my days has 1 hour, or better, removing  rousing working time, useless sleeping time house work time  and wife time ( i home my wife will never read this 😛 ) , i have one hour 🙁 . My Nas can act as a server with classical lamp installation, but talking about the project with my senior developer friend Francesco Pellegrini i understand that free python hosting exists and maybe we can try to use it. For now , i keep searching for solutions.

3 Months later ….

I’m here again. During this time i studied python3 in order to develop a web services probe, and i understand that i love python : it is fast, handy, and productive oriented. There are several free hosting, as, for example, OpenShift cloud, the Red Hat PaaS (Platform as a service) product, but there are always some problem, for example, installing requests module isn’t easy as i thinked, and i haven’t time or money to use a private instance. Maybe there will be other easy solution, but in those days i learn about slime framework. Slime framework is a php micro framework useful to write RESTful web services. There are dozens of frameworks, and here you can find a useful article about php restful framework. So, i needed to setup a server machine to start developing. I created a Mint virtual machine with every tool i needed. I simply wanted for an apache webserver, php, mysql and a mongodb, and i needed netbeans to develop. I known there are several and more modern technology, but i needed to start with something i already know how to use. Maybe in the future i will change apache with nginx. Netbeans works well with php xdebug module so i have everything i needed to start.