Part 1 - Programs Every Developer Should Have

Word 2003 (Warez Portable Prefered)

Notepad++ (Latest Prefered)
Firefox 2.0.0.14+ (Latest Prefered) (FireFox 3 Final when released)

–ADDONS-

• FireFTP (Latest)
• Web Developer
• Dom Inspector

WampServer 2 (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyAdmin and more)

–ADDONS-

• Download the latest PHP 4.4.x package
• Download the latest PHP 5.0.x package
• Download the latest PHP 5.1.x package
• Comes defaulty with PHP 5.2.6 which is good
• Download Apache 2.0.63 and enable it, because it works with all versions of PHP.

Mozilla Thunderbird (Latest version Prefered)

Foobar200 MP3 Player (It’s a silent mp3 player that don’t touch your CPU at all which makes it very ultimate, you can find it here: http://www.foobar2000.org/ and many people get bored like the rest of us will when programming keep your self intertained)

PhotoshopCS or 7 (Theres a lot of torrents for these two, I prefer any of them)
MS Paint (Great for quick screen shots)

NOD32 (Very good anti virus, its incredible, just download the trial and get a patch ;))

uTorrent (For ebooks and what not, pretty decent usage)

I’ve just recently converted from Xampp server to Wampserver 2c, I’m actually loving the experience. I can use different versions of PHP,Apache and Mysql with a click and its very fast when changing versions for testing. I have to admit wampserver 2 is good. One thing I had a hard time with was going from Xampp to Wampserver and I think I’m going to write an article on how to make sure you connect your wamp server smoothly. Xampp wasn’t bad at all, but Wampserver seems more flexible when it comes to development. Xampp is more for people who like doing stuff in a slow matter, when Wamp is more a do it quick, switch type of Windows Apache Mysql and PHP server.  One last thing I like about wamp, is the quick support, there are more answers to already asked questions making it even easier to find information.  It’s great.

If you’ve had any experiences with Xampp, please let me know.

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine by the name of “Zero Tolerance” pretty known vBulleting/IPB programmer. He was explaining to me why free forum software shouldn’t go the “noob route”.

UPDATE Clause Locks the sql table

He was telling me how vBulletin works and was explaining to me that when a user views a topic they don’t update the topics table because thousands of users visit the topics A LOT when on a big community specially like vB support forum. They instead of using UPDATE clause they use INSERT clause because its a less priority towards the sql server. So picture 300 members viewing a topic the sql table is Updating Locking the table and unlocking the table constantly just to add +1 to the total views. This could terribly kill your sql server resulting in a db shut down.

So try avoid using the “UPDATE” clause at the wrong times. Everyone don’t edit their post at the same time, but I’m pretty sure a lot will view a topic at the same time on a big topic or announcement.