5 ms·

"Just do stuff." Along the years I have come to admire more and more those who take what they do know and put the effort into just that: building something. T

"Just do stuff." Along the years I have come to admire more and more those who take what they do know and put the effort into just that: building something. The idea of purpose is key here. Once you have a purpose, a goal, finding the right tool for the job is no longer that difficult and you will suddenly realise that a lot the languages/frameworks people have been evangelising to you may make no sense at all. "If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there." - Lewis Carroll

austenallred 11y ago
Somehow this turned into a thread of people debating the merits and faults of PHP. There's a place for that, to be sure, but that's not really the point. The point is that getting started is the most important thing, and moving forward is the next most important thing. I'm not saying if someone comes to you and says, "I want to build a web app" one should say, "Do it in PHP." But if someone says, "I'm building my first web app in PHP" the most damaging thing you could say is, "lol you're coding like a noob. You should be doing that in {language x}." I see happening all the time. Coding in PHP is better than not coding because you're terrified of not doing things "the right way," and that often is the alternative. Let him or her finish a project in PHP before you try to turn the ship around and make him or her learn Rails. Or JavaScript or Python, or Java or whatever. Just start.
- steveax 11y ago
  Or as a friend says: "the worst dancer in the world is better than the best non-dancer"
harryf 11y ago
Exactly. For me the real art of programming lies in the getting stuff done. KISS, YAGNI ... the smartest programmers I've ever worked with - the ones I'd want to work with again - were masters of getting results on-time or even before-time with clever, minimalistic solutions.

5 ms·

"Just do stuff." Along the years I have come to admire more and more those who take what they do know and put the effort into just that: building something. T

by prophet_ 11y ago

austenallred 11y ago
Somehow this turned into a thread of people debating the merits and faults of PHP. There's a place for that, to be sure, but that's not really the point. The point is that getting started is the most important thing, and moving forward is the next most important thing. I'm not saying if someone comes to you and says, "I want to build a web app" one should say, "Do it in PHP." But if someone says, "I'm building my first web app in PHP" the most damaging thing you could say is, "lol you're coding like a noob. You should be doing that in {language x}." I see happening all the time. Coding in PHP is better than not coding because you're terrified of not doing things "the right way," and that often is the alternative. Let him or her finish a project in PHP before you try to turn the ship around and make him or her learn Rails. Or JavaScript or Python, or Java or whatever. Just start.
- steveax 11y ago
  Or as a friend says: "the worst dancer in the world is better than the best non-dancer"
harryf 11y ago
Exactly. For me the real art of programming lies in the getting stuff done. KISS, YAGNI ... the smartest programmers I've ever worked with - the ones I'd want to work with again - were masters of getting results on-time or even before-time with clever, minimalistic solutions.