“30 day challenge” in web programming



    I am not a programmer. I know a little PHP (I took courses for about 20 hours), but I never wrote more than 15 lines of code. But recently, inspired by the Met Cutts experiment , I decided to conduct a similar experiment on myself. I was wondering if I could create at least a small finished product in 30 days and learn PHP in parallel. Check how difficult it is to force yourself to do something unusual every day. I also decided to periodically take notes on how my work is progressing and here is what came of it.

    Day 1
    In order to improve my PHP skills and stop wasting time after work, I decided to write a WordPress plugin for managing meta robots.

    Based on my old script metarobots.php. About 2 hours I studied the documentation on developing plugins for WordPress - it turned out everything is not difficult enough. I did all the basic logic, now it remains to make the settings page. I didn’t think that I could do so much in the first day.

    Day 4
    The settings page turned out to be more complicated than I thought. Writing and reading files turned out to be not easy tasks for a novice like me. Spent 3 hours in 3 days. The browser constantly has 40 pieces of tabs open, google each tag. As a result, an almost finished plugin. It remains to make one control function and can be tested on a real site. An additional plus is that I normally understood screening and the basics of regulatory expressions, rewrote the logic of the original script. I'm starting to understand why, on toster, having looked at the code of my first script, they said that I program as a third grader.

    Day 5
    Finished the settings page for the plugin or almost finished, let's see. I noticed that I began to google less and dig more into the documentation for the engine, and maybe the task was not difficult. Today, the first time I wrote right away the working code, coded for about 15 minutes, launched it - and it worked right away! No bugs! Great feeling. It is interesting that playing and dull on the Internet does not pull, although I work for a maximum of 2 hours, maybe it just does not bother.

    Day 6
    St. Patrick's Day. He looked at the code with one eye. Marked up a bit. I doubt very much that is correct. Good night.

    Day 7
    Headache yesterday. I threw my code to a friend: the first time the plug-in did not start. After consulting with people who know php, I got rid of the toughest crutch. Now the plugin works the same on LAN and hosting. Wrote 99% of the entire logic. It remains to format the code, create language files, write a readme file and you can upload it to the plugin library.

    Day 9 I
    thought that I would format my code for at least a couple of hours, but found beautifyphp.com - it's just a super cool service for people like me! Automatic code formatting in seconds.

    Those who know PHP scared stories about theft of code through similar services, now I'm a little nervous.

    Day 12.13
    I added the plugin, wrote readme.txt, gave it for translation. I want to put the plugin on wordpress.org. I
    started writing a plugin for Joomla, especially since there are usually more problems with indexing than in WP. The body of the plugin was rewritten in half an hour. Tomorrow I will test. It was not very difficult to transfer a small plug-in from Wordpress to Joomla, a bit of reading documentation, the rest is copy-paste and auto-replace.

    Day 14
    2 hours trying to figure out how to raise the second domain on LAN using Open Server. It didn’t work out, I hope I can tomorrow. I could not test the plugin for joomla. Shorter idle day.
    I looked through my notes, somewhere was lost for several days.)) Strange.
    Tomorrow day 15 is the middle of my marathon.

    Day 19
    Recent days, very little program. It turns out that writing once-running code is far from all. I constantly find bugs. Not enough time to finish everything humanly. Sick. I start to be lazy and mow from work. We must get together and finish everything on time.

    Day 21
    Made a plugin blog page . Sent for moderation.
    To be honest, it’s very nice to understand that in 21 days, despite laziness, it turned out to be a finished product, albeit not at all complicated. Recently I thought: how incorrectly we use modern computers. Technology has reached the point where each of us can automate part of our work with the help of simple programs. Get rid of a bunch of routine work.
    I hope I can finish the plugin for Joomla in 9 days.

    Day 22
    Today I received a response from Wordpress, I did not think that they would respond so quickly: there were about 70 plugins in the queue for verification. As I expected the code from me with errors, I did not think about security at all. Corrected everything and again sent for verification.
    Tomorrow I’ll sit down for a plugin for Joomla, something doesn’t work in it, but I still don’t understand what.

    Day 24
    I received another email from wordpres.org, my plugin passed the test. That's cool! I feel like a real tyzh programmer. But now the new thing is SVN. I read the instructions and I can’t understand how to upload files there. I understand that this is probably very convenient and safe, but I have more and more suspicions. It seems that the developers are coming up with a bunch of additional technologies to make it difficult for a beginner to get comfortable. Another feature is readme.txt markup. Seriously: why use an obscure markup syntax that partially supports html, instead of just making readme.html? Exactly a conspiracy.
    Did not do anything today. Spread out readme.txt, read about SVN.

    Day 25
    SVN is not as difficult as it seemed. Installed Tortoisesvn, figured out and uploaded the plugin in half an hour. Now I havepage on wordpress.org . I'm sitting smiling like a fool.

    Day 32
    My 30-day programming marathon ended, even a little sad. In recent days, I have worked on the plugin very little. But, nevertheless, I am pleased with my results. I may not be able to make a plug-in for Joomla (I will definitely do it), but I finished the plug-in for WP, as planned. I uploaded it to wordpres.org and got involved in some great common cause. It is very pleasant to realize that the plan has been completed - it gives confidence and I want to work further.

    Many plans:
    We need to learn OOP
    Add a plug-in for Joomla, maybe Drupal
    Modify a plug-in for WP (localization, Canonical support)

    Summarizing


    To summarize my experiment, I can say: this small marathon turned out to be really useful for me. I learned PHP, and also a little penetrated into new topics: code documentation, SSH vulnerabilities, version control systems. And even though I'm not a programmer, but now I understand them much better. In addition to practical knowledge, this 30-day experiment gave me more confidence in my abilities. It is amazing how a little effort every day allows you to quietly move the project, which at the very beginning seemed quite complicated, and see how this gives the result.

    And I also noticed that doing some work every day for several weeks, this work becomes a habit. A good habit that helps replace time killing with something useful.

    Now I’m thinking of making such marathons regular.

    If you have been putting off an interesting project for a long time or wanted to learn something, but did not have time, try a 30 day marathon. At a minimum, you will start an interesting project for you, and ideally do something worthwhile and make a good habit.

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