On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 11:41 +0100, Eakin, W wrote: > Hello, > This question could be seen as a general programming question, but > because PHP is what I know best, I'll ask it here. > > A good friend of mine is the person who got me more interested in > programming as a career. She's a professional COBOL programmer, and > works for a large bank. She once told me that 75% of her time was spent > going over and rewriting/repairing old code that she didn't write, and > only 25% writing new code. From what I know about COBOL, it seems that > it might need more rewriting than other languages, because of all the > built up old code. But as I look forward to the day when I can work as a > full-time PHP coder, I wonder. The question is, how much of your time > (you, the professional PHP coder reading this), is spent > rewriting/repairing old code vs. writing new code. Although this is a > PHP list, and my question is in regards to PHP, if you want to give me > your opinion on this same question in regards to other languages you've > programmed in, I wouldn't mind. > > thanks, > William > All languages have this problem. It's going to happen regardless of which language that you work on. As you become a better programmer you can plan ahead better, but you should always expect to have to go back and rethink things and clean up existing code. (refactoring) If you do it effectively, the time it takes to go back and work on legacy code can be dropped: see: http://www.refactoring.com/ ..and a good book that someone recommended to me recently: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect? tag=gp04-20&path=tg/detail/-/0201485672%3Fv%3Dglance Cheers, -Robby -- /*************************************** * Robby Russell | Owner.Developer.Geek * PLANET ARGON | www.planetargon.com * Portland, OR | robby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * 503.351.4730 | blog.planetargon.com * PHP/PostgreSQL Hosting & Development * --- Now supporting PHP5 --- ****************************************/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
