Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] PHP programmers need spanked!

[Shawn Parker <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

there are a couple of reasons for this problem. first, web programmers 
tend to be new. most don't come from a traditional programming 
background. on top of that, most barely learned their php skills through 
experience...not study. so, no one was there to correct their mistakes. 
secondly, constructing web sites and services usually entails meeting 
some insane deadline. fact is, most web developers just don't have time 
write code correctly.

"who cares what the source looks like as long as it works..." is the web 
developer mantra.

i'm guilty of it. when someone hands you a spec sheet for a decent sized 
database application due in a week...commenting all of your code and 
writing modular, portable oop based php is out of the question.

sucks, believe me. but it's an unfortunate truth of the "must have it 
now" web generation.


Michael wrote:

>
>> You're not hacking on osCommerce by any chance?
>>  
>>
> Exactly. I'm starting to think that a complete rewrite would have been 
> easier than trying to fix this code. I've seen a lot of other PHP 
> programs that were programmed really badly though. MediaWiki (of 
> Wikipedia fame) comes to mind too. Many PHP coders just either aren't 
> very experienced programmers or they just don't care about the end 
> result.
>
> Personally I like sepperating UI and core logic with XML-RPC but you 
> can do it almost as well just by cleanly sepperating your code into 
> functions and objects that obey some reasonable naming scheme. PHP's 
> allowance of inlining HTML is handy for short scripts but people that 
> use it for major programs are just insane. Haven't they ever heard of 
> using templates? :p
>
> Seriously, by the time I fully understand all this tangled mess it'd 
> not be that much more work to rewrite it. I've worked with OSCommerce 
> before and it is ALWAYS a hassle. For something like an e-commerce 
> package it should be especially important to have clean code as you 
> want to be able to security audit it. I'd definately want to break it 
> into a three-tier structure with each tier connected by XML-RPC. 
> That'd really let your website scale too as each tier could be broken 
> up across multiple servers.
>
> As it is I've spent a huge amount of effort just fixing typos (that 
> keep the program from working) and reformatting the code just so that 
> it's readable enough to figure out what is going on. *sighs* Actual 
> coding is only about 20% of the time I've spent working on this.
>
> -- 
> Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
> http://kavlon.org
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


-- 
Shawn Parker
Network Administrator
Cumulus Media
Columbia, Missouri - KBXR, KFRU, KOQL, KPLA
Jefferson City, Missouri - KBBM, KJMO, KLIK
573-449-4141 Ext: 331

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