NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

B.A.S. wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I'm trying to move from being a rank beginner to an intermediate level 
> of programming PHP. While practicing & trying to learn something new 
> every day, I'm also reading up on security (Essential PHP Security by 
> O'Reilly & Pro PHP Security by Apress).

That is never bad.


> Unfortunately, I still have a really tough time trying to work out the 
> logic of what I want a script to do, and my code is pretty primitive & 
> verbose because of that (I have to painstakingly step through each 
> little bit of logic in order to wrap my head around anything).

Welcome to my world, you are not alone.

> What I should be doing to get to the next level? Should I read up on web 
> application design? OOP? Just keep plugging away? What do you guys use 
> when working out the logic of an application you're building? I'm 
> guessing that would be some kind of flow chart?

What I do is write the commentary first. I write down each step that I know or 
think needs to be done in the respective sequence. It isn't as formal as a 
flow chart, but it does the same job: first think about what you need to do 
and then do it. Of course there will be changes while writing the code and 
when testing and fixing bugs, but that will happen no matter what you do. If 
you rather make a flow chart, go ahead, but you do want to add plenty of 
commentary anyway.

> What about IDEs? Because of my HTML coding & graphic design background, 
> I'm still using Dreamweaver--would I perhaps learn faster or be more 
> productive using Zend Studio (or even something less expensive like 
> phpDesigner)?

Well, I went through the odysee of IDEs and still plan on finishing my review 
of all the ones that I tested out. My three recommendations are LuckaSoft's 
EnginSite Editor for PHP, Waterproof's PHP Editor, and NuSphere's PHPEd. I use 
PHPEd as it has the best debugger implementation, not surprisingly as Dmitri 
???, the creator of dbg, works for NuSphere. NuSpehere costs money and they do 
show that they are a business quite drastically. You buy a license and get 
support and updates until the next version comes out, which is typically 6 
months later, so your benefits fade quickly. I find that a bit asanine, but 
they do put out a product that I think is work the money. See if they have 
some introductory deal. I got the smallest package for under 60 bucks. I used 
LuckaSoft's IDE before and think it is a great IDE and even as good or better 
than PHPEd if it wasn't for the debugger. It uses dbg as well, but in debug 
mode you have to stop at the beginning of each script and that turns old very 
quickly. I got a free license for EnginSite PHP because I did the German GUI 
translation for them. SO if you know a second language and they don't have 
that as GUI language then spend the two days translating and get a nice IDE in 
return. Waterproof's IDE has less features, but for the general development 
work it is on par with EnginSite. If you write to Waterproof and tell them 
that you do PHP as a hobby and that your projects are for yourself as well as 
friends and family to look at then they will give you a free private license. 
They are really nice about that. Uh, one more thing about Luckasoft, see that 
you get their MySQL client with the IDE if you decide to use Enginsite. It is 
the best MySQL client that I have seen so far. They also sell it as a 
standalone tool and it really is nicely done.

I'd get the Standard package from NuSphere and the Luckasoft MySQL client. 
NuSphere's Pro package has a MySQL client built in, but I haven't had a chance 
to check it out.

Now, some may recommend the Eclipse based IDEs. I found them to be horrible 
and truely not designed for PHP. Just syntax highlighting doesn't cut it. I 
also found those bolted on packages difficult to install and lacking a lot of 
features. I also tried Numega, but that didn't do it for me. I also tried Zend 
and I think that IDE was designed by a bunch of drunken monkeys. It is among 
the worst pieces of crapware that I ever came across. Unbelievable that they 
charge money for that. I guess some people like it, otherwise it wouldn't be 
so popular.


> Please forgive the numerous questions, but I'm 40+ years old and want to 
> approach this professionally, not just be some hack who writes sloppy 
> code for for beer & pizza money and doesn't care about the client.

Don't underestimate beer and pizza! I think the best approach is to schedule a 
lot of time and come up with a few projects that you are interested in. Then 
pick one, write specs for it, establish milestones, create the outline (either 
as comments or as flow chart), then star coding, and finally do a lot of 
testing. When you are done, take the project and put it somewhere in the 
corner of your hard drive and start over again. You will be amazed how much 
better you are now and how much better your code is. I work on a project now 
for three years and found myself in the position to write code for a task that 
I coded before in a different context. I didn't use the old code, but created 
new scripts. Turns out that the new ones are half the size, run more stable, 
use less variables and flags, require less db queries, and are just much much 
better designed and written. I ditched the old code and used the new code.
And don't get hung up on creating something that isn't there yet. I work on a 
picture and video archiver/viewer and there are tons available that are 
probably much better than mine. But with that approach you will quickly find 
out that everything was already coded before. Other than that, I completed an 
MP3 archiving/player system, started a bug tracking and CRM tool (was too big 
of a task for me), and spend some time writing a custom CMS for eLearning, but 
quit the job due to budget cuts (the feds needed the money for the useless 
wars rather than for social services for children and families).

And by all means ask as many questions as you can. Ask tons of questions. The 
answers that you will get will propel you to the next level. I don't think I'd 
be on the level I am at now if it wasn't for relentless asking on NYPHP Talk.


David