Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutt
You sound like you're an expert coder - why did you use off the shelf cam scripts rather than doing it yourself?
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Expert people are effective, and so do not re-invent the wheel. Also "coder" is generic, for example the developer of a 3d videogame may be unable to write an easy web site, and vice-versa - it is even hard to find a single person able to write both iOS and Android apps, or a single developer using well 2+ languages, so much different info it needs to be known.
Really, my sites was based on existing scripts, but ended up 80% different: one started from a tube script and ended as a cam site! This is starting from template (for ex. users db and backoffice admin), to build an unique product quicker. Time to market, want you launch a few sites now or one only years later?
The main point of programming it is the code reuse, i.e. to produce the most results in least effort and time. You may write from scratch small specific tasks (you not find done by others with google search), but if there's a ready open source code, use it. Especially a cam site is product of teams of developers across years, hardly a single one, unless recycled pieces. If there's commercial code with source license for less $$ than the worth of you rewriting it, buy the code, and you're more smart than wanting to rewrite all from scratch.
A guy can still demonstrate he can rewrite all from scratch, but this a no-profit activity, like "demo scene" or hack compos, the opposite of what commercial developer are supposed to do. More LEGO blocks a developer knows and compose together, quicker (cheaper) you solve problems, because you write the least code lines, just few glue between blocks others provided and tested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_reuse
Why use Wordpress when you can rewrite it in PHP, and why to use PHP when you could use C. So 80% of the sites run wordpress, joomla, drupal, in turn made in PHP, in turn made in C, in turn calling libs calling OS (linux etc.) which calls firmwares calling assembly opcodes, in turn easier representation of binary numbers, ran by processor and chips.
So the guy who write "
all from scratch" should really send own binary opcodes to a CPU and hardware to simulate an operating system and web server and apps on top of it; anyone? While this example looks obviously silly, it helps to figure the "why don't you write all yourself" question: because it is not effective, but instead more expensive, at least in 2014, given there's so much free ready code you can't even keep updated on all of it.
That was not the case in 1995 when I was writing sites, indeed, in C language, already was a big improvement from assembly I used before, but while this is cool to talk about in retrocomputing meetings, if you do sites as real job, you more likely do quick and cheap with PHP on the web, as long as you know PHP (and its frameworks), than in other ways. And in adult that's PHP-only due to historical reasons, in mainstream it is diversified.
Said this, web development itself it is a mess, not just PHP, but for ex. Javascript (see:
http://wtfjs.com ), Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Chrome versions, and google SEO. SO in all this mess you can well overlook an !== FALSE or so.