What language/framework/workflow sets do you recomend for a small office?

Question

I work in a small office (only 1 designer, me and plus 1 programmer).

We have a solid background in classic ASP development and some sort of a small proprietary framework/cms based on ASP + MySQL + Javascript written line by line in here and the projects aren't so big until now and we want to step up with something more fast and secure way to develop without reinventing the wheel (again).

I have a little knowledge in PHP and .Net (C#) from some particular projects and personal learning.

We have researched various languages and frameworks, as well as some new (to us) methodologies like TDD and some version control oriented workflows with GIT, etc.

Until now we have thought in PHP with some framework like CodeIgniter or Kohana and ASP.net (C#) with MVC 3, since I can start from some knowledge I already have and maybe adopting GIT as our version control system for the bigger projects.

We need some advice in getting a new set of skills and tools that work the best for us before getting 1 by 1 and trying.

EDIT: What we need to change(maybe)
As you can imagine, we don't have a testing process like TDD or BDD and the testing is done very breafly (We have luck with so little problems after release) nor a real idea of how to use it (need more study and clarification).

We use Dreamweaver most of the time to code and need a more fast and robust development environment with an autocomplete feature like MS Intelisense and nice highlighting (I personally like to write code and have used the notepad to write almost all of my first apps, but in a profitable work with a short deadline we can't go this way. Not that Dreamweaver is bad, but it's too general and lacks some features).

I know that security is a thing to see at the programmer side, but there's plenty of frameworks with features that helps in this case and now we have a very basic and limited set of tools written by us to do this (poor SQL injection protection, etc).

Our "version control" is purely based on a network share and our machines. The final version is always the one in our file server and most of the time, when we have to make some changes, we change the files directly and upload them again. A backup of this share is made each 2 or 3 months.

We are growing up and expect to hire someone soon. Its hard to find a VBScript programmer for ASP and when we find one, the salary is to high for us by now because nobody is learning it in this days and who knows already have a job with a good one.

Final concerns: We've decided to use ASP.Net(C#)/MVC as our primary framework and use CodeIgniter as an alternative to linux servers and other projects. Thinking in joining some MS program for startups and small business to help with some costs.

We're getting Git as our vcs in our private file server for the origin and instances in each develop machine for us to clone, work and push back. We also considering a service like Bitbucket to maintain a copy on the cloud.

If some of you have any more advice or other thoughts about this I'll follow-up.

I would like to thank you all and mark many of the answers as right but I can't. I think this question may be a base of reference for small offices like us to get some points and help on the same decisions.

Answer 1

As I read your question, I think this is a tipping point where you have to do a strategic decision and then decide on how to proceed from there. I would condider consulting the Technology adoption life cycle (wikipedia article) and decide where I would like my team to be there.

Classic asp is outdated. Php using the frameworks you've mentioned or asp.net seem a very good solution if you want to capitalize on what you already have and pivot one step from the "Laggard" position towards the late/early majority. You can capitalize asp and c# know-how and jump to php or asp.net, you will gain many more advantages, one that crossed my mind is the ability to cloud deploy to Azure.

You might want to use the position you are in as an opportunity to jump towards the Early adopters/Early majority and experiment with more modern approaches such as ASP-MVC, Rails, Django, Grails. There will be a huge cultural shock in the first months, but you will discover many things that you are missing (and your competition might not) such as ORM, MVC, Enviromnent with better access to TDD/BDD technologies, tutorials about more modern VCSes (Ruby people use git a lot, I know you can do it with php) etc.

Answer 2

"Version control for some of our bigger projects" - version control for all of your projects. Period. You might not need it now until you find something serious wrong in a small proejct. VCS can save your arse.

"Network share backed up every 2/3 months" - back this up every day. It may not have gone wrong up to now, but picture the pain of losing it all.

Personally I do most of my work in C#/ASP.net MVC using MS visual studio and find it very productive for web based programming and with a large community of helpful people :)

Answer 3

Given your requirements regarding version control, anything at all would be fine - there are lots of version control systems, and there is no particular dependency between framework/language and VCS.

It sounds like you don't want to deal with anything obscure. If you pick a microsoft solution, you will get the IDE you want, and you will have access to a million smurf programmers; likewise with Java-based solutions. The disadvantage is that Java (and from what I understand of the .Net languages, them likewise) are early bound, which is different from VBScript and VB.

PHP (which I haven't used) is popular, hitting your requirements for readily available staff, and from what I've heard, not dissimilar to classic ASP (which I have used). I don't know about development environments, obviously.

You should also consider Django (python) and Ruby on Rails - they are both late-bound languages, and many, many people find them pleasant, productive, and popular with small teams.

Update:

I would suggest that you try the free solutions (i.e. everything except microsoft) on the level of installing them, and building your favourite tiny application (todo list, blog, something of that nature). Likewise with the microsoft solution, but no doubt your free trial period will be limited, so you may want to do it in a more planned way.

You could do that at the weekends if the pressure of time for real business is high.

Answer 4

You might also investigate more recent and robust web technologies, like opa or Ocaml with Ocsigen

See this answer for more.

Once mastered, they will increase your productivity.

Answer 5

If you are open to bigger change, you may try build your backend on NoSQL (CouchDB seems a good solution because of CouchApps - you can have part of your backend written inside CouchDB itself, using Javascript). NoSQL is suited well for agile development, since data structure is free from scheme, and you can adapt it on the way with less hassle than using relational DB.

node.js is also a promising way to go, if you are going to serve many requests.

If you plan to scale off even more, look at messaging patterns and things like ZeroMQ / RabbitMQ.

I'd definitely advice to shift to dynamic languages since they allow you much bigger power in translating your ideas into code. Python, Javascript, Ruby and even Smalltalk if you are not afraid (GLASS is nice platform for Smalltalk web apps based on decade-proven Gemstone appication server that is used in big industry applications).

Answer 6

What language/framework/workflow sets do you recommend for a small office?

C#/.NET framework 4.0/Workflow foundation +BizSpark

Why?

1-The easiest to start with: - you can find plenty of books and resources online.

2-Very good community: - probably you’ll find your question already answered, and there is good open source communities like codeplex.

3- Good price: - two words I say for small startups with “Microsoft bizspark”

4- Well structured & Rich in feature framework: - support for stuff like MVC, entity framework, easy to use TDD, and good SQL injection protection :)

5- Bizspark: - you’ll get stuff like TFS (a very good source control tool with bug tracking tool and use case tracking) and all Microsoft products for like 400$ a year.

6- Common language specifications : - you can use C# with other VB projects easily.

Answer 7

Software: .Net (C#), SQL Server Express Regarding development, you can use MVC and EntityFramework. Or you can develop your own tools, like some T4 templates for code generation, and a mini ORM helper.

Answer 8

First, I would start migrating off VBScript / ASP -- it is a dead language. I know I would never green light a new ASP-based project on general principle.

Second, for a shop that size you are probably better off moving as much of your services out to the cloud. The overhead of administering things right is just too much at that scale. I would look to something like bitbucket for SCM as they give you unlimited private repositories. For file storage, I would look at any one of the dozens of dropbox-like services. The other thing I would consider adding would be some issue / time tracking -- redmine comes to mind -- as well as some continuous integration to make things as hands off as possible.

As for what framework to use, I think I would avoid pigeon holing my company if at all possible. At that size you really need to work with what the customers want.