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I have been programming for over 20 years and have very similar thoughts all the time :) My eyes are bigger than my stomach. I believe that these days it's probably impossible for anyone to really understand everything. Personally, I think PHP is a fine language when coded well (most of my PHP looks like my Java, though I haven't coded much PHP since just before the introduction of lambdas). I feel like it undeservedly gets a bad rap, perhaps because it's so easy to write horrible code in it. But that is just evidence of its complete accessibility in my books. I think that some of the coworkers I had at my PHP jobs would agree that it is an adequate tool for the job of web development (some people even use it for other purposes, but that's not my style). I wish I could give you some solid advice, but I don't feel qualified to do so. I will say, however, my favorite experiences in programming have always been upon completion of a project -- seeing it go live, get real users, and actually work, from start to finish. Most of those times have been in my professional career where I was paid to complete something and had a hard deadline (that has nearly always slipped), but a few have been school assignments and personal or open-source projects that have 0 or nearly 0 users. Sometimes solving a problem or scratching an itch is just the thing I need. Also, in nearly every case where I've shipped production code, I look back on it fondly some years later (especially if it is still running and getting used) and think, "damn, I must have done an incredible job. I got everything just right." But on the rare occasions where I get to look back at the source code, it's always got plenty of TODOs lying around, and things I wanted to fix, stuff I would do if I had a bit more time but just never got to, etc. It's never perfect... but sometimes it still works. Memory is a funny thing. Finally, someone linked this on a vaguely similar thread recently: https://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html - I thought it was great. Here's that thread, BTW, which you may also enjoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9796203 -- some really quality responses on there, IMO. |
Feynman is a lovely example to follow for anyone wanting to become an engineer. The book is one of my all-time favorites.