Ok lets see what i did when i first "learned" how to hack PHP. Wrote some (lot!) scripts which said 'hello world' then did some counting then print some pyramids and what not. The next step was 'i was told' to make it show dynamic content. That is the good old print the date and time on some lame html.
Next came the file handling. PHP rocks on that one too. Its quite easy to work with files in PHP.
Then i guess came the guestbook and DB connectevity. After making lots of stray pages you realise its no good ;-) and you start to do "require header.php" etc. After lots of projects you realise HTML sucks. What with lots of inline coding. It becomes tedious to changel logic.
Then u realise u should separate the two of them. That is the presentation logic and the business logic. see: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123769&page=1&pp=25
This is when you pick up a template engine or two. BTW checkout pattemplate, it rocks IMHO. So you go back and realise its cool to use tempates and switch themes with changing the template folder.
After some point of time you get tired of the omnipresent FORMS. You say what the #$@#. These things suck up my whole time. Then u start to scratch your head and say "i need a method to my madness ©". You start to use form generators and stuff like that. Then time passes like a quiet river. And then bang you are back to the square one. Your project is a mess of classes (your own and some stolen). You find it hard to make new changes.
Then you decide to take things in your own hand. You start to look for a framework!!. After going through sourceforge.net and freashmeat you download a few of them and install them. After a few wasted days you realise all of them are total crap :-(. Not what you have imagined.
Then you think what every other serious php programmer thinks, why not my own web framework. This leads to another entry in the sourceforge and freashmeat etc. And you loose interest after some time and go back to the square one.
After some time u rediscover that frameworks can be good too:
http://stevenf.com/mt/2005/05/cake_is_good.php
Heck i cant help it, it seems to be my story. So please dont hold anyone responsible for my rants ;-).
See u soon.
