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Please allow my intro to properly define the scope of my question:
I'm still very new to the programming world. This all started for me when I had an idea for a software program, but no programming experience. I ended up going the outsourcing route to get the program, and after almost a year, we do have it live and functioning.
This specific program is written with php and is 100% web-based. We're using lots of ajax, jQuery, etc.
Now a year into it, I have been learning and learning wherever I can (lots of learning here!!!) I'm mainly focusing on Java now to build up to Objective-C and the iPhone fun (probably like 99% of all other newbie programmers out there).
I'm really learning so much, and one of the biggest things I'm learning about is proper commenting and scalability.
I'm seeing now that this job we just finished is very sorely lacking in both those areas. I am wanting to add and build upon this program, and not only do I not have much experience, but I'm seeing that it's really hard for me to even get an idea about the functions without these comments...
So my question is-what is the best course of action to begin to pick up the pieces on this program? A full re-write is out of the question, and I don't think is needed.
I'm sure this is not the first time some newbie programmer, software developer has been down this path...what do others do here?
Is it common for a programmer to come into a project very far along and then "clean up" the mess in order to make things move forward productively?
If this is the wrong place for this question (and I understand it may well be) can someone point me to where this would be more appropriate?
Thanks!
Joel
We call it "refactoring" and it's an important part of programming.
First, you must have a rock-solid set of automated tests. Usually we have unit tests that we run with a unit testing framework.
http://www.testingtv.com/2009/09/24/test-driven-development-with-refactoring/
Then you can make changes and run the tests to confirm that nothing was broken by your changes.
In some cases, you have to "reverse engineer" the tests around the existing programs. This is not very difficult: you have to focus on the interfaces that are "external" or "major" or "significant".
Since you're reverse-engineering, it's hard -- at first -- to determine what should be tested (because it's an important external feature,) and what should not be tested (because it's an implementation detail.)
I'm really learning so much, and one of the biggest things I'm learning about is proper commenting and scalability.
First, I'm curious what you've learned about "proper commenting" as this varies drastically. For some, it's documenting every class and function. For others, it may be documenting every line of code or no code at all.
After having gone through some of the different phases above, I'm with Uncle Bob Martin who, in Clean Code, says that you document decisions, not what the code does. The code itself should be readable and not need documentation. By adding comments describing behavior, you've created duplication that will eventually become out of sync. Rather, the code should document itself. Using well-named functions and variables help describe exactly what the other intended. I'd highly recommend Clean Code for a full discussion of these concepts.
As for scalability, it's usually something that you want to build in. Scalability might be a function of good design, or a proper design for the requirements, but poor design will make scalability a nightmare.
I'm seeing now that this job we just finished is very sorely lacking in both those areas. I am wanting to add and build upon this program, and not only do I not have much experience, but I'm seeing that it's really hard for me to even get an idea about the functions without these comments...
I see this as an indicator of one of two things:
That the code isn't well written. Yeah, that's highly subjective. -OR-
That you don't yet fully understand everything you need to. -OR-
A little bit of both.
Writing good, intention-revealing code is hard and takes years of practice.
So my question is-what is the best course of action to begin to pick up the pieces on this program? A full re-write is out of the question, and I don't think is needed.
As other posters have mentioned, Refactoring. Refactoring is the process of changing code to improve readability and usability without changing functionality. Get a good book on refactoring, or start reading everything you can online. It's now a critical skill.
Is it common for a programmer to come into a project very far along and then "clean up" the mess in order to make things move forward productively?
Unfortunately it is. It takes a lot of diligence to avoid falling into this trap. Try to make your code a little bit better every day.
I don't know about this being the wrong place or not, but I'll answer as I can:
Is it common for a programmer to come into a project very far along and then "clean up" the mess in order to make things move forward productively?
Yes, in my experience this is very common. I have been doing contract work for over 10 years, and I can't count the number of times I've had to come in and clean up something hastily put together to either make it scale or to be able to add functionality onto it. This is especially common when you outsource the programming to another company, the incentive there is to get it working and out of the door as quickly as possible.
So my question is-what is the best course of action to begin to pick up the pieces on this program? A full re-write is out of the question, and I don't think is needed.
I don't know that there is a "good" answer to this question, the only thing I can tell you is to take it one method at a time and document what they do as you figure them out. If you still have access to the people that initially wrote the program you can ask them if they could give you documentation on the system, but if that was not included as part of the original work spec I doubt they are going to have any.
I'm really learning so much, and one of the biggest things I'm learning about is proper commenting and scalability.
As you have found on your own, proper commenting is important, I'm not convinced on the importance of building scalability in from the beginning, going by the YAGNI principle. I think that as any program grows it is going to go through growing pains, whether that is scalability or functionality. Could someone have built twitter from the start with the kind of scalability in mind that it currently needs? Possibly, but there is the very real possibility that it would flop.
Is it common for a programmer to come into a project very far along and then "clean up" the mess in order to make things move forward productively?
It's definitely common for pretty much EVERY programmer :)
Having said that, remember the IIABTFI principle. If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It.
Understanding how the program works and what the pieces are is useful.
Trying to improve it without a specific goal and a business purpose in mind is not.
The big question is how well is the program currently running meeting the needs of those that use it? While it may not be the best looking code, it does work which may mean that you end up doing 101 refactoring exercises around it to get enough of the basics down to make other changes.
While you may be able to ask the original writers of the program, this can be a possible sore spot if they think it is awesome and you think it is crap, for example. It is an idea and one that should be carefully analyzed a bit before one goes and ends up burning bridges because they think you can't appreciate their genius in what was done.
Often this aren't done in an optimal way and so as one learns better ways to do things, things are done in better ways. There is a limit to that of course, but I'd start with the idea that you have some refactoring lessons to help get the basics of the app under your belt and then start putting in enhancements and other stuff to see what was really done in the end.
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this is maybe a silly question but I am really wondering if it is possible to use a MVC framework such as Zend without learning the language first? Thank you for your help!
You can't learn Zend Framework without learning PHP. That you might have guessed.
After, you don't need to have a degree in PHP to learn Zend Framework.
You can learn them both together.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: A framework serves to speed up development, by giving you a set of tools to handle mundane and repetitive tasks. Some frameworks also enforce a specific programming model, but their primary task is always helping you write faster and cleaner code.
Having said that, it becomes quite obvious that anyone thinking of using such a framework, first needs to understand (globally) the language it's written in. You don't have to know every available function by memory (who does?), but you will need to know the basics at least. As I said, a framework speeds up your development. It can never replace it.
If you write poor code without a framework, expect to write poor code with a framework.
If you can't code at all without a framework, then you won't be able to code with one either.
It is possible to lean MVC in general without knowing a programming language. Learning a specific framework will mean learning the language in which it's written. So, yes, it is possible to start learning Zend Framework without knowing about PHP, but be prepared to learn PHP on the way.
I would say YES it is possible, but provided you have experience in other languages or framework. However you cant really go far, and you probably learn PHP along the way in exploring the framework. From scratch will be kind of tough though.
To add:
I was learning Drupal without actually learning PHP prior. But in the process, I kind of figured out bits and pieces of PHP as I've knowledge in other languages.
Sure you can. You might find it slightly more difficult though if you're not familiar with the language. It depends on how much programming/language experience you've had previously. PHP is a relatively straightforward language to pick up but obviously if you've not done development before with something with similar constructs and syntactical similarities, then you're going to struggle.
Zend can be a complex beast however, and I'd recommend at least playing around with PHP to start with so you get an idea of how the language works, before you dive head first into the framework.
I think you'll struggle like hell, even if you do manage it. Frameworks are tools that encourage good programming standards and give you access to libraries for which you can call functions into your applications (to avoid writing everything or hard coding). If something breaks you may have to manually fix something, what are you going to do if you can't program to fix problems that occur within the framework (hire someone?)?
I suggest you go to the php website and buy a book on the language to get your feet wet. I suggest starting with the essentials of any language: variables, arrays, functions, methods, object oriented programming, libraries, etc. At least study those topics (especially OOP and write a small project with them) before messing with frameworks. Many use OOP and you will struggle if you don't even know how to program in the language, although if you knew how to program it would be less of a struggle than if you didn't know either OOP/Programming in general.
It's not a skill you develop over night, write code, read code, debug code, and repeat until you're familiar with the general concepts.
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What Should I Learn After PHP?
Ive been doing PHP for the past 2 years and I'm quite comfortable with it, I can do most things and I'm finding it harder to find challenges. Which is good I suppose.
But as I become more experienced I'm hearing bad things about it. That in the grand scheme of programming it's a baby.
So what would you recommend I move on to? I thought mabey Java or C. But you guys are the experts. What do you think?
Also, could you suggest some good places to learn.
Take anything you hear about PHP with a pinch of salt. Whilst it can be used as a simple scripting language, you can write entire object-oriented web applications with it (PHP5 adds massively to this).
PHP is my language of choice for many web projects - and not just because it's the one I know best, I've been using C#.NET, ASP.NET and WPF for much longer than I've been using PHP).
It depends on what you want to do, you choose the right tool for the job. PHP is a fine choice for rapid web development.
However, even if your day job requires you to stick with PHP, learning another language by doing some toy projects will actually improve the way you write PHP. Pick a language, try it out for a few months, then try out another!
What about participating in some kind of Open Source project ? Now that you have some experience, you would probably be able to help doing nice stuff ;-)
It would also be a rewarding / interesting experience :
not working alone is often better -- you learn more stuff, and you are more motivated
working on a big OSS project looks nice on a resume, too ;-)
It depends on why you want to move really. Are you looking to get past PHPs alleged flaws and produce better webapps, are you wanting to improve your programming ability/style/technique or do you want to learn a different style of programming?
You probably only want to learn C if you intend to move away from web-development. Java probably isn't going to teach you anything that you don't already know from PHP, assuming you write OO PHP code of course.
Learning one of Python/Ruby/Javascript would let you learn about functional programming - if that's your goal.
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I have this idea for a website that's been floating around my head for quite sometime now and now have finally decided to get to work on it. Due to the nature of the project and my experience I am getting comfortable with the idea of running it as a PHP+MySQL application on an Apache server.
This is my first time doing web programming of any sort(I have a background in sysadmin and mainframe systems coding) and I am pretty unsure of what practices to take into consideration so that I don't find myself undoing/redoing things later in the project. Considering all the flak the language has taken on StackOverflow(which can be seen here and here) it would be nice to have a set of common mistakes to watch out for for a beginner like me. I did find this thread outlining things to avoid in PHP but most of the points made little sense to someone like me who's just setting out in PHP.
Do you have any suggestions, tips or tutorials outlining common gotcha's in the language which might come back later in the project demanding entire rewrites.
For what it's worth I am currently working my way through Programming PHP(O'Reilly) and PHP in Action(Manning).
I was in a very similar position a couple years ago, having come from a NOS background myself.
I actually started with PHP and MySQL for dummies. Once I had absorbed the knowledge contained therein, I hit the Web (I used SitePoint a lot, like Boushley recommended) and I read a couple of O'Reilley's book on the subject.
Once thing I will tell you, is that if you want to streamline your understanding and your efficiency, I have found great success with a number of MVC frameworks(CodeIgnitor, CakePHP, etc). If you have no idea what MVC is, I recommend finding out. Now that I use MVC, my code is easier to understand, modify, troubleshoot, etc.
And honestly, half of the learning in PHP is running into those common mistakes and learning from them. Its hard to appreciate those 'common mistakes' until you make them.
Don't worry about HOW you are going to learn, just START leaning!
If I could give you one piece of advice, it'd be to use a framework - they will make your life so much easier. They take away all the repetitive code from programming websites, handle security concerns and abstract lots of things, as well as make you build your website using a pattern such as Model-View-Controller.
I highly recommend the CodeIgniter framework for it's simplicity, power, great documentation and ease of use, but there are plenty of other good frameworks too. There are lots of questions on SO on this so have a quick search. There is a fantastic introductory screencast on CodeIgniter (soon to be a series) from BinaryCake, so check that out here.
I hope that's helped! If you have any PHP concerns, feel free to message me - it's my area of expertise (along with CodeIgniter) and I love it!
While still developing, have all errors show up:
ini_set('display_errors', '1');
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
Can save a lot of time (in case of say, typos in variable names). Change this when it goes live to not display or only display "real" errors depending on the type of site and security levels involved (you don't want everyone to know paths and variable names and such..).
Find a variable/function naming convention (under_scores vs camelCase vs..) that suits you and stick to it. Also, classes go in the /class directory, includes in /inc etc. Both these make it easier to understand your own code years from now. Oh, and the same goes for coding style, I guess: choose one and stick to it (indentation, bracket style, ..).
Comment your code :-) Personally I also have a little log at the end of longer files that shows when I did what and why. Each addition is timestamped, and the same timestamp is also in the comments behind the change itself, as the line number on which it sits can easily change. Similarly, in an included file containing a bunch of functions, I have the list of function names in a comment at the top of the file, with a one-line description behind them.
Finally on security (though this should really be your first concern ;-) ), treat all user input as suspect. That's POST & GET data, cookies, user-agent string, search strings - anything that is supplied by the browser. It's trivial to change cookie data or change/add form items.
Read up on SQL injection & XSS attacks, and look at PHP's relatively new data filter functions: http://php.net/manual/en/intro.filter.php
Google any of these to get some good reading
Don't use register_globals
Turn off magic_quotes - escape all user entered input in SQL statements
Escape any user entered input printed with htmlspecialchars()
Plus a lot more... These are some common things to watch out for though.
There are a number of great websites out there with lots of tutorials. One that comes to mind is Site Point. They'll try their best to sell you a book or two while your're there, but they do have some decent articles. This article for instance discusses some common security blunders in php.
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-security-blunders/
They have lots of them...
http://www.sitepoint.com/search/search.php?ps=10&q=php&submit=Search
Also a nettuts.com has a load of tutorials an things of that nature. They're more all across the board though.
http://nettuts.com/
And I think pretty much everywhere you look you'll see the common ones like watch out for register_globals, magic_quotes...
one good book to look at that is also free to download here covers beginner to advanced PHP techniques and is good way to learn good standards :)
Use a framework and use Object Oriented Programming
Books are great for learning additional languages, but for your first one, a good video tutorial is a great way to go!
Register for a Lynda.com account (google: lynda trial) and sign up for as many one day trials as you need (or be a good honest person and purchase a week). They have a pretty good beginner and advanced PHP series of video tutorials which are (IMHO) a great way to learn your first language.
A tip: If you can start programming Object Orientedly from the get-go, you will save some time in the future and learn good practice from the start, luckily the advanced tutorials cover this!
Here's a link: http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=435
I've never taken this particular course (when I learned a few years ago, it was different), but I just recommended this to a friend (who was just starting), and he really liked it!
Hope this helps!
If you're new to programming in general, A database backed web application is likely to be a bumpy ride. You will probably be programming in at least two, real programming languages, PHP and SQL, and if you're going to do anything of modest complexity, JavaScript too. Keeping them strait will be rough, because they are all quite different.
Just to warm up to programming, you might want to start instead using a more focused learning excercies, such as working through the Euler Project problems, or Code Kata.
Either way, Try to pick up good habits wherever you learn about them, including the popular suggestion here of using an MVC framework for the heavy lifting.
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I am wondering why this framework (QCodo) is almost forgotten and totally unpopular.
I've started using it a few years ago and it is the only thing that keeps me with PHP. Yeah ... its development is stuck (that's why there is now more active branch Qcubed) but it is still very good piece of software.
Its main advantages:
Event driven (something like asp.net) no spaghetti code
Powerful code generation
good ORM
follows DRY
very simple AJAX support
is fun to write
Since then I wanted to be trendy and checked Django but I cannot write normal request-based web application (it just doesn't feel right).
Don't believe? chess.com is written with it and surely there are plenty others.
My 2 questions are:
Have you heard of it (PHP people)?
If you are using it what is your opinion about it (show us examples of your work)
Thanks
I've used PHP a lot for many years and never heard of it.
The creator(s) of Qcodo never really promoted the framework, and thus, didn't generate a large following. I believe they created it mostly for their own use, but also offered it up to others. It is awesome if you are looking for a code-generating framework. It does have a learning curve. So to get the most use of it, it's best to spend time studying the examples.
Qcodo has really had no active development for well over a year and there doesn't appear to be much chance that development will continue on Qcodo anytime soon. Qcodo appears to be dying a slow death.
Qcubed, a branch of Qcodo, is under active development and has been since Nov 2008. It was created by users of Qcodo who got frustrated with the lack of Qcodo progress. If you are just getting started, start here and not with Qcodo. But use Qcodo forums to search for problems/questions you may have.
Qcodo and Qcubed are fantastic frameworks. Don't discount or underestimate them just because you've not heard of them.
Emulating ASP.NET or Wicket in PHP is not a good thing to do. Moreover, the code style does not look good to me.
$this->btnSavePage = new QButton($this);
$this->btnSavePage->Text = "Save";
$this->btnSavePage->Visible = false;
$this->btnCancelEdit = new QButton($this);
$this->btnCancelEdit->Text = "Cancel";
$this->btnCancelEdit->Visible = false;
Hungarian notation? OMG. I need to create a big object to create a button? Heavy weight to me.
Yes, we do use it at Chess.com and overall have been very happy with it. It can get problematic trying to figure out how/where to store all those QFormStates when you're getting well over a million pageviews a day. Every page view is its own QFormState! We solved this by putting all of them into memcache! It does have a bit of a learning curve, but once you know it, you never really need documentation any more. I actually have moved away from using QQ entirely, and use all custom sql in our ORM files. QQ is just not powerful enough to do heavily optimized queries and highly tuned queries is more important than database abstraction. After all, the site needs to function and be fast. Here is one example ORM static method in our User class to load a random user from the database (we used to use this to show a random "user spotlight" on our members page). Notice how it uses the slave database, not our master (custom built function). It also uses memcache so that the randomized user only changes every 10 minutes (600s).
public static function LoadRandom($blnAvatarRequired = true, $blnForce = false) {
$strCacheKey = MyMemcache::QueryToKey("User->LoadRandom()");
if($blnForce || false === ($objUser = MyMemcache::G()->GetQuery($strCacheKey))) {
$objDatabase = QApplication::GetSlaveDbConnection();
$DaysAgo = new QDateTime(QDateTime::Now);
$DaysAgo->AddDays(-10); //make sure this is an active member
// Setup the SQL Query
$strAvatarReq = $blnAvatarRequired ? ' and u.has_avatar':'';
$strQuery = "
select
u.*
from
user u
where
u.is_enabled=1 and
u.create_date > '$DaysAgo'
$strAvatarReq
order by
rand()
limit
1
";
// Perform the Query and Instantiate the Result
$objDbResult = $objDatabase->Query($strQuery);
$objUser = User::InstantiateDbRow($objDbResult->GetNextRow());
MyMemcache::G()->SetQuery($strCacheKey, $objUser, null, 600);
}
return $objUser;
}
Qcubed and Qcodo are used by us in 3 projects and these ones are the cleanest and easiest to maintain projects we ever had! This is great stuff and easy to understand.
Just go into the code you won't need much manuals.
Qcubed community is much stronger at the moment so you might want to check in Qcodo forum for your answers on basic problems, but post on the Qcubed forum.
We will continue to stay with this fantastic product and community!
Regards,
tronics
http://www.twitter.com/qcodo
No, I'd never heard of it.
The main ones I've heard of are Zend, CakePHP, Symfony, Code Igniter, and one or two other ones I can't recall the names of right off the bat.
I've been doing PHP work on and off for about 3 years and have never heard of it. Ask anyone to name a PHP frameworks and you're gonna get the usual suspects: Code Igniter, Cake, Zend, etc.
Guess QCodo devs need to work on their marketing a bit!
I've been using QCodo for 2 years and now I'm with QCubed.
This is the nice way to develop and maintain web applications, as well as, the easiest way to deploy code and test it. Remember that QCubed is now growing in acceptance and it's good for all QCodo's Community.
I think that frameworks can save a lot of development time but it many cases it's not recommended for all yours web developments.
I started to use it two years ago. The pro:
code generation from the database
ORM object oriented
simple use of ajax
Cons:
qcubed community is not so skilled to carry on a project with new good ideas
the new code is not at the level of Mike Ho.
bugs in the state of qforms, the forms of qcodo/qcubed.
is not popular.
they do not want to go ahead and use DDD and forward engineering.
the forms only works with js enabled.
is written in PHP.
new plugin system poorly designed.
At the moment, Grails seems to be the best framework, very DDD oriented, with the possibility to use any existing Java code, good template library, possibility to use different js frameworks, built on Hibernate and Spring. With Grails is possible to write simple web app or financial application.
I hope not to use PHP in the future, but since I know Qcubed/Qcodo I will use it if it will be necessary. For newbies, I reccomend Symfony, bigger community, mre plugins, feature rich, it has a more secure future.
Updates:
No database migrations, no way to track database schema changes
No schema reflecting which tables are generated
It is not designed to real TDD, it is not easy to test models, controllers and views. They just added a testing framework to an unfriendly testing web framework
QForms still bugged and can loose status when using several controls and trigger Ajax error and blocking the application.
The ORM is very boring to use in the long term (lots of chatty/redundant code) and cannot be tested with a tool like Rails console, in the end it takes less time to use pure SQL and test it with phpMyAdmin.
Bugs in the ORM too, sometimes I get a string when I declared the field as integer (code-generated queries).
There is not a front controller and a routing system and the framework is inside the public path! The plug-ins are installed in the public path too!
Strange directory structure not similar to other MVC frameworks and they thing that the M stands for ORM only instead of model.
not link_to tag like Rails or Symfony and many other tags.
Over complex metacontrols that are useful to waste time only.
Framework focused in scaffolding when in Rails it is not used a lot since most of the developers use a user centric design instead of data centric one.
The views are full of object->render and JS and custom controls are a pain to be customized, and instead of staying inside a template are inside a class with logic session .. everything.
It does not work with PHP 5.3 (not tested but should be resolved) and on Quercus.
Rails/Grails has ton of plugin doing everything.
I could continue but I think you get the idea. Just learn Rails or Grails for few months then let me know what you think.
I am moving my Qcodo project to Rails and I have a wonderful environment, nice community and most of the innovation in the web is around Ruby and Rails. Rails has been voted several times as best web development tool and is the only one that can substitute Java or .net
While I have heard of it (Qcodo... not this fork) I never looked into using it. There are tons of frameworks and only so much need. PR and mindshare are hugely important in such a situation and Qcodo never really had either. Now that I am settled on a handful I have no time, nor inclination, to start learning a new framework.
This Swim Log uses it mySwimLog
I've been using QCodo since beta 2, and am now a core contributer of QCubed, so yes, I've heard of it.
What initially drew me to the framework was the code generation. I came from asp.net, and codesmith, and was very pleased to find a framework that gave me both the event-driven approach of asp.net and the code generation of codesmith.
I also love that it's all pure OO PHP, which means I don't have to learn a new language to develop my PHP app, and customizing any aspect of the framework that doesn't behave like I want is simple.
All of this has resulted in us being able to produce an easy to maintain and robust Learning Management System that we have sold to and host for numerous Fortune 500 companies.
There are some downsides, such as the runtime overhead of an ORM approach, but the readability and clean layout of the code results in the ability to more easily streamline other aspects of the application, and significantly reduces both development time, and the number of bugs produced.
Since QCubed is a community driven project, anyone is able to submit tickets, suggest improvements or discuss changes, it's very clear where the project is going, and very open to constructive feedback.
In defense of some of the negative things said here, I will simply point out that tickets for most of the supposed "problems" simply have never been created. And I would encourage anyone that does encounter any of them to please create a ticket for us to look at at http://qcu.be.
OK, Here is something I want to tell about this Qcodo / Qcubed thing:
Its brilliant. I just have no words about how great it is. You say CodeIgniter? Symfony? I say Qcubed.
It was when I wanted to start off the project I am working on and I looked into all those and through a Wikipedia article, landed on Qcodo site, and then on Qcubed...and I was surprised.
The features I loved the most:
No SQL queries needed. Of course, it can be done but most things are taken care of!
Speration of Templates from the core functionality.
Creating custom controls is a piece of CAKE (and its not CAKEPHP).
Totally Even driven. Saving states is like..."where does that happen?"
NO LEARNING CURVE. Just look at Yii or Symfony exmaples and then go for Qcubed examples. Its much simpler compared to others.
Full AJAX support. I love this.
No JavaScripting. Ask it to do something as a 'javascript' action, it is done by javascript. Change one word to 'QAjaxAction' and it goes to ajax. Change again, page reloads. What more do you want?
Autocomplete, typecasting (both automated and manual control) and what not!
Inline editing of almost anything!
yeah, there are a few cherries on the ice cream when it comes to Yii. But I think Qcodo has more inside.
You say Authentication support? Well, I created one to integrate with Qcubed in 1 day. It saved a week of lerning headaches with other frameworks. Qcubed rocks.
yes, I hate its slow development. But I think its near to complete! (may be I know too few things but anything I am capable of imagining seems to get solved through Qcubed).
I wish it was more popular...I would have saved me a week of search before landing on their pages.
I have used QCodo/QCubed for 1.5 years now. Started with my own framework, which at some point seemed messy. That's when I started looking for a more mature framework. Luckily I found QCodo. Since then I have never even considered looking for something else. The framework is so flexible and powerful, that you can do everything you want with it.
I had almost no experience with event-driven architecture. So, the beginning was somewhat hard, cause there was few documentation available. But community itself is very active and you probably get answer to your newbie questions in 1-2 days (sometimes even in hours). But currently the documentation level is way better and community is even more active :)
Nothing I can complain about. And if I have some problems/suggestions, I will try to discuss those with core developers. Whining about stuff without constructive discussion is lame imho.
I have used QCodo/QCubed for 3-4 successful projects now. The more I use it, the more I like it :) And also, I'm trying to help developing even better framework whenever I have spare time. And I can say, that I have had more than 10 people, who I have convinced to start using QC now ;) And I hope there will be many more.
QCubed totally rocks!
Never heard of it.
Been doing PHP on and off 4+ years
http://www.piranhamethod.com/2009/04/09/qcodoqcubed/
I have heard of it and I love it.
I also came from a dotNet / Codesmith environment. When I picked up a project that wanted to translate a dotNet site to PHP I looked for a framework that could best emulate the way the original application's logic was set up. What I found was either bloated frameworks or frameworks that did not completely fulfill the projects requirements.
I accidentally found QCodo while researching using the MyGeneration tool for PHP code generation. I have not looked back since. The ease of use, ability to quickly build complex applications and the true OO approach QCodo now QCubed uses makes it the best framework for my purposes.
I've been using QCodo, ZCodo and now QCubed for quite a while now.
I actually picked it as a replacement for CakePHP, which at the time of my need, wasn't mature enough to do the things I wanted.
I'm super happy with it as a framework; it abstracts things just enough, but not too much that you lose sight of the programming.
I plan on using it for any development project I'm responsible for in the future, and I'm looking forward to QCubed being the best community maintained framework for PHP5 out there.
The quick reason is that popularity and success do not generally go with what's technically best. I'm sure any techie can come up with numerous examples. There are numerous things that can promote mediocre solutions, like marketing, first-mover advantage, being a touch better in some area that catches people's attention, being used in some high-profile application, or just plain luck.
The other reason is that what appears technically best to you may not appear so to somebody who's doing something different.
I think that QCubed is great and mainly because of the way you can use Ajax (you dont have to write Jscript and you dont have to use jQuery).
One very useful document: http://www.qcodo.com/demos/QcodoClassLibrary.pdf
I chose QCodo 4 years ago to develop our product. I've never regretted - now we're 3 developpers on the thing, and any non-OOP solution wouldn't work. We have installed almost 50 customers with it - on Apache, IIS, my SQL and SQLServer platforms, Linux or W2003.
F
The design is brilliant, code-generation is great, and it's really easy to develop, extend, and maintain. I can't read any other code now...
Yes, marketing is quite poor, and the project used to depend just on the creator (Mike Ho). All of it moved to Git recently, and marketing should be better soon. And, now Mike Ho is back !!!
I have used it in few projects involving Flash remoting but I only use the ORM in the framework as I don't really like EDP stuffs like .NET. The flow doesn't seems right at all for stateless web. It's great if the ORM can be released as a separate component.
I never heard about it.
I didn't used it.
qcubed community is not so skilled to carry on a project with new good ideas
Nonsense
the new code is not at the level of Mike Ho.
Nonsense
bugs in the state of qforms, the forms of qcodo/qcubed.
??
is not popular.
So what
they do not want to go ahead and use DSL and forward engineering.
Your point? Every framework that doesn't want to go your route is wrong? I for one would not want the suggestions you have made
the forms only works with js enabled.
You have to be kidding right? If users don't have JS enabled, then they're in the stone age...
is written in PHP.
No comment
new plugin system poorly designed.
Based on what do you say that? I would say nonsense to this as well
Clearly there is some hidden agenda with this poster...I've also had a close look at Symphony - and I would go with QCubed over Symphony every single time. For big apps or small