Note: This is not an attack on educational institutions in the slightest. My first real job in the technology world was at a college, and it was a great experience and a wonderful place.

I am an avid fan of places like Reddit which has sub-communities built around software development. I’ve run across posts in the past that contain student developers asking questions such as “Why didn’t I learn that in school?” or “What am I missing in school?” and I just want to scream

EVERYTHING!

Students learn the fundamentals in school. Some believe that what they learn in school is all they will ever need. They believe that they are being prepared for the working world.

They are not.

Currently I do development on two different machines.

Desktop:

• AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 840
• 16GB RAM
• 3TB Storage (2 x 1.5 TB drives. One for Ubuntu 11.10. One for Windows 7)

Laptop:

• Macbook Pro (Intel i7. Mid 2010)
• 4GB RAM
• 640GB storage
• OSX Lion

Development Software:

Programming languages are static across operating systems unless otherwise noted.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to be exploring and reporting my experiences with various web development frameworks.

The frameworks I have in mind are:

• Chicago Boss
• Play!
• Lift
• FuelPHP
• Django

I intend to build the same web application in the various frameworks to see the ease of development.