“Don’t Reinvent The Wheel” is a phrase that we hear used all the time in software development. Usually it’s used in the context where a library exists to do what the user wants, but they are writing their own. While the sentiment is usually correct, I can’t stand the implication of the phrase. Therefore, I can’t stand it when people use that phrase without understanding what it really means. Let me explain:

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve likely heard me use the term “N-Tier Architecture” before. Today’s question comes from Arno. He basically asked “What is this N-Tier Architecture thing you keep talking about?”… So, to answer his question, a N-Tier Architecture is one that uses more than one tier. Of course there’s more to it than that…

As you can probably tell, the title of this post is based off the common saying “The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side.” I’ve always been amazed by this saying, because while we can find countless cases of it being true, we can also find countless cases of it being completely and utterly false. Take smart-phones for instance. People are quite dogmatic about which they choose, and they believe that the grass is definitely not greener. This is something that’s bothered me for a while. But yesterday, I think I’ve made a cognitive leap towards understanding why it works for some things and not others…

In this day in age, it seems that the community trend is completely and unequivocally trending towards the use of web application frameworks. So much so that the defacto first comment to someone asking how to do something seems to be “Just use a framework, and it’ll solve the problem for you.” While I completely understand why this is the case, I can’t say that I agree with it. And while I do believe that frameworks serve a purpose, I think that they are vastly over-used. Let me explain why…

In response to last week’s ask for questions, I received a number of questions that I’d like to address. Since it would only do the question justice to have a dedicated post for each question. So I’m going to try to do one post per week on a user-submitted question (probably on Wednesday, but no promises). This week’s question is a rather abstract one:

I’ve been learning a lot about service layers and managers and domain objects and one thing really confuses me. Why is MySQL being turned into a non-relational database? It has so much power, so much flexibility, but it seems like many programmers want to abstract it to the point of near uselessness.

Now, there are so many facets to that question that it’s hard to find a starting point. But let’s try:

The concept of generators was recently proposed for addition in PHP’s core (Possibly for 5.5.0). While I believe that this is a great tool, it appears that many PHP developers aren’t familiar with the concept of generators. So I thought I would take a little time and explain some of how it works, and how it can be used to greatly simplify code.

One of the most powerful changes that PHP5 brought to the table was the ability to autoload classes. It’s such a useful tool that it was the first standard the FIG group put forth. Almost every single major PHP framework and library uses an autoloader to include its classes. It always felt somewhat wrong to me to autoload in production at runtime. So I decided to give it a bit more exporation…

I was asked an interesting question via email yesterday. The question is fairly simple. The answer, not so much… So, rather than reply in an email, I figured that I’d write a post about it instead. The question, simply stated, is: When comparing a float to an integer using ==, where does the conversion happen?

So, let’s begin…

Every day I come across code that is insecure. Sometimes the code is so hilariously insecure that any 10 year old could break it. I’ve also gotten into discussions with people who should know better about their practices. It’s very, how to put this, disheartening. It’s sad that the average developer knows (and cares) so little about proper security practices. So, I’ve put together a simple pledge (or manifesto, if you’d like).

One of the things that I see repeated over and over again is the simple question “What books should I read to become a better developer?“. Or “How did you learn about that?“. Or even “What does a coding standard matter?”… OK, so that last one was a bit of a sentinel question, but the point is clear. Where should you look if you want to read to improve your development abilities? Well, I figured I’d take a few pages out of my library and share which books worked for me, in order of significance. If you remember from a prior post, I indicated that you should choose concepts over implementations. This list should illustrate that.