Tools Review

Before disappearing in the next project I’ve decided to review my favorite tools. Most of them could look uncool for a real geek but, you know, they work.


phpMyAdmin. This is actually the first web app I took, which was a) not written by me, b) freeware and c) stable. In late These three features were amazing enough for me several years ago. Despite of its catastrophic frame interface I believe it is still the most comon way to access MySQL from the Web.

MySQL. I never asked myself why I’ve taken this database platform. Earlier on I was working with PostgreSQL. I think MySQL is a good companion for small and mid-sized projects. It like playing rapid chess: not always the best player wins, but the player who plays quickly and not very bad.

Mantis. A bug tracking system. My impression of it is very close to phpmyadmin because of its simplicity. Of course the interface is a bit overloaded but it is table and … it works.

Subversion. At the time I started to use it, this system was considered to be a successor of CVS (here CVS funs can start screaming) . A very good documentation (Subversion Book) and nice Windows client (TortoiseSVN) have inspired me to jump in.

Mediawiki. Being employeed by MDC we started to explore wiki-world using phpWiki. One of my colleagues (Ryan, The Perfectionist) made us to switch to mediawiki engine. Thank you, Ryan.

WordPress. The youngest tool in my collection. I’ve already posted my first impressions being very satisfied with it so far.

I’m going to repeat a review after a year.

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