[vox] Improving Programming Skills

[marteen at lugmen.org.ar]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 09:46:20AM -0700, Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> I'm a pretty decent PHP programmer; about 90% of my job consists of
> deconstructing the code behind Moodle (and a couple of other major
> projects) and building in my own patches and changes to make it mesh
> better with my department's business model.  But at my evaluation meeting
> yesterday, my boss expressed some concern that I may be reaching to top of
> my skill set, and I agree with him.
> 
> So does anyone have any suggestions for how I can bring my PHP programming
> skills up to the next level?  Almost all of the books I've looked at and
> the courses I've checked out online focus on the basics of PHP
> programming, and I'm well beyond that.  I don't have a degree in CS or any
> related field, and my formal training consists of one week-long course in
> PHP and a class in JavaScript that I took at least seven years ago.

I am PHP developer myself (I am a full time freelance though) and I've
found that a better learning of Javascript and XHTML are great
companions to PHP nowadays, as well as a deeper knowledge of SQL and
database design and optimization techniques.

Also, I try to always keep fresh algorithms and design patterns that I
learnt formally when I was in college and don't use very often today.

Another way to keep your mind open and fit is to learn languages
like lisp, haskell, erlang... which have different paradigms and make
you think simple things in sometimes radically different ways.

The other option I see, is to involve in the development of the PHP
language itself. The "open sourceness" of it, makes that possible. But
maybe the high research level of this is not too appealing to your
employer.

Greetings,

-- 
Martin R. Dapas