7 replies to this topic

[s0mmer]

Hello all,

My name is Steffen, im from Denmark and i just joined the forum today in hope of debating here for a long time.

My thread is about big systems. I seek some guidance on how to develope and organize larger systems. I've got a bunch of ideas like social network sitesetc. Should i implement these with for example a framework? Or is it overkill because it might not get any visitors? Should i just start small and code it from the bottom? With the possibility to further optimize for a framework?

The actual coding part is no problem, but i dont have any experience with "bigger systems" and how to get started with new ideas like the ones im mentioning.

Im also sorry if this wasnt the right category to ask in.

Best regards,
Steffen

[WingedPanther]

I actually am in the middle of a series of tutorials on how to develop a big system. You can find it in the PHP Tutorials section. I'm coding from scratch, but if you have a framework that's relevant, that can be good too. The question with frameworks is: how much time will you save in raw code compared to the time you will spend fighting the framework's restrictions or learning it?

[s0mmer]

WingedPanther > Thanks for your reply. Ill check out your tutorial. What you mentioned about frameworks is exactly what im thinking and is my experience on frameworks. However im worried if a system is going gold that it would be a huge problem to implement a framework later on? I assume that is needed if more ppl is going to work on it, language support etc etc.. Or shouldnt i worry about that now?

[WingedPanther]

You should worry about that now. Trying to glue a framework onto an existing code base could be extremely painful. However, a framework is not necessarily going to make your site magically better than a hand-crafted site.

Think about it this way: if I provide you with a statistical calculations library, that will not automatically make your word-processor easier to code or work with. By the same token, if you've got your spreadsheet program 90% done, this is not the time to try to crowbar on a stats library.

[s0mmer]

WingedPanther > Really good tutorials, i can see you have put an effort into them. But they are a bit focused on how to programme a system, and like i said that is not the problem in my case. Ive done dozens of systems, some larger than other. But lets say i want to make a facebook similar system. Should i make me learn a framework, or should i just code it like im used to, what do u think?

[WingedPanther]

Unless there is a framework out there that will do a significant percentage of the heavy lifting for you, I'd just code it. You could spend more time looking at frameworks than it would take you to code it.

It depends on the features you want, and how easily you think you could implement them.

[s0mmer]

WingedPanther > Ill take that into consideration. I thank you for your help.

[WingedPanther]

No problem. I like to help as much as I can :)