So, you start with a PHP website.

Nah, no hating on PHP here, this is not about language design or performance or strict type systems...

This is about architecture.

No backend web framework, just "plain PHP".

Well, I can deal with that. As long as there is some consistency, I wouldn't even mind maintaining a PHP4 site with Y2K-era HTML4 and zero Javascript.

That sounds like fucking paradise to me right now. 😍

But no, of course it was updated to PHP7, using Laravel, and a main.js file was created. GREAT.... right? Yes. Sure. Totally cool. Gotta stay with the times. But there's still remnants of that ancient framework-less website underneath. So we enter an era of Laravel + Blade templates, with a little sprinkle of raw imported PHP files here and there.

Fine. Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css. Whatever. I can still handle this. 🤨

But then the Frontend hipsters swoosh back their shawls, sip from their caramel lattes, and start whining: "We want React! We want SPA! No more BootstrapCSS, we're going to launch our own suite of SASS styles! IT'S BETTER".

OK, so we create REST endpoints, and the little monkeys who spend their time animating spinners to cover up all the XHR fuckups are satisfied. But they only care about the top most visited pages, so we ALSO need to keep our Blade templated HTML. We now have about 200 SPA/REST routes, and about 350 classic PHP/Blade pages.

So we enter the Era of Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css + hipster.sass + REST + React + SPA 😑

Now the Backend grizzlies wake from their hibernation, growling: We have nearly 25 million lines of PHP! Monoliths are evil! Did you know Netflix uses microservices? If we break everything into tiny chunks of code, all our problems will be solved! Let's use DDD! Let's use messaging pipelines! Let's use caching! Let's use big data! Let's use search indexes!... Good right? Sure. Whatever.

OK, so we enter the Era of Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css + hipster.sass + REST + React + SPA + Redis + RabbitMQ + Cassandra + Elastic 😫

Our monolith starts pooping out little microservices. Some polished pieces turn into pretty little gems... but the obese monolith keeps swelling as well, while simultaneously pooping out more and more little ugly turds at an ever faster rate.

Management rushes in: "Forget about frontend and microservices! We need a desktop app! We need mobile apps! I read in a magazine that the era of the web is over!"

OK, so we enter the Era of Ancient PHP + Laravel + Blade + main.js + bootstrap.css + hipster.sass + REST + GraphQL + React + SPA + Redis + RabbitMQ + Google pub/sub + Neo4J + Cassandra + Elastic + UWP + Android + iOS 😠

"Do you have a monolith or microservices" -- "Yes"

"Which database do you use" -- "Yes"

"Which API standard do you follow" -- "Yes"

"Do you use a CI/building service?" -- "Yes, 3"

"Which Laravel version do you use?" -- "Nine" -- "What, Laravel 9, that isn't even out yet?" -- "No, nine different versions, depends on the services"

"Besides PHP, do you use any Python, Ruby, NodeJS, C#, Golang, or Java?" -- "Not OR, AND. So that's a yes. And bash. Oh and Perl. Oh... and a bit of LUA I think?"

2% of pages are still served by raw, framework-less PHP.

Not a rant about anything in particular. Just a summary of some feelings stored in the hateful part of my heart.

Developing for Android: Add this third-party library to your Gradle build. Use (this) built-in Android class to make the thing work.

*Clicks link

Deprecated since API version SUCKMYDICK-7. Use (this) instead

*Clicks link

Deprecated since API version LICKMYBALLS-32. Use...

Developing for Windows: Please use (this) API call. It was literally already available before Bill Gates was born. Carbon dating has placed this item to older than the universe itself and it is likely the entry point for the big bang. It is also still the best way to accomplish (task).

Developing for Linux: "Hmm, I wonder how to use this"

> > > Some shitty mailing list in small blue monospace font tells you to reference a man page that is three versions behind but the only version available.

What? Those three sentences didn't explain it enough? Well, maybe you aren't cut out for this type of thing.

JavaScript: you know how it is.

SQL: You expect a decent-quality answer from stack overflow but you always get an outdated and hacky response and it's using syntax from Microsoft SQL. You need MySQL.

C#: A surprising number of Microsoft forum results ranking high on Google. You click on one in hopes that it will be of any sort of quality. You quickly close the tab and wonder why you ever even had hope.

Literally any REST API: Is it "query" or "q"? "UserID" or "user_id"? Oh, fuck, where's the docs again?

You thought you escaped JavaScript, but it was a trick!: Some bullshit library you downloaded to make your other library work redefined one of the global variables in the project you inherited. Now you get 347 "<x> is not a function" errors in your console. Good luck, asshole.

FontAwesome/ Material fonts/ Any icon font pack: You search "Close" for a close button icon. No results. You search "Simplified railroad crossing sign without the railroad". You get a close icon.

I think that's all of my pent up rage. Each of them were too small for an individual rant so I had to do this essay.

Hi,
I'm not a ranty person so I never actually thought I'd post anything here but here it goes.

From the beginning.
We use ancient technologies. PHP 5.2, Symfony 1.2 and a non RFC complient SOAP with NO documentation.
A year ago We've been thrown a new temporary project. An VOIP app for every OS.
That being iOS, Android, MAC, PC, Linux, Windows mobile. With a 3 month deadline. All that thrown at 4 PHP developers. The idea being that They'll take it, sign the delivery protocol, everyone happy. No more updates for the app needed. They get their funds they needed the app for and we get paid.

Fast forward to today...

Our dev team started the year with great news that We'll most likely have to create a new project. Since the amount of new features would be far greater than current feature set, we managed to finally force our boss to use newer technologies (ie. seperate backend symfony4 PHP7+/frontend react, rest api and so on). So we were ecstatic to say the least. With preestimates aimed at a minimum 3 month development period. Since we're comfortable with everything that needs to be done.
Two days later our boss came to me that one of our most annoying clients needs a new feature. Said client uses ancient version written on a napkin because They changed half of the specification 2 weaks before deadline in a software made not by a developer but some sysadmin who didn't know anything. His MVC model was practically VVV model since he even had sql queries in some views. Feature will take 3 days - fixing everything that will break in the meantime - 1-2 months.
F*** it, fine. A little overtime won't kill me.
Yesterday boss comes again... Apparently someone lost a delivery protocol for a project we ended that half a year ago. Whats even better at the time when we asked for hardware to test we never got any. When we asked about any testing enviornment - nothing. The app being SEMI-stable on everything is an overstatement but it was working on the os'es available at the time. Since the client started testing now again, it turns out that both Android app does not work on 8.1/9 and the iOS app does not work on ios12. The client obviously does not want to pay and we can do little with it without the protocol, other than rewriting the apps.
It will take months at least since all of those apps were written by people that didn't know neither the OS'es nor the languages. For example I started writing the iOS one in swift. Only to learn after half of the development time, that swift doesn't like working by C Library rules and I had to use ObjC also. With some C thrown in due to the library. 3 unknown languages, on an unknown platform in 3 months. I never had any apple device in my hand at that time nor do I intend to now. I'm astonished it worked out then. It was a clusterf**k of bad design and sticking everything together with deprecated apis and a gum. So I'll have to basically fully rewrite it.

If boss decides we'll take all those at the same time I'll f***ing jump of a bridge.

Just received a test for a job I'm interviewing for. I was interviewing for a C++ position. Practice test: Create an REST API using SpringBoot, Spring Data, document with Swagger and implement continuous integration testing.

To be fair, I also mentioned I'm fluent in Java. But I've never touched SpringBoot or done any backend webdev, since my intention was to never get near it.

Deadline: Sunday. Game on...

I started programming when I was 14, because I was deeply enrooted in MMORPG hacking communities. It gave me an escape from real life, and I felt empowered by the skill to create something from nothing. My first language was Lazarus FPC, followed by VB.NET, C#, C++ ( managed and unmanaged non CLR ). As time went on, I found more ways to turn my "hacks" into software, and finally I began selling subscriptions which required me writing an authentication system.

After weeks of research, I began writing my own REST API in PHP using MySQL as my database. At this point I had an IPB forum up and running for a year, but with my newly acquired knowledge I was able to couple my API with my forum software. To properly distribute my API i had to learn NGINX to route my API to a subdomain.

Soon after I began writing my own portal for my authentication system, at which point I had become entirely enveloped in Web Development. I was 17 when I dropped my forum, I'm now 21 and freelancing web app consulting, day job as a QA automation developer.

Working on an Android app for a client who has a dev team that is developing a web app in with ember js / rails. These folks are "in charge" of the endpoints our app needs to function. Now as a native developer, I'm not a hater of a web apps way of doing things but with this particular app their dev teams seems to think that all programming languages can parse json as dynamically as javascript...

Exhibit A:

- Sample Endpoint Documentation
* GetImportantInfo
* Params: $id // id of info to get details of
* Endpoint: get-info/$id
* Method: GET
* Entity Return {SampleInfoModel}

- Example API calls in desktop REST client
* get-info/1
- response
{
"a" : 0,
"b" : false,
"c" : null
}
* get-info/2
- response
{
"a" : [null, "random date stamp"],
"b" : 3.14,
"c" : {
"z" : false,
"y" : 0.5
}
}
* get-info/3
- response
{
"a" : "false" // yes as a string
"b" : "yellow"
"c" : 1.75
}

Look, I get that js and ruby have dynamic types and a string can become a float can become a Boolean can become a cat can become an anvil. But that mess is very difficult to parse and make sense of in a stack that relies on static types.

After writing a million switch statements with cases like "is Float" or "is String" from kotlin's Any type // alias for java.Object, I throw my hands in the air and tell my boss we need to get on the phone with these folks. He agrees and we schedules a day that their main developer can come to our shop to "show us the ropes".

So the day comes and this guy shows up with his mac book pro and skinny jeans. We begin showing him the different data types coming back and explain how its bad for performance and can lead to bugs in the future if the model structure changes between different call params. He matter of factually has an epiphany and exclaims "OHHHHHH! I got you covered dawg!" and begins click clacking on his laptop to make sense of it all. We decide not to disturb him any more so he can keep working.

3 hours goes by...

He burst out of our conference room shouting "I am the greatest coder in the world! There's no problem I can't solve! Test it now!"

Weary, we begin testing the endpoints in our REST clients....

His magic fix, every single response is a quoted string of json:

example:
- old response
{
"foo" : "bar"
}
- new "improved" response
"{ \"foo\" : \"bar\" }"

smh....

I am so 😢🤒😡 right now. I applied for a remote job, so they gave me an assessment and the language was c++. The funny thing is that c++ was not in my resume.
So I decided to explore c++. "I don't know what the fuss is, C++ is not so hard". It was very easy for me to grasp. It took me two days to understand it.
Then I did one of those online test and I scored 58/60.
Now I went back to take the assessment test on C++ but lo and behold the assessment is now on Rest API.
But Rest API is also not on my resume. They are not assessing me on my strengths like Java or kotlin or python or my my lesser strengths like C# or JavaScript.

I'm currently between jobs and have a few rants about my previous job (naturally). In retrospect, it's somewhat therapeutic to range about the sheer brainfuckery that has taken place. Enjoy!

First, let me set the scene: legacy B2B web app made with LEMP stack and sencha ext.js 3 + 4 (don't ask) and a lot of madness. Let's call that app "Alpha".

Alpha is a self made CMS build for typical ERP stuff. Yes, a self made CMS: entities are containers, containers have types and fields and values. Like so many legacy PHP apps, it does not have a dedicated FE: the HTML is rendered on the server and then spewed out to the browser.

Easy right? Coding like it's 1999! But there was a twist: Because everything is basically a container, the HTML-templates are saved in the DB. Along with the nessary JS and the CSS. And the translation variables. Why? Because fuck you! That's why. Who needs a git history anyways.

For some reason, Alpha was kinda slow.

There was also an editor, that allowed you to modify templates (web, mail, pdf) on the fly in prod. Because templates contain repeating data (header/footer), one template could contain additional templates. Much confusion. You could change templates via migration (slow, boring) or just ctrl-c/ctrl-v that sucker (fast, much excitement).

Did I mention Alpha was slow?

On with the rant: e-mails! How do they work? Noone knows. How to send mails asynchronous in PHP? Witchcraft is the only possible answer to that riddle. Here is your enterprise™ solution:
1. create mail
2. insert mail into DB
3. WAIT UP TO 59 SECONDS FOR A FUCKING CRON TO SEND MAIL

Why? "Because that way, we can resend mails in case the network is down :)"

Same procedure for the SOAP-API (db-queue + cron). You read that right: all requests to various other systems are processed once a minute.

Alpha slow.

Alpha was only one of several systems. Imagine a bunch of monolithic php apps, interconnected via SOAP, REST and GraphQL like a godamn intergalactic orgy. Image having to debug that cluster fuck.

Let's say there is a bad request. These things happen. No biggie. Remember the db-queue? Let's try to send the bad request a second time! And a third time! Still no luck? How odd. Let's create a specific file in a specific directory: a LOCK-file. Now, "the db-queue is on hold and no request gets processed :)"

Golly gee thanks Alpha.

Anyhow, did you know that MySQL has a join limit of 61 tables?

I'm working on a Web API for retrieving informarion of some sort (can't speak as it is a work in progress😝).
Before starting to work on this project all the experience I had was Desktop (C#, VB) and some SQL but now I'm learning so much more: REST, Asp.net core, nosql, GraphQL and more.
Even if I can't finish this project, still what I'm learning is even more valuable

hmmmmmm let me see.

Web based? lets do web based.

Do something simple like a basic crud app on web api format:
Do it with full authorization and authentication.
Start hard. Do it with pure golang using NOTHING but the std libraries.
Now, do it in a magic mvc framework like Rails or Laravel
Now do it on dotnet core
Now do it in django rest.

Watch the differences in all of them, sell your soul to something and now do it in Clojure. If you do it on a Scheme dialect or on Common Lisp my CMS admin will suck your whatever you have. Dude seems to be pretty good at it, we are trying to keep him from pulling tricks on the street but he insists.

Then add a React client with Typescript to get them basic ass endpoints to display nicely.

It should give you a fuckload of perspective amongst the different tools and way we do things and might make you appreciate the differences in paradigms required(pro points for doing modular in c# dotnetcore using different classlibs for the major points of the application using some crazy pattern like the mediator pattern)

I would hire a mfker that throws all this shit at me on a portfolio on the spot.

Started porting one application written in php to:
Golang(and some libraries to make certain sht simpler like GORM and Gorilla amongst a couple of others, most shit is STD shit already built in)

Java Spring(I know it well, but wanted to try this particular app in it, lots of boilerplate although the coded is solid AF)

.NET Core API, which I separated in a series of modules for the domain interface, the persistence logic, the actual api etc, I really dig it. It has a basic React frontend in Typescript whereas the other 2 versions are using the standard Go html/template package and the Twig interface for Spring.

My favorite thus far is Golang. I find it extremely easy to extend, the language reads good enough for a retard like myself to make sense of it fairly easy, really easy to test and experiment with it, any idea I get for something to add(say users and stuff) took me less than 30 mins to figure out while reading the actual documentation, as in the base documentation or just the source code.

I know the language is retard proof, and I am highly enjoying this. Not to say that the other two are bad, not at all, been using C# and Java for years now, but I highly appreciate being able to concentrate on functionality rather than all the fucking architectural boilerplate needed to run basic shit in the other two frameworks. Thus far Golang has been a breath of fresh air the likes Clojure gives me, while not even being a profound or mind blowing language in terms of features(since other than the interface{} and goroutines i can't think of shit) and have not reached a scenario in which I am stuck or dying to have generics one bit for the overall business logic.

The app is growing like crazy in terms of code since the original php application was huge to begin with, but dear me this shit is as simple as it can get without being too technical. Might move it to production once all usability tests pass and force the rest of the staff to learn it. I have one lead dev that damn near refuses to touch anything other than php, and a very eager to try shit out content administrator that comes from a Java and C# background.

all I want to say is how much I love go haha

I want to build my own REST NET API, I am familiar with C#. And I was working with Flask, Django and Express.js

The whole webapi structure of dotnet project seems to me a bit strange. Do you have any favourite resources that helped you to get into dotnet?

wasting 4 hours trying to send a post request and fetching back the json reply, and having to fall back on fsocket when c url is not available is no fuck, the fuck with C api code in what's supposed to be web directed high level language that has no fucking native interface for REST actions
!rant

Do we really need languages like Java and C++ throughout the full stack of a web app? I feel that a properly used scripting language alongside a compiled language (for a REST API) can almost always do the trick for highly loaded apps.

Any decent rest api client for c++? Kind of like requests for python?

Okay, so i always was like an anti corporate rebel, i moved to bigger city and ended in marketing agency working remotely and explaining to this guys that i can't create rest api on their server because they are allowing only get and post method and client wants delete put etc etc, normal thing. Is it normal or it's something wrong with me ? Maybe it's time to switch to C++ and go to some corporate company ?

I just thought of a potential webapp ideas while talking a shower. Still need to give it some thought but wondering how best to built it out? Sorta like a message board/kiva/change.org

I'm thinking #1 is backend + REST api. Then just create a webapp using React Native so it can be used mobile and browser?

Probably will build the first prototype though using either C# just to test the APIs...

But I guess how do you break a project up. Do you build backend first or do it feature by feature (both backend and frontend)?

And well what about hosting? Do need to decide now like AWS/Heroku... Or can I just build on local? Need a db though...