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Lessons from Devnetwork

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:21 pm
by Ambush Commander
Almost every topic in Theory and Design is on a topic worth reading about. Wouldn't it be cool if the people on DevNetwork got together and started archiving really good topics from that forum?

* We could annotate the discussion, fixing spelling errors and expanding the notation, as well as adding useful links and footnotes (UoW [1] ... [1] Unit of Work)
* The person could then summarize the question, and the answers that developed from the discussion. Maybe the question turned out to be something different, or maybe multiple questions where answered
* Index all of them in a useful way so that someone seeking to improve their theory and design knowledge could casually browse them, somewhat like Patterns.

I think it would be a really cool idea.

Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:32 am
by Charles256
hm.why don't we make a book?is that what your saying?LOL.I've often thought about putting those comments into some useful part of my site (in amore organized fashion of course) but i couldn't help but feeling like that's stealing content so i've managed to resist:-D

Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:52 am
by n00b Saibot
from what i understand, he meant a different place in forum where these topics would be archived in lessons form... great idea though :)

Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:34 am
by John Cartwright
Useful Posts Thread, feel free to reply to the topic and if deemed useful we will add it to the list :P

viewtopic.php?t=29816

Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 12:23 pm
by Ambush Commander
Useful posts thread hmm...

I'd say that while these two goals are not exclusive of each other, they are different.

For instance, the useful posts thread, while it points to the thread, does only that. This is fine and dandy for really short "How do I do it?" type questions but not so much for many pages of theory discussion/debate (esp. debate). For instance, viewtopic.php?t=35719 is three pages long but kinda gets off track and covers many issues. With annotation and summarization, the contents of the thread could be a lot more interesting/useful (I'll probably take a hack at that one first). Other times, threads are filled with a lot of unnecessary stuff, and the essence could be distilled to a few sentences. This is especially true if one topic is done in, say, five different threads. Sure, the threads will be useful, but a crossreferencing between all five them, I'd argue, would be even more so.

The tutorial section is of limited usefulness, because there is no way to really "browse" the section by subject matter. You'll have to search.

That being said, here are some useful posts that I'd like to add:

* Application Controllers
* Advanced MSDOS Batch Scripting (and alternatives)
* Splitting by word except when inside quote - the topic presents two ways of doing it: via regexps and via a stack based parser

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:58 pm
by onion2k
Charles256 wrote:hm.why don't we make a book?is that what your saying?
You may laugh, but that's exactly what they did over at phpbuilder.com .. "Beginning PHP" from Wrox Press came out of it.

I volunteer to write a chapter or two on GD and web graphics.

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:09 pm
by Chris Corbyn
onion2k wrote:
Charles256 wrote:hm.why don't we make a book?is that what your saying?
You may laugh, but that's exactly what they did over at phpbuilder.com .. "Beginning PHP" from Wrox Press came out of it.

I volunteer to write a chapter or two on GD and web graphics.
It could be a cool thing to have a paperback on the shelf of a bookstore. We certainly have a whole archive of things to think of as examples, discussion topics and areas that crop up most.

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:20 pm
by Charles256
to be honest that's what my site has been a template for..it hasn't gotten hte articles posted but i've been writing articles.been thinking of turning it into book form but i'd also wanna cover the moer advanced topics..perhaps call it the PHP Bible?

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 9:02 pm
by d3ad1ysp0rk
Charles256 wrote:to be honest that's what my site has been a template for..it hasn't gotten hte articles posted but i've been writing articles.been thinking of turning it into book form but i'd also wanna cover the moer advanced topics..perhaps call it the PHP Bible?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 5?v=glance

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 9:59 pm
by Charles256
okay.so new name,smart ass ;)

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 10:02 pm
by Ambush Commander
Back on topic...

I have webhosting, but not the time, to get this sort of project up and running. Anyone willing to write the back-end code for a project like this (or we might just end up using a wiki...) How about some annotated discussions?

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:41 am
by Moocat
I brought this up in another post today, but what about a wiki format? Doesn't that fit the standard and also allows for many users to update information and add on articles and such?

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:58 am
by Moocat
Ask and ye shall...find stuff on your own :)

Here:

http://www.wiki.cc/php/Main_Page

and here:

http://info.phpnexus.net/index.php/Main_Page

The only problem is, the first one appears to be abandoned and the second appears to be near empty. I might suggest to work on the second one seeing as it's open for new material instead of having to alter older material. You could of couse, obtain the same results by just starting up your own, but it's up to you guys :)

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 12:31 pm
by timvw
I think, if one really wants, he can find for virtually every php related (and not so related) problem on the net.
And most problems have been raised and answered on this forum too.

The problem is that most people are too lazy to look up things themselves, so the addition of yet anoter FAQ/Wiki/Forum isn't going to help.

My € 0.02

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 12:55 pm
by Moocat
timvw wrote:I think, if one really wants, he can find for virtually every php related (and not so related) problem on the net.
And most problems have been raised and answered on this forum too.

The problem is that most people are too lazy to look up things themselves, so the addition of yet anoter FAQ/Wiki/Forum isn't going to help.

My € 0.02
That's true, but I'm on a bit of a wiki kick right now, I love finding everything I need about one subject in one area (like a forum, but in encylopedia format :)