Five Years (doing mostly PHP) is Enough

Re:Five Years (doing mostly PHP) is Enough by WilliamLP on Friday October 24, 2008 @10:56PM (#343278)

I'm naive, but isn't doing something over and over again always a sign that you're doing it wrong? Even if you have to work in PHP and write simple database table management screens all day long, there's nothing to stop you from stepping back a layer, for example by writing programs to write that PHP and MySQL code in whatever language you choose. I believe that if a problem really is trivial in programming, there's always a way to make it trivial.

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Re:Five Years (doing mostly PHP) is Enough by brlewis on Saturday October 25, 2008 @12:10AM (#343325)

Not all boring work is amenable to automation. Nobody has made a robot that can sew clothes, for example.

OTOH, I find myself still enjoying web/database programming in Scheme, despite having done it for 9 years now. I guess it helps to be able to focus on solving users' problems and not waste time wrestling with inappropriate tools.

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Re:Five Years (doing mostly PHP) is Enough by fauigerzigerk on Saturday October 25, 2008 @06:57AM (#343491)

I agree in principle, but at some point you're done with don't-repeat-yourself framework wizardry and you're up against the basic task of translating fragmentary verbal requirements into a technical solution. Web frameworks (sometimes) make that process more productive but no less boring.

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Re:Five Years (doing mostly PHP) is Enough by WilliamLP on Saturday October 25, 2008 @10:23AM (#343564)

That's true, but I think we can both agree that the author can do a lot better than spending 60% of his time to "copy-and-paste chunk of code, then tweak for new field names, then make sure to update the correct database fields, add validation, ad nauseum."

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Re:Five Years (doing mostly PHP) is Enough by fauigerzigerk on Saturday October 25, 2008 @12:06PM (#343612)

Sure, I totally agree.

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