How To Dynamic Web Rendering?

[Robert Clipsham]

On 15/05/2011 22:46, Alexander wrote:
> On 15.05.2011 23:05, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
>> And like I said at the beginning, the old-style-PHP/ASP of mixing
>> code and HTML is one of the things that *HAS* become widely
>> accepted as bad practice.
>
> Could you please back your claims with something? I know already that
> you are the kind of person who knows better, and you are used to
> speak for everyone, but that's just words.

I can't be bothered collecting lots of references, but having done web 
development both professionally (not as much as Nick) and 
non-professionally, I can tell you that it *is* widely accepted as bad 
practice.

I've found the people that don't agree with that are either (reasonably) 
new to web development, or don't really know what they're doing.

>> Just because there are some amateurs and incompetent
>> "professionals" around that still don't know any better doesn't
>> change that fact.
>
> And you are professional? Show me something that is professional, so
> I can learn.
>
>> Ugh, I never could stand that hippie rhetoric. Despite what
>> society's been brainwashed into believing, there *ARE* opinions out
>> there that are just plain moronic, and yes, *wrong*.
>
> And yours is always *right*? ;)

Meet the seasoned web developer - 99.9% of other web developers are 
idiots who can't code, and anyone who does it differently to you is wrong.

After a certain amount of time working with the web, and several code 
bases that started as quick hacks to get the job done but evolved into 
entire websites with a good few users, you realize that most of the code 
out there is terrible. It gets the job done, sure, but it takes a lot of 
effort to debug or add new features. Anything you add to the code base 
just makes it harder to maintain, even if you start writing things 
properly. Want to re-factor something? Chances are you can't do it 
without breaking something.

If you're curious, add:

error_reporting(-1);

To the start of most PHP applications, and see the large number of 
notices/warnings/errors which scroll past in your error log - over time 
the PHP developers (not developers that use PHP) have realized how many 
things can go wrong (register_globals, magic_quotes, safe_mode, etc), 
and added more warnings, notices and errors which aren't shown by 
default. I've encountered a good few developers which have said I 
shouldn't have enabled it and it's not their problem when working with 
their code. Note that things like wordpress use error_reporting() 
elsewhere, so adding error_reporting(-1); won't make any difference as 
it will be overridden.

Of course, I'm not saying Nick is always right (I happen to disagree 
with him on a few things, just mention javascript to him to see what I 
mean :D), but you now have 3 developers with varying experience with the 
web telling you it's not the right thing to do. Sure, it's fantastic for 
quick sites, nice and fast to put something together... But when it 
evolves into a something bigger it will be a nightmare. Using a decent 
framework is just as fast, and it's easy to maintain later on.

As for using D for web development... I'd use it even without a web 
framework, purely for the maintainability/error reporting issues 
mentioned earlier on. There are no frameworks available that I'm aware 
of other than Adam's currently (which I believe he's using 
professionally, so it has to be reasonably good), but something is 
better than nothing. I'm also working on my own, progress is slow though 
due to time constraints. Give it a few months and it might be workable.

> /Alexander

Seems I managed quite a rant there. Oops :D

-- 
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/