Category: Articles (Page 189 of 258)

If you hang around any group of programmers long enough, you’re bound to get into a discussion as to which language is currently the best language and why that’s the case.

Well. Then again. Maybe not.

I’d say this is true is some cases, but I’d venture to say that if you’re hanging around a group who has been at it for quite some time (read: at least a decade or so), you’re going to have discussions as to what features of what languages are nicer in contrast to features of other languages.

A more mature discussion, right? At least a little.

But then you take this one step further: You sit and chat with a group of people who have been working on the same platform or framework for a while and you may find yourself in a discussion about what features of a given framework has that are better than its alternatives..

Perhaps a better way of putting it is: You may end up discussing why one language, framework, or set of tools encourages better programming practices than any other given set of languages, frameworks or tools.

You know you’ve been there when you can quickly list off several reasons, say, Python programmers prefer white space, Rubyists prefer unit testing, Rails developers appreciate MVC, jQuery developers like method chaining, JavaScript programmers love the prototypal inheritance, and Smalltalk programmers love how few of them exist (I kid, I kid).

On a more serious note, there’s no shying away from the fact that people either love or hate PHP. Sure, there’s middle ground but there’s no fun in taking a stance there so you don’t read many articles on people simply saying “Yeah, I think PHP’s okay.” But when it’s used in the context of another framework like CakePHP or Laravel, then you’re likely to find something different.

So ultimately, I think it’s worth asking the question, does WordPress encourage strong or poor programming practices?

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As far as WordPress projects are concerned, I’m far more comfortable talking about projects that I’ve been working on myself regardless of if they are for fun or profit.

And yes, there are times where I’ll share code and other snippets that come from contract work, but I generally do not talk about those types of projects out of respect for the client and/or out of respect for the terms of our agreement.

Contracts, respect, professionalism, and all that fun stuff.

The Disenchanted Young Professional

But there’s been a project that I’ve been a part of for a few months now, and I received an email last week that struck a chord with me. I asked the client if I could share the quote – keeping them anonymous of course – but use it to try to make a point.

They obliged.

I hate trying to support a theme that’s so dated and broken. I can hardly wait until I can offer support for a theme that I am proud of and is coded well and will be kept up-to-date.

And though it’s already been referenced through a number of different blogs, and the article is already over a week old (which is, you know, practically forever in Internet time), I couldn’t help but think: “We’re ruining WordPress.”

You may or may not think of it as hyperbole, but this is a very real problem.

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I’ve written a little bit about the WordPress Theme Customizer in a number of previous posts primarily because I think it’s one of the best features that has been introduced into WordPress in a long time (of course, this isn’t meant to downplay any of the work that’s been done since ;).

To be clear, I’m a fan because it takes a significant amount of guesswork away from the end user allowing them to see the results of their changes almost immediately versus, say, having to tab back and forth between the settings in the dashboard and the public-facing view of the site.

Couple that with additional changes introduced in more recent versions such as being able to add and remove widgets from within the customizer and improvements to this particular experience in the pipeline for a future release (such as 4.0), then you’ve got a nice feature that’s only getting better.

It’s evident that the same problems that have plagued us in one part of the application are migrating elsewhere in the application.

I’m sure this is something that happens in any language, framework, foundation, library, or platform, but if you’ve specifically been with WordPress for the last few years, then you’ve seen this happen.

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