Back To The Real World

It’s been a very interesting month. I was laid off and the family moved to Oregon with my in-laws during the Clovid-19 pandemic. Luckily my wife still had her job during all of this. Instead of playing video games or drinking I decided to code while she worked. I learned Python and Django while I built a simple Ruby on Rails CMS and even did a React-Ruby on Rails- Postgres app. I’ve done maybe 10 projects from a 99 bottles of beer on the wall app in Python to a Django polls app. I even played around with Blython which is Python in the browser. While I had fun learning new stuff it appears as though the country is going to open back up again and it’s time for me to get back to my bread and butter which is PHP development.

Learning new stacks/languages/frameworks helps me become a better PHP developer. Ruby on Rails taught me MVC, Asp.net (particularly C#) taught me OOP. Python completely blew my mind. Having a Class within a function is something I would have never thought of until I learned Python. One thing I loved about Django was the concept of apps where each piece of functionality is separated by its own unique app.

Why Am I Sticking with PHP And Not Rails Or Django?

One because I’m very productive in PHP. Two because PHP is in demand. Three because of the choices I have. If I want a blog there’s WordPress. If I want an e-commerce website there’s Magento. If I want a more custom site there’s Laravel, Symfony, and CakePhp. And the list goes on. I tend to build in PHP. I learn with everything else.

The one thing I really need to work on is testing. I suck at testing my applications. I tend to test for the bare minimum situation and create tests for the sake of tests and not for the sake of testing edge cases. If there’s an extremely tight deadline I skip tests all together. I plan on working on that for the rest of this year while ramping up my Laravel skills. Laravel is a framework you have to constantly be on top of because it changes weekly.

While most of my spare time is going to be spent with testing and Laravel I’m going to be splitting my time between Ruby on Rails and Django. I already have an idea for two side projects that would fit each nicely. I love Rails. It’s by far my favorite web framework of all time. But me and Python just click. Python just makes sense to me. The only downside to Ruby on Rails for me is the magic. It’s hard to debug and test magic. While Django feels like I’m in control. The problem with Rails is the job market. Rails jobs are disappearing. Django jobs seem as though they are growing. But Rails and Django are no match for PHP in the job market.

I think I grew by leaps and bounds during the pandemic. My greatest takeaway is that learning for the sake of learning is helping me grow and I shouldn’t put all my development eggs into one basket.

Tags

Django ruby on rails Web Development