I've been surprised over the years to see this is still being downloaded, in several countries nonetheless. I mean the number of downloads is not staggering but it shows that this project has been useful I would think to at least some people.
In any case, I haven't spent too much time continuing to update this project for several reasons. First and foremost, I have had a number of health challenges. Second, I had a family and between that and work, I had no time to spend on this. And so on...
However, that said, my grandiose ideas for this project have faded and perhaps it's a good thing. At the end of the day, I did use this project on production code before. In other words, I used it to build a real, functional website that was database-driven. Your typical 3-tier (presentation, web and data layers).
In hindsight, I should have named this project, PHP Web Framework (phpwebfm). It's not really a toolkit as much as it is an MVC code framework based on J2EE design patterns from several years ago now.
The web-based demos/screenshots I created were pretty useless to be honest. I built a fully functional website with this code that was a real example and far surpassed what the demos/screenshots were. However, it was proprietary in that I didn't own the code. It was developed for work so I couldn't share it. I actually won an award from work for developing the platform with my own code. An innovation award. Just a paper certificate. Nothing fancy but the recognition was worth more.
I don't know if this code works with the latest version of PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. I'm not really sure if I want to revive this project and test it with all the newest software. The last time I did it, I realized my code had basically stood the test of time because I only had to spend about a 1/2 hour updating it to produce version 1.0.4. I considered this code "alpha" but to be honest, I have already used it in a production office environment. Granted, that's not the same as a publicly hosted website over the Internet but nonetheless. It was running on an intranet. Later on, what I developed got rebuilt from the ground up using Zope/Plone in Python by a hired developer. My original code/ideas was used to drive that project.
All in all, this framework is good for rapid development and prototyping from my point of view. Yes, it requires you to understand how to code and you really should look at the code and understand it before you'll really know how to use it. This was a framework that I built for my own purposes and just decided to publish it as Open Source. It was never meant to be used by "beginners" but I figured hey, if someone wants to delve into it or if they already have PHP development experience, it could be useful to someone.
Since I developed this project, I sort of lost the motivation for programming. It was always a hobby for me more than anything. I just happened to have a need to use it for a project at work one time but my work had nothing to do with being a hobbyist programmer. I just used it to solve a problem. My work was writing, editing and publishing technical IT standards. Later on, I moved to doing policy work on the business side for corporate recordkeeping. It was a good transition for me with my IT background. In any case, now I've been on disability since 2015 since my disease has struck again so no idea if or when I'll be going back. Just waiting for surgery which could happen anytime but probably quite a bit further into the future.
Why did I lose motivation? Let's just say that the programming landscape these days is not what it used to be. I used to do it back in the day when Android, iOS and apps didn't exist. There's so many people doing programming on so many different things now it's hard not to pursue an idea that someone else has already pursued and perhaps with greater skill than yourself. This is my main problem. Ideas. Something I'd really be interested in doing. I glaze over ideas threads about OSS projects but nothing really makes me go, hey I'd like to spend my free time doing that! I'm just bored... I play games and that's about it. Get bored of those too. From spring -> fall I go motorcycle riding and I LOVE that. Fall and winter is spent mostly indoors.
So my question to all of you is this... Do you feel that this code is still useful given all of the changes to coding standards, ways of doing things, frameworks, tools, etc. available today? My guess is that this is grossly outdated and not worth pursuing updating this again. I could be wrong... May as well ask people who actually use it right? If I see no replies to this thread, then my answer will be an obvious no, don't bother updating. Otherwise, I have lots of free time and could spend some time updating this. The only motivation would be people who've used it replying back to this thread and saying please do so. Otherwise, I'm not motivated.
Programmed in many different languages over the years, master of none though that's the thing. Assembly, Borland Pascal, Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Visual Basic, Basic, QBasic, Authority, Erlang, PHP, etc. Seems these days, it's all about using a whole different set of APIs, frameworks and libraries. The current wave of new age programmers follow a much different approach it seems to app development nowadays. A lot of it seems very foreign to me and I guess that's partly why I get unmotivated. I see so many languages, libraries, frameworks, etc. it's like what do you pick? What do you learn? The answer you always get back is, it depends. There was this saying in standards-related work. “The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” - Andrew S. Tanenbaum. However, sometimes I feel that's to my detriment. I'm old. 39, going to be 40 soon. Technically, I have 16 years of work left before retirement. It feels like I just entered the work force yesterday at 21 years old but here I am, years later, saying "where did the time go?"
It doesn't take long to become a dinosaur... but you can still teach an old dog new tricks if he's willing to learn I suppose. I guess I should stop rambling at this point...
Last edit: Brian Bisaillon 2019-01-10
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I've been surprised over the years to see this is still being downloaded, in several countries nonetheless. I mean the number of downloads is not staggering but it shows that this project has been useful I would think to at least some people.
In any case, I haven't spent too much time continuing to update this project for several reasons. First and foremost, I have had a number of health challenges. Second, I had a family and between that and work, I had no time to spend on this. And so on...
However, that said, my grandiose ideas for this project have faded and perhaps it's a good thing. At the end of the day, I did use this project on production code before. In other words, I used it to build a real, functional website that was database-driven. Your typical 3-tier (presentation, web and data layers).
In hindsight, I should have named this project, PHP Web Framework (phpwebfm). It's not really a toolkit as much as it is an MVC code framework based on J2EE design patterns from several years ago now.
The web-based demos/screenshots I created were pretty useless to be honest. I built a fully functional website with this code that was a real example and far surpassed what the demos/screenshots were. However, it was proprietary in that I didn't own the code. It was developed for work so I couldn't share it. I actually won an award from work for developing the platform with my own code. An innovation award. Just a paper certificate. Nothing fancy but the recognition was worth more.
I don't know if this code works with the latest version of PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. I'm not really sure if I want to revive this project and test it with all the newest software. The last time I did it, I realized my code had basically stood the test of time because I only had to spend about a 1/2 hour updating it to produce version 1.0.4. I considered this code "alpha" but to be honest, I have already used it in a production office environment. Granted, that's not the same as a publicly hosted website over the Internet but nonetheless. It was running on an intranet. Later on, what I developed got rebuilt from the ground up using Zope/Plone in Python by a hired developer. My original code/ideas was used to drive that project.
All in all, this framework is good for rapid development and prototyping from my point of view. Yes, it requires you to understand how to code and you really should look at the code and understand it before you'll really know how to use it. This was a framework that I built for my own purposes and just decided to publish it as Open Source. It was never meant to be used by "beginners" but I figured hey, if someone wants to delve into it or if they already have PHP development experience, it could be useful to someone.
Since I developed this project, I sort of lost the motivation for programming. It was always a hobby for me more than anything. I just happened to have a need to use it for a project at work one time but my work had nothing to do with being a hobbyist programmer. I just used it to solve a problem. My work was writing, editing and publishing technical IT standards. Later on, I moved to doing policy work on the business side for corporate recordkeeping. It was a good transition for me with my IT background. In any case, now I've been on disability since 2015 since my disease has struck again so no idea if or when I'll be going back. Just waiting for surgery which could happen anytime but probably quite a bit further into the future.
Why did I lose motivation? Let's just say that the programming landscape these days is not what it used to be. I used to do it back in the day when Android, iOS and apps didn't exist. There's so many people doing programming on so many different things now it's hard not to pursue an idea that someone else has already pursued and perhaps with greater skill than yourself. This is my main problem. Ideas. Something I'd really be interested in doing. I glaze over ideas threads about OSS projects but nothing really makes me go, hey I'd like to spend my free time doing that! I'm just bored... I play games and that's about it. Get bored of those too. From spring -> fall I go motorcycle riding and I LOVE that. Fall and winter is spent mostly indoors.
So my question to all of you is this... Do you feel that this code is still useful given all of the changes to coding standards, ways of doing things, frameworks, tools, etc. available today? My guess is that this is grossly outdated and not worth pursuing updating this again. I could be wrong... May as well ask people who actually use it right? If I see no replies to this thread, then my answer will be an obvious no, don't bother updating. Otherwise, I have lots of free time and could spend some time updating this. The only motivation would be people who've used it replying back to this thread and saying please do so. Otherwise, I'm not motivated.
Programmed in many different languages over the years, master of none though that's the thing. Assembly, Borland Pascal, Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Visual Basic, Basic, QBasic, Authority, Erlang, PHP, etc. Seems these days, it's all about using a whole different set of APIs, frameworks and libraries. The current wave of new age programmers follow a much different approach it seems to app development nowadays. A lot of it seems very foreign to me and I guess that's partly why I get unmotivated. I see so many languages, libraries, frameworks, etc. it's like what do you pick? What do you learn? The answer you always get back is, it depends. There was this saying in standards-related work. “The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” - Andrew S. Tanenbaum. However, sometimes I feel that's to my detriment. I'm old. 39, going to be 40 soon. Technically, I have 16 years of work left before retirement. It feels like I just entered the work force yesterday at 21 years old but here I am, years later, saying "where did the time go?"
It doesn't take long to become a dinosaur... but you can still teach an old dog new tricks if he's willing to learn I suppose. I guess I should stop rambling at this point...
Last edit: Brian Bisaillon 2019-01-10