I use to be one of those idiots that bragged about knowing how to code websites, more specifically, PHP… I even bragged during a one year period that I could make a web page do anything, including just about pick your nose for you. Ok, so I was an idiot, I admit it. Something has gone horribly wrong though - horribly. I’ve lost my PHP skillz due to ASP.NET - I kid you not.
For those that use PHP and haven’t touched Visual Studio, here’s a quick reason: Visual Studio is a Drag’n'Drop environment. Want Authentication? Drag the login box onto a page, customize it with properties and you’re done. No custom coding needed (unless you’re getting really fancy). Almost all the main features are “DnD” but you can custom write code to interact with those features.
Dreamweaver has similar functions with their CS3 release, but no where near what VS has.
Upon starting up a very small PHP project for my wife and her Unit (Army), I was setting up a MySQL table for users (authentication) and setup the field names. ID, Name, Email, etc. Variable types, no problem! ID = UID…um, where’s UID??? SHIT - MySQL, not MSSQL. They problems went downhill from there. I felt like an idiot, I felt like a beginner all over again. The panic set in - what have I done!? I hadn’t touched PHP/MySQL seriously in a year. A few small tweaks here and there with WordPress, but thats it. The rest has been almost non-stop .Net
I quickly did a Google for PHP based authentication and it started coming back. The first example was decent, but I didn’t need 6 files for an Authentication code block for my site - thats soooo late 90’s. Luckily, between the panic and looking at the auth code listed on a website, it started to come back, very slowly and appeared clunky. I even had to relearn how to navigate inside MyPHPAdmin, something I’d been using for the last 4 or so years (I’m guessing here).
Anyway, luckily, I’m able to chunky monkey this project back together. It’s coming back, but very slowly… Moral of the story, don’t stop using a language if you’re going to go back to it.
