Professional PHP

[Skunk]

There's a lot more to programming than knowing the language (syntax, usage etc). To be a truly "expert" programmer I'd have thought you would need a very thorough grounding in design principles. Knowing every PHP function backwards is all well and good, but if you don't know how to organise large projects / write reusable code / keep things secure / use OOP where it would provide an advantage / keep things easily maintainable you're definitely not an expert PHP programmer. I've reached the stage with PHP (my first "real" programming language since I used to tinker with BASIC on the C64) where I know and have experience with most of the important functions / features of the language, but I need to learn decent design principles in order to progress further.

The problem is - how do you learn this stuff? There are a thousand and one excellent PHP tutorials / books that teach you the language, but so far the only resource I've found for writing well designed applications is "Web Application Development with PHP 4.0". I'm goign to university to do a computer science degree in a few months and I'm hoping that will teach me the kind of coding discipline needed to write really good code, but until then if anyone knows of a good book / tutorial for designing applications in PHP (or any other language) I'd love to know about them/

[manipura]

All I have been able to find are articles explaining the mistakes people make while programming. But the structure of it all depends on what you are building, and there are so many different things you could make, and so many different ways of making it. It would be hard to write something that would help someone structure their system.

[mad-onion]

Not true!
Most things in programming have a set way that they should be tackled. So therefore knowing the structures is, in my view, more important that the functions etc. You can always reference functions but you cant reference how to program easily!

Of course there will always be things you need to do in programs that doesnt get done often so it wont have an easy solution and a true expert would tackle that and make it look like it was elementry!..

[tubedogg]

Originally posted by aspen
See... thats what I'm talking about. If you do that, you can call yourself an expert.

And keep in mind that it took 3 full-time devs plus 3 contract devs more than 6 months to do it.

[mad-onion]

Yes i can imagine it would....although it is a tiring thought!! Six months on the same project...

Also i imagine a good percentage of the work on VB went into the stuff users dont see (admin etc)

[exbabylon]

Also remember that vB has been around for a little while. They didn't come up with this version you are using in six months. If you look at the total number of hours of coding that went into this program we are currently using it would blow your mind! The number of lines of code is outstanding, but I believe I have one application that comes mightly close, around 30 thousand, but, you also need to look at the fact that their coding is probably much tighter, allowing them to accomplish greater tasks with less lines of code.

Just remember, profressionals are those who can do what they do flawlessly. The are also people who are confident enough as to not have to wonder, "Am I A Professional?", they are secure. A lot of times intermediate coders will ask, "Am I professional?", and the answer is, "Obviously not, because you don't know yourself you don't have enough confidence in yourself to do what it takes to be a professional."

Just a few of my thoughts, God Bless,

Alex Stanton

[Theiggsta]

I could rant on and on and on about this subject...but I call myself pretty intermediate, I have really sharpened my code ethics lately and am now doing the second project I have done, which is an entire shopping cart script. So far its at about 7,458 lines (give or take) and 11 tables. I am porting it to postgresql at the moment and so far is about 1/2 way done. If I complete this project, I will truely consider myself an intermediate.

Notice its not expert, I dont think of myself that highly, I think you can only call yourself that when you can humbly answer (offhand) any code that would help another and you do this more than once and on many occasions.

I try to answer as many questions on this board as I can, but I dont because I dont know the best answer for them. So I dont call myself an expert for this reason.

[pedro_gb]

How do you find out how many lines of code multiple files are? I wanted to know that a while ago for one of my scripts, but didn't know how to do it.

[Theiggsta]

I use editplus so I just take count the lines on each page and add em up...

[tubedogg]

Originally posted by exbabylon
Also remember that vB has been around for a little while. They didn't come up with this version you are using in six months.

Actually they sort of did. vB2 is a complete rewrite from vB1 and it was started between about 9ish months ago, so really any dev time on vB1 doesn't count (and keep in mind they were still developing and updating vB1 for at the least the first couple months that they were working on vB2).

[tubedogg]

pedro_gb: I did exactly what Theiggsta suggested for the number I quoted earlier for vB2.

[Michel V]

What I've learned about code ethics is more about organisation of your files and functions. Often times I find myself with duplicate functions and twice more db queries than needed. Add files with cryptic names ("why oh why did I name this file a.php again ?") and uncommented code, and you've got the big mess I was in just some days ago.

(edited: oops I forgot I already put my previous post in context)

[manipura]

Yeah, I have a problem with writing code and not commenting. I really have to get into that habbit.