Do PHP Developers Give Themselves Away Too Much?

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McGruff
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Post by McGruff »

Multiple inheritance.
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Stoker
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Post by Stoker »

Speed/Efficiency! (v4)

Private and Public Objects/variables/methods, Event generation (featured vars), Multiple Inheritance, and probably more stuff I didnt think about right now..,

interresting/useful to have; automatic instatination of classes (ala Python and Ruby), common LISP style dynamics

Personally I find very little use for OO in web/content development, if it comes to the point where changing (dynamic) repeating stuff is need I believe a 2 or 3 tier approach may be more beneficial..
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Post by McGruff »

Stoker wrote:Personally I find very little use for OO in web/content development...
I avoided classes for ages but recently I've had an OOP revelation with php and I definitely find it useful - in fact I can't imagine life without it. It makes life so much easier in so many ways.

Been redoing most of my code in trees of classes which really helps to share out common code efficiently. Most of the lower levels will be completely reusable for new projects - just add on a few new childs.

Although it would be nice to get some more OOP features like multiple inheritance I'm not complaining. A great language to work with.
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mooberry
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Post by mooberry »

Back to the original question though, I think that PHP, just like C and probably mroe so that Java, has a large number of small-scale hobbyists, and those are the people that will accept low rates to do the stuff, because for them it is a comparably large amount of money for comparatively little skill.

It is like any market system. You get what you pay for. A company that wants an uber-fantastic PHP site is not going to waste their time trawling for little fish amateur PHP developers.
[]InTeR[]
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Post by []InTeR[] »

OO is heady for templates, mime-mail and that kind of stuff...

Not for replacement for every function.

A class is be'ing usefull if it's be'ing used often.
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caseymanus
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Post by caseymanus »

Something is useful as along as its used. How profound is that.
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Post by Guymon »

I think more so than trying to look at PHP vs. C++ and these other languages (which is apples and oranges in my mind) in relation to giving away one's development time, we should simply compare it to the so-called current market value of JSP and ASP programmers. In the corporate community, as far as _web_ development is concerned, JSP, ASP, ASP.Net/C# and even ColdFusion, are the ones that have this cloud of mysticism around them. The perception of this is because they are proprietary, which translates into hype among the business community. Everyone here knows you can achieve the same business related goals with PHP as you can with these others. I know because I debated for a long time which one I wanted to persue learning, so I investigated all of them -- if you know one you can learn them all, given the spare time. Unfortunately, I think some businessmen may have the perception that since PHP/MySQL is free and open source, then it must be free (or at least cheap) in terms of labor.

I know a couple of freelance guys who give away a lot of their time (stupid cheap and/or free) doing PHP (and sometimes even w/Flash) for all sorts of people all over my city. It <span style='color:blue' title='I'm naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> me off to no end as it devalues _all_ PHP developers and will ultimately screw us in the end. I've experienced it first hand when I am trying to court a new client and have one of the freebie developers swoop in and take it. And they stand there and smile right in my face like it's just healthy competition. Granted, I've seen the resulting hack-n-slash work and the quality is marginal at best, but like others here have said, you get what you pay for. Everyone in the entire open source community needs to start reenforcing that idea to clients of all sizes IMO. Otherwise where's our bread and butter?
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phice
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Post by phice »

You have to ask yourself, "What's the sole purpose of why I learned PHP?"

I, myself, learned HTML to enjoy myself much more than just an average internet person. I dove into PHP because I noticed a few companies (like vBulletin) that were making enormous amounts of money by their PHP skills. That's the reason I learned PHP. I want the money. Simple as that.
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JPlush76
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Post by JPlush76 »

phice you dont love php for the art of it man?? you sellout!

just kidding, I picked up my first php book to make a living as well. Today, I'm a full time php/mysql developer
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phice
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Post by phice »

Ah, I learned it to make money, but I love it now for the amazingly nice people within the PHP community. :) I tried to learn ASP before, but the book I bought required me to learn VBScript, so I said "nope." Even though, I plan on learning ASP this summer. Hopefully that wont be too hard of a task. ;)
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nielsene
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Post by nielsene »

I know some of what people are complaining about... I give almost all my stuff away, as its highly specialized for a small domain. Its what I've worked on for about two years... Yet I'ld like to take some side jobs for pay, but my time is worth more than most "little jobs" can afford and without an extensive portfolio.....

In addition I'm a programmer, I'm most definately not a web designer... I don't have artistical talents, etc. At some point I guess I should find someone to partner with, but the few I've talked to have been such complete flash junkies that I've been turned off....
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phice
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Post by phice »

I'm the exact same. Though, I am learning Adobe right now, which every PHP dev should do, so we can pull these ugly opensource webpages into a much more graphical experience.

Sometimes I think OpenSource sites don't even try to be attractive. OSDN, phpBB and a few other selected sites actually do a great job on design, but I'm sure they pay people to do so. If that's the truth, I guess the OpenSource community isn't really a great place to make money from. I wonder why? ;)
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m@ndio
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Post by m@ndio »

I won't give out freebies... nah ... I get paid to do it and it took me a while to learn so I won't give stuff away! Wish people would stop being lazy and learn it for themselves :lol:
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phice
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Post by phice »

m@ndio wrote:Wish people would stop being lazy and learn it for themselves :lol:
I dont want people to learn it because that would mean less business for the current programmers. ;)
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Post by JPlush76 »

lol phice I think the same thing sometimes :O
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