# PHP - Hard Coding or Dreamweaver?



## ian27 (Jun 22, 2004)

Hi,

I am currently teaching myself PHP / MySQL by working my way through various manuals and tutorials which is teaching me how to hard code the language. Although I am slowly getting there it certainly is hard going.

I know that Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver MX 2004 have facilities to help you program your PHP and connect it to your MySQL database. I'm curious out of the people here who use PHP regularly -  do you hard code your scripts or do you use editors such as Dreamweaver to help you create your code?

I'm not sure how far DW can go with PHP - is it versatile with the language or do you simply have to hard code most of the stuff anyway?

Thanks.

Ian


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## guilly (Jun 22, 2004)

ian27 said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> I am currently teaching myself PHP / MySQL by working my way through various manuals and tutorials which is teaching me how to hard code the language. Although I am slowly getting there it certainly is hard going.
> 
> ...



I always believe that the best way to have control over your program (even if it is a web application, SPECIALLY if it is a web application) is by writing "pure" code. If you attach to Dreamweaver sooner or later you will feel imprisoned by some limited way of doing things, and by the time you want to do all those new thingies offered by PHP you'll have to go all the way back.

No, really. I've written thousands and thousands of PHP code, and my advice is that you stick to an editor such as SkEdit, jEdit or similar and forget about WYSIWYG editors. That will help you become a real professional.


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## agusgriego (Jun 22, 2004)

I agree that you shouldn't use Dreamweaver's built-in features to create database connections, etc. You should hand code, however, Dreamweaver is a great tool to hand code in php because it contains a good reference of available PHP functions and has code-sense (although somewhat limited) that helps a lot.


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## ian27 (Jun 22, 2004)

Thanks guys. Your comments give me some reassurance that I am doing the right thing by going down this "hard coding" route.  I have been teaching myself PHP now since January and dread to think how many hours I've already put in, and I still struggle to put a basic script together. All I can say is that I have so much admiration for you developers who do this for a living - there certainly is a lot of skill and knowledge required to do it well. 

Ian


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## imbrokn (Jun 22, 2004)

If you have some cash to spend, I seriously suggest getting ZEND studio. Unlike dreamweaver which is a website building tool that happens to support PHP, ZEND studio is a tool made JUST for writting php applications. The debugging facilities are second to none for debugging php. I think it runs about 250 dollars, but that really isn't that much for all that it does. The VB studio style code completion, project viewer, and Project assets view are all well worth it. They have a 30 day free trial that you can check out. 

http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-studio.php


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## Pengu (Jun 23, 2004)

Unless its changed greatly, i remember Zend studio for OSX being very much a tacky port from windows, with an uber-crap interface.

Try out skEdit. It rocks


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## andehlu (Jun 23, 2004)

i use BBEDIT for all my php logic and DW for all the html elements within. I tried using Ultradev (older DW for databases)  a long time ago, and I noticed that the learning curve of that was almost as much work as learning to hand code the logic myself. Even though I have been hand coding PHP for a while now, I still like to get books on it for various tips, tricks and styles. i got this book last year and the dude who wrote it has a great approach to coding. He throws in alot of ideas like error handling and security throughout. http://safari.peachpit.com/?XmlId=0-321-18648-6


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## ian27 (Jun 23, 2004)

Thanks for the info guys. I've just purchased a copy of "PHP / MySQL  dynamic websites" this afternoon andehlu. I'll let you know what I think of it when it arrives. At the moment I'm working through PHP / MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. I think it's a great book, loads of detail and plenty of explanations line by line which is pretty much what I need. 

Is there a reason why BBEDIT or skEdit are better to use for coding than DW?


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## TommyWillB (Jun 23, 2004)

Here is the compromise... Use Dreamweaver... but only in the non-WYSIWYG code view.


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## ian27 (Jun 24, 2004)

Thanks Tommy - so does using something like BBEDIT have no advantage over using DW in code view?


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