Dear community of developers,
mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
I'd like to share a vision why bleeding-edge solutions scare and how to
craft it more friendly with a case study.
Every development stage begins with a root folder, empty index page and text
editor. In late 90s I used plain HTML with a couple of SSI for permanent
header and footer later on. Nowadays I'm with PHP, principally because of
wide hosters support, and JQuery for a sleek and smooth interaction (like
gathering feedback without reloading or hiding irrelevant sections in FAQ).
New data comes, technologies change, project reflects that following
universal laws of nature.
Imagine you're Leonardo da Vinci. In childhood there is a welcome plate with
your name, some surrounding sketches you draw on a workshop's backyard and
information for travelers on how to reach your beautiful village. Dreamy,
huh?
With the course of time your scope and depth of interests grow. You're not
attached to sketches anymore, therefore moving them to /art/ together with
architecture, paintings and sculpture. To introduce your recent researches
for debate, you create /research/ and fill it with anatomy, botany, geology
and optics. According to historians and personal anticipation, plenty of
engineering insights are ripen, so you reserve /inventions/ as well.
Manifestly new pages differ in design, yet they have common elements. So how
to reuse layout wisely?
First thing I've learned is template inheritance. This feature comes with
server-side languages like PHP, Python, Ruby. In a nutshell it allows you to
have a parent page with common markup (viz. head, nav, footer) along with
children pages (requested via browser) that load parent subsequently
replacing or extending it with request-related data. Eventually you don't
repeat yourself. Beyond doubt this magic could be mastered by native inline
programming, however I prefer human-oriented solutions with a short learning
curve acting as a layer between geek stuff and essential needs thus anyone
around netglobe could evolve. I believe PHPTi is the easiest and
well-documented one to get acquainted with template inheritance.
Speaking of layout magic, curious persons could go even further and try
extras like HAML, w2tags or Jade to simplify markup habits typing %li
instead of <li></li>. So pity this trend is not popular within PHP community
(e.g. HAML ports such as PHaml, phpHaml, Fammel and PHamlP are neglected to
date).
Right, and what about elements decoration? There's where SCSS, LESS,
CSScaffold or Turbine comes into play and makes it possible to keep DRY
inside stylesheets by using variables (color: $linkcolor), expressions
(height: $bodylineheight * 4) and intuitive nesting. Again, it runs
in-between so you stay powerful without headaches. Check official examples,
they're truly inspiring, enough said.
Idea is about changing approach as project grows. Changing approach without
frustration in consequence of painful dissonance between tech-savvy raptures
about some bleeding-edge solution and errors you catch for hours. And yes, I
do explicitly omit narration of merging, minifying, versioning and chained
loading as being enhancements, not a core.
CHILDHOOD
index.html
sketches.html
contacts.html
MATURITY
index.php
/content
/art
/index.php
architecture/*.php
paintings/
sculpture/
sketches/
/inventions
/index.php
/research
/index.php
anatomy/
botany/
geology/
optics/
/templates
/common.php
/images
/inc
/css
/js
/php
Superb? Not yet, although it's widespread. Obvious drawbacks? Every page
request invokes compilation cycle (common.php+requested page). Solution is
to serve static cache generated in advance. (How?) Content edit requires
accessing one or more files. Solution is to keep content in database.
(What's the best practice?) Markup is mixed with content and sometimes,
ouch!, with raw PHP. In short, framework built with MVC principles is a
saviour. (Erhh?)
- Hey! - exclaims someone like me, a guy or a girl not that bright in
development, but doing best to go with the times, - Now you sound like a
politician! Dainty slogans followed by non-system mumbo-jumbo.
Indeed, it must be admitted. Widely-known MVC frameworks from Symphony2 to
Smarty3, from Kohana to Yii, from CakePHP to CodeIngniter claim to be fast,
secure and easy to learn. Really? Does one look for speed and security from
the word Go? No. I dare say evaluation of how new scenery jars on habits
goes in the first place. That is what will happen to the current beloved
hierarchy, links, diligent markup, blocks of program code achieved through
much suffering, etc. Either you convert a couple of pages successfully &
feel you're quite at home or alas & alack!
Today I dimly know something concrete about autoloaders, helpers, filters,
routers, models, views, controllers. It all came to nothing, but I'm eager
to grasp it in the process of gradual transition like bricklaying. Gradual -
not at once, you see? Stop bragging of how your framework conforms to
geek-invented paradigms. Draw more parallels out of the world behind real
windows, give more humanly narrated cases like one about da Vinci and
optionally reinforce them with strong visuals. Gradual bricklaying is about
hook people on the familiar language and accustomed practices.
I do believe this is the reason why JQuery is a leading javascript framework
whereas MVC frameworks exist without leader.
Fathers of computer evolution and their honourable assistants, while you're
polishing bottlenecks and contributing on benchmarks, public ashore still
gaze at schooner called Bleeding-Edge-Solution with no ladder to step
aboard. Ladder across the abyss of Coding-Horror. Throw a ladder at last!
Meanwhile, I thank you with all my heart for your enthusiasm.
--
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