Re: [chiPHPug-discuss] PHP / Magento Job

[Larry G. <la...@ga...>]

On Friday 11 September 2009 5:54:11 pm Arlo Leach wrote:
> > Yep, my fault. I guess I'm not that good at PHP. Eh, Neil?
>
> Well, I don't think Neil or Zach meant that working with any PHP-based
> software or framework should be -easy-.
>
> Most of my projects begin with comparing the available off-the-shelf
> options to a custom solution or a hybrid between the two. I explain to
> clients that a custom solution will take longer to get going up front, but
> in the future, customizations to off-the-shelf software will take about
> three times longer than a comparable addition to the custom software.
> There's just a lot more "stuff" to work through in those systems compared
> to a system that was designed and built for one purpose.

Only if the custom system you're working with is crap, or you don't know how 
to leverage it properly.  Any system worth its salt will make add-ons easier 
to develop, because you can leverage good existing libraries to do much of the 
hard work for you or because there are add-on libraries available that already 
do most of what you want, than a completely custom system.  That's assuming 
you know how to leverage that particular system properly, of course, which is 
where "experience with platform X" comes in.

It works for languages, too.  I'm a skilled PHP programmer with a decade of 
experience.  I've worked in a number of other languages, too.  I could 
probably pick up enough C# to be at least moderately productive in a month or 
so.  I don't expect I'd actually be any GOOD at it for at least a year, 
because a different language/framework/platform requires such a different mental 
model that takes time to develop.  

And that's assuming the language/framework/platform is any good.  I've worked 
with systems where it didn't really matter how good I was, the end product was 
going to be crap because the underlying foundation was crap.  There's no way I 
could have changed that without rewriting the underlying foundation, which of 
course budget didn't allow. :-)

-- 
Larry Garfield
la...@ga...