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Posted by firewoodtim on 11/08/07 14:29
Let me start by apologizing for the length of this note. I believe it
is worth reading, however, because it must epitomize the situations of
a lot of people who try to become serious programmers. I hope it
helps more people than myself.
Also, thank you all for the feedback. The generosity of the people
who post here is clear. You want to help others. It is much
appreciated.
After reading many of the responses, it seemed beneficial that I be
more specific in describing the system I've developed and the
situation (quagmire?) in which I currently find myself. Also, from a
purely intellectual point of view, it would be good to get some advice
on how best to achieve elegance, both in my programming and in
charting the course of my future education.
About 3 years ago I had a dramatic change in career (a failed
non-cumputer-related business), and I decided to make a new career of
my hobby - website development. At that time, I had a first-course
knowledge of C, C++, Java, Assembly, and I had developed some trivial
sites in a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP environment. It was fun, and I had
some savings, so I threw myself into developing an idea that I'd been
playing with for some time.
Now after three years, I find myself in possession of a feature-rich
PHP system that, as an end product, provides a website-owner with a
site they can modify in the following ways:
1. Add/delete/modify categories in a multi-level menu system (several
menu layouts available).
2. Add/delete/modify several "elements" which constitute the content
of the website pages. An element is a title+text+image combo, along
with formatting options (position, colors, sizes, etc.).
3. Drag and drop absolute placement of elements.
4. Drag-based resizing of images, text boxes and titles within
elements, as well as the overall elements themselves.
5. Combinations of parent elements and child elements that enable
multi-element sets, each subelement independently formattable.
6. "Components", which are product-like, independent pages, branching
off the category pages. These provide the facility to implement any
number of independent pages from thumbnail links off a parent category
page.
7. A feature-rich highest-level admin system, where I create the
original, empty website for a customer and provide the formatting and
other features that the customer wants for his/her site. This
includes a storage facility for each website's design that can provide
a template for new sites when the client wishes to duplicate the
features of a previously designed site.
8. more, more, more... the list grows
However, all that has come at a cost. I am now semi-paralyzed when I
start to create a new feature. I have to trace through miles of code
that is not quite "spaghetti-code", but does remind me of that phrase.
I know the system well enough to do what I need to do, but it
sometimes takes me days to do what I know should take me hours.
For version 2, I need to rewrite the code from the ground up and I
want to get started on the right track. That is the purpose of my
original post. Can anyone give feedback on that?
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