So, just spent the last 5 hours gaming with Meg and Daz, it’s been a while since I did so with anyone, and it’s a helluva thing

It’s taken my mind off a lot of the frustrations of learning a new … everything really (from a web dev context).

I’ve come back to it all, and whilst I got it in the first place, I’ve now understood this even more and it’s a rare moment where I’m *really* excited about coding a proper solution to the Hard Reset site. It’s a little bit of a roundabout way but:

1. Code an SOGC site using CodeIgniter and the MVC method (I can’t believe how different it is to Symfony, it feels so much more open and less like a giant, monolithic black box of a framework)
2. Use this code and replicate the Hard Reset site with it, the challenge will be using the existing schema of the Hard Reset site at present.
3. Implement MPU’s site as well to handle this
4. Roll out to the rest of the MPU Network events that request this

CodeIgniter, and it clicking into place and my choice to go ahead with it for the MPU network – it feels like the right thing. I haven’t had this feeling in a long time.

Very excited.

Well, I spent most of the afternoon trying to get my head around Symfony – I think, given the scope of the project, and all the bells and whistles on offer from Symfony – it’s perhaps the wrong framework.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s elegant, extensive, and extremely powerful – but it adds abstraction that isn’t necessary for our scope of work. I took a look at CodeIgniter as well this evening, and I don’t know — it just clicks with me so much more than Symfony does.

It feels like a gentler learning curve both into the world of OOP and MVC design for my PHP.

Guess we’re going with CodeIgniter now

Well, most of the basic functionality required for the HR website has been completed. And in my short coding break, I decided to take a look at potential frameworks for developing the new LEGION project, and the MPU website going forward (to infinity and beyond!)

I came across Symfony, an MVC-based framework. As far as I can tell, a lot of projects out there are actually based on Symfony, although a lot of them don’t make mention of it.

The framework itself seems to have considerable staying power!

Why bother with all this?

Quite simply, writing everything in flat-file PHP, even with elegant includes and MVC based structure – still doesn’t work because:

1. There’s too many opportunities for security flaws
2. Maintenance is inefficient (changing the name of an included file means you have to track where ALL those include(‘file.php’) are, and change them – not easy when there’s 10 planned sites, with over 3000 files between them)
3. Developer-agnostic code. No single developer on the project can wholly own the code, making them the source of truth. Instead, the code remains the source of truth, and the developers the craftsmen who shape it. Bringing in additional developers will be easier, and faster.
4. Base skill level increase. All devs who are currently in the team would need to learn this framework, it’d increase their skills, and change the way they do things to an MVC paradigm. This also makes the barrier for entry for community members more difficult, as the vast majority of them are not familiar with this paradigm. It means whoever does apply to help, would already have high enough level skills to understand the concepts of MVC (and thus, meet a certain skill requirement for the team)
5. Art & Science become separate. Church & State so to speak. Artists and designers can work on assets and required aspects of the site, entirely separately from the coders.

Hmm, I guess there are a lot of reasons to move on with how I code things.