@tony_marston404 - I didn’t indicate that you should refactor your application framework to take advantage of autoloading. I specifically wanted to show that the problem an autoloader solves is not the fact that there exists a “long list of includes”. The existence of an include or require statement in a script doesn’t prevent a developer from effectively using an autoloader.
In response to a comment I made on a separate thread, you said this:
I think the rest of this community has decided that there is no point in trying to convince you that modern programming practices are beneficial, so personally, I will not do that anymore.
What I will do, however, is ask you to respect the intended audience for these forums. If you take a look at the About Us page for SitePoint, you’ll find this as the mission statement:
our mission is to deliver new ideas, emerging concepts, and teach state-of-the-art technology to our readers
You have used certain techniques to solve the issues being discussed. However, a visitor to SitePoint (e.g. those interested in new ideas, emerging concepts and state-of-the-art technology), is not the audience to whom the merits of these techniques should be discussed.
Whether or not your framework can be deployed as a viable enterprise solution is not at question here. You’ve been able to do this successfully for a decade, so that is not in question. This does not mean that modern programming techniques are not beneficial or that there are not opportunities in your code base to apply these techniques.
For the record, the state-of-the-art in PHP programming includes things like:
- Dependency Injection
- Namespacing
- Auto-loading
- Not implementing a
Singletondesign pattern - Favoring composition over inheritance
- Modular composition
Of course this list is not exhaustive, but over the course of the last few weeks I’ve witness you argue against all of these items. My concern with this is that a visitor to SitePoint who is interested in staying up to date on programming concepts (e.g. those interested in new ideas, emerging concepts and state-of-the-art technology) will receive mixed messages regarding what’s acceptable and how a concept should be employed.
I imagine you’ll want to argue about how the modern practices are un-necessary and don’t offer valid benefits because you’ve been able to solve the same problems your own way. Again, this is not a commentary on your framework or how you have solved a problem in the past. It would be best though, to focus on how to employ new ideas, emerging concepts and state-of-the-art technology.
If you’d like to continue the discussion that has been had thus far, perhaps you could spin up a forum on your own website where it could continue.