[HacktionLab] Recommendations for modern web dev environments

[Mike Harris]

Hi List,

We sort of covered some of this when discussing alternatives to
Wordpress or static HTML prior to BarnCamp, but I thought I'd throw this
out there again to any of you programmers out there.

I'm looking to re-write a hotpotch system, written in mySQL+Perl+JS with
some Jquery and some PHP, in a new platform/framework.

We need to link in with 2D real-time drawing tools, have CRM-style
management, have a full invoicing and billing system, a shopping cart,
graphical and numerical reporting and hierarchical user role/permissions
management.  We also have complex forms and need to be able to save and
restore form states, possibly on the client to then send to the server

There are some pretty good JS based stuff out there for doing the 2D
stuff, in native HTML5 SVG and Canvas support, but what components or
programming environment would you choose, what can you recommend that
balances power with learning curve with being cutting edge, but a stable
enough API.

So far I've looked at the possibility of hanging it off Drupal + Drupal
Commerce + CiviCRM and glueing that together to something like the
backbone.js stack and the 2D drawing stuff.

But I'm not convinced about that, as Drupal Commerce and Civi do not
seem to glue together very well, and Civi is very non-profit orientated
and therefore doesn't have support for sales and invoicing - although we
could obviously write that module and contribute it.

I'm wondering if it's entirely possible to do it all in JS, or mostly in
JS, and if that's wise.  Am thinking some kind of stack like Marionette
+ Underscore + Backbone + JQuery communicating with Node.js on the back
end.  I've briefly glanced at Coffeescript, Require.js, Ember.js,
Handlebars.js, and then there's Rhino, etc, there's so much to choose from.

What would you do?  What would you recommend?

Before you suggest it, all learning Java is not within the time-frame. 
Ideally PHP and JS would be what we'd like to use, Ruby is a possibility
though, perhaps Plone/Zope/Python, and of course there's always Perl.

Cheers,

Mike.

-- 
Mike Harris
w: http://mbharris.co.uk
t: +44 7811 671 893
0: http://mbharris.co.uk/keys/pgp.html