Seasons change, standards change, hairstyles change, and in the same way, technology changes: both the gadgets that we use each day and the underlying code used to make them function. On the World Wide Web there are a plethora of code languages used to power the web, and to create the applications we have come to use on a daily basis such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. One of the most popular languages is called PHP (Hypertext Preprocesser), which itself has changed a lot over the past decade, and those who use it have changed how they harness it to construct and develop the web.
Having grown to be one of the most popular code languages was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because the information and resources available to learn it made it easily accessible to those wanting to quickly be able to contribute to the ever growing world-wide web, and a curse for much the same reason. The facility of use and the many resources and tutorials meant things could be done quickly, and by any means necessary, by anyone. No standards, no uniform way of doing things. And because of this, the glorious applications of the past have become the headaches of programmers and developers of the present, who spend countless hours patching and fixing, and refactoring (rewriting code in a more efficient manner) these applications.
Of course, while this may keep things from falling apart (and you would be surprised at some of the major PHP applications that are one line of code away from exploding), it takes time and resources away from the projects of the present, which usually are built according to the standards and conventions that arose from the frustrations of PHP’s past. Standards such as MVC (model-view-controller), and Object oriented programming, which have been prevalent in other languages, have been adopted by the language itself and those who use it.
While the desire exists to rebuild the applications of old using the more efficient and proper ways of web application building, most business and organizations aren’t willing to commit the time and the money to start from scratch. Thus enters a book that will allow you to fulfill the desire to rectify the coding mishaps of the past, while maintaining a fully functional application: Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP. Recently published, this book takes you step by step through the process of modernizing old, poorly written applications by conversion to the MVC pattern, classes, libraries, and unit testing. To learn more and to purchase this book, visit https://leanpub.com/mlaphp for more information.
Happy coding until next time!