I got tired of using other peoples work, and I like re-inviting the wheel so I can learn.. therefor I built my own framework for this application.

Learning is one thing, but reinventing existing code for production work is just stupid.

Don't be an ***..

The code I am writing doesn't already exist. I've used different frameworks out there, and I was not impressed. I can re-use this code to build other client sites, big or small. It's my own work, and I can charge how ever much I please.

Yeah actually I often do the same thing haha >_<

It's ok, he didn't mean outright malice.

He's just saying that reinventing the wheel is most of the time pointless. This is all well and good when you're basically a contractor. You set your own standards and rules and you definitely want to take as much time as you want (if you charge by hour). But if you're working for someone else, reinventing the wheel is utterly pointless unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary.

Right, and I understand. We needed an application designed specifically to manage our data and present it. And really I've only spent about 2-3 weeks in development time so it's not like I'm killing myself here. There is still a lot to go but the rest will just continue to fall into place.

I mean comon re-invent the wheel? That's what I am best at.. kinda like BASF

Yes, MVC frameworks do this really, really, well. If you weren't impressed with the existing ones, then you were probably using the wrong ones or didn't take the time to learn them.

You're not using any O/R mapping tools, are you? Doing all the SQL by hand? Yeah, welcome to 1993. That's a terrible way to write web applications.

No offense but you sound like a typical CS student who doesn't reuse existing software because he's either too stubborn or thinks he can do better. At my school, software engineers laugh at the people that do this, because they know better. It has gained us the stereotype of arrogance, but we're usually right.

Using Django you could have built that site in a day, your time could then be focused on making enhancements and interesting features rather than the boring bits like data validation

Not if you don't know Python

Anyway, based on the kind of debugging you were doing, it sounds to me like you don't even have a database abstraction layer, a common feature in most frameworks. It saves time on proper validation, makes writing such a database-heavy website as yours much easier to manage, and keeps the database out of your code.

Just something as simple as that can really help, especially when you have to, say, change the name of a table. Now you only have to change the name in one place, in one file, as opposed to many places across many files.

For smaller sites you can benefit from whipping up your own code, as you're effectively just adding overhead with all the classes and functions a framework offers, but on a site that will be as large as this one? The overhead is easily worth it, and can be lowered by bytecode caches. (Massassi/Sorrowind for instance runs the eAccelerator PHP bytecode cache, which significantly speeds up commonly used files like VB's classes, MediaWiki's classes, and MZZT's silly TF2 killscript)

We do this in our web apps @ work. Our database is ADORNED wth stored procedures like you wouldn't imagine. We have our own "O/R mapper" and I can't stand working with it. It's all .NET 1.1 code. Things like UserData, UserProfile, and UserProfileList for collections. For those not O/R mapped, DataTable/DataRow is the idea.

All our new **** is straight up .NET 3.5, LINQ, and...wait for it...Unit Testing!

I'm not a software engineer or a CS student.. I was at one point but I would have rather shot myself in the face.

Doing SQL by hand is a terrible way do write web applications? Let me see some of your web applications so you can show me whats up.. Oh and you should probably tell 80% of the web that they shouldn't do SQL by hand.

My web application is just fine, and in the future when we have the money, and we are ready to grow again, we will just simply hire someone to do it the right way. I'll consider you since you seem to be an expert here.

80% of the internet doesn't do SQL by hand.

Seriously. No one writes SQL by hand. What you're talking about is GUI over database, which is an incredibly naive way to write an application. It results in the data "layer" behing highly coupled with behavior and view. The key principle of software engineering is that you want to separate concerns; low coupling and high cohesion. Running database code right with your UI and behavior is a terrible, terrible idea. It makes it harder to write, harder to debug, harder to maintain. MVC is an architectural pattern that separates the concerns of the data, behavior and view so that this problem is eliminated.

My most recent web application uses the ADO.NET entity framework. SQL is completely abstracted away from all of my code. I never have to worry about it. For this project (a simple project management/bug tracker, it's for a usability class), I don't deal with the "Users" or "Bugs" table, I deal with User and Bug objects directly in C#. They are mapped to the tables for me. I have many-to-many relationships and I don't have to worry about join tables. If I want to see who is assigned to a particular bug, I look at the Bug.Users collection and I magically have a list of all users working on that bug. No joins or any of that BS. This is what O/R mapping tools do.

You got me here.. that stuff is over my head. But I'm not really paid to know that kind of stuff, and I'm not really that educated either so we are just working with what we got.

I'm a PHP writer, and this is what I built.

And it alllllllll makes sense.

well what did you think it was made in?

QBasic

The thing is, it's not. Frameworks make writing applications easier. It's easier to work with plain objects than it is to work with SQL.

There's a lot of languages used for web applications. PHP, Perl, Python, Java, C# using .NET, etc. For some reason PHP writers tend to do everything the hard way. Then there's people who use Perl... :shudder:

Yeah, I built ZCom in Perl.. what a nightmare.

But what is wrong with PHP? I don't know what you mean by PHP writers tend to do everything the hard way. Maybe the code or syntax looks like the hard way because other languages probably have easier ways of doing a particular function. But that is not our fault.

It's too late now and there is no turning back, I am not going to take the time to learn a new language now. But if I did I was be curious to try the site in Cold Fusion.

No, it's more like PHP is incredibly easy to crank out, and since it's so easy, people refuse to use "prebuilt" classes and think that they can do better themselves.

I refuse to use prebuilt classes because I know I can do them better myself.