Thread

Well, I’ve been around the CI framework since December of 2009; I’m not a professional web developer, or I would be destitute by now.

I make my living developing mainframe apps for the Wall Street crowd, and when I get home, I need a reason to ignore the Mrs. :coolhmm:

So I’ve been fiddling with CI and PHP on my localhost.  In the 2 and 1/2 years, I’ve had some fun, seen some views, but have not been able to put anything of any value together. 

It’s too hard!

To code everything from scratch for every website is insane. There is so much minutia to consider, and every time I need something… Yesterday it was a way to implement open_id, today it’s a way to figure out why, after six months of working, all of a sudden, the screen is blank and nothing loads, I just don’t know why!!...

I search and I search and I try and I try… I end up finding posts and tuts that are older than my ten year old dog, and completely irrelevant. How many times have I completely ruined the site I’m working on in trying someone’s contribution or plugin or add-on? (Rhetorical question)

Look, it’s too easy to render the whole root directory of code totally useless with an enter key and a momentary lapse of reason. 

I custom built an ETL that gathers business facts and reference data into a DB2 database so as to afford client access to reporting data without impacting operational databases. It was about pulling data from disparate operational databases and making that data available to a number of varied platforms. This involved dozens if not hundreds of programs, of all kinds written in COBOL with embedded DB2 SQL. It took three people a year to put together, but it wasn’t as complicated as it sounds.

I find putting together a single website far more frustrating, and unpredictable. I guess because I’m a perfectionist, I don’t like unreadable code, I don’t like code that is not internally documented, and as tickled as everyone is to using OOP methodologies, I’d rather cut my own phallus off than have to figure out what’s going on in someone else’s code.

I guess that’s the main reason why 75% of the business world is still entrenched in COBOL, I can teach any dufus to write a program that functions.

OK rant’s over.
Thanks for letting me blow off some steam.

I’m resigned to the fact that the website I wanted to build two years ago will never see the light of day.

Ciao.

I remember the fist website I made. It took a long time, about three months, and it was pretty lame. Even the first 5 or 10 websites I did were nothing all they great. There is so much to know, and mastering even one of those things seemed beyong arm’s length. The thing is, you won’t make a nice website with only two years of experience. Just keep going, and it will all work out one day…

cobolCowboy,
I salute you for your knowledge of Cobol, I never could get interested in that end of the profession.  I have been making websites for about 15 years, and I started much like Skunkbad, they weren’t pretty but they worked.

  You know from you own experience that good code is reusable. I have found design features that I incorporate into all my sites and don’t reinvent the wheel.  Your comment about lack of documented code in other peoples work is par for the course.  In retrospect, my code gets documented after the fact; I get it working and then add the comments later, if I remember to do it…

  I suspect that you want to make CI do all those neat tricks that you know how to do with Cobol.  Consider that you have a large Cobol library available to you, some of which you probably wrote yourself. Give yourself time to build the same resources under CI.  I occasionally use third party tools, when I’m too lazy to figure out how to write them myself or the job must be done “stat” and the client doesn’t care how it gets done.

  CI’s learning curve is lower than most of the other Frameworks out there (no flames guys, I believe this to be true).  If you build several smaller sites, before trying to make the Taj Mahal of software, it avoids getting depressed when it doesn’t do Everything the first time. Remember how you were with Cobol in the beginning?

  Most of the people on this forum are very willing to answer questions and analyze code.  Do take advantage of this resource.  Especially when you have just hit the enter key one too many times.  Backups are your friend…