Are you going to hear more about the learning curve for PHP and all its friends? You betcha!I started asking this question the other day at work and the responses were interesting so I'll throw it out here for general response and use:
What is the first web page you remember EVER seeing?Your first ever. This seems to inspire an automatic part B
What is the impression it made on you?
All to distract you from the learning curve issue. And yet it is related: I am severely reminded of my early days of trying to figure out, without having previously learned any sort of programming language whatsoever, how to write web pages. This was right after the mosaic to netscape switch. Oh my - exciting times they were.I remember finally calling up the guys at albany.net to ask - but HOW do I get it so other people can see it? Oh - FTP? OK. Get software to FTP? OK. And then it will work? really? And the files are going to go where? And I'll put what address in my netscape? OK.
But the miracle, and it continues to be no small miracle in my mind**, is that it worked and continues to work.
Fast forward to today and voila - I'm right back to that earlier time when I had to work and work to find out - duh - no closing angle bracket.... or duh - didn't upload that image now did I? No. etc etc etc.
Today the problem might be curly braces (thanks Dave for that straightforward illumination on convention!) or it might be just the total duh moment of - if you insist on cutting and pasting at least remember to change what needs changing!. Or as in tonight - that "includes/" isn't part of the scripting stupid, it's part of the file directory name and you ain't got that set up! Duh. You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out things like that. Is it productive? I suppose in that it teaches me a lot about troubleshooting code. Could the time be better spent? Oh yes I can think of a few ways, starting with a cool beverage and ending with code that works for a change. But that problem solved and it's on to the next.
** I'd like to mention here that back then when I so excitedly said - Hey! I've got a website! Go here! I was met with roundly vacant stares. That continued for a good two or three years. Ten years later, now people say - what's the website? like it's a given and whine if there isn't one. That's a miracle too.
OK, just for John, because he laughs about the fact that I blog (and that everyone else blogs too.... but I think he's just jealous because HE doesn't have a blog.... yet) Here's my work for tonight. My first "real" PHP page. Wildly exciting in some ways and pretty darn boring in oh so many other ways.
added value: for those who just want more, go here for different examples of what I did. I made it up to about page 55 before I crumped out and made a stupid mistake and it was too late to find it. Of course this morning it popped right out at me. the form_handler file has been used and edited quite a few times, so it's much more complex than when I started. Today I started with arrays. ooooh oooh oooh!
