Php Exercise - Mvc: Fill & Download for Free

Well, the coolest thing I created alone is the very first one. I was 30 years old, working full time in security (not even computer security). One day, my wife, who is a teacher, told me : “Well, I wish I had a website, to share with my students some interesting links, infomations, etc…”. Ok. I didn’t know anything about website hosting and so on, but it sounded very interesting.Step 1 : I created a very simple site with a software called “Rapidweaver”. It was like “Dreamweaver” (WYSIWYG web editor), but simpler. So she had a static website and she could edit the content with the software, then upload the new html files to the server. Yeah. Was very happy.During the next year, she told me : “Would it be possible for students to post texts they wrote on my website ?” Uuuurrh. No, not with this software. Damn. So I decided to learn HTML, CSS, and PHP, MySQL. It was quite hard because I didn’t have much time, and I learned online. But it was so interesting !Step 2 : I re-created the site, but entirely with what I learned. Guess what ? The website was kinda ugly, but it worked. The students could login and post texts. Very cool, no ?But… my wife asked me : “That’s very cool now, thanks, but… would it be possible for me to write exercises and make these exercises feasible for students ? And the corrections would be automatic ?”. Well… yes it was.Step 3 : I added an “Exercises” module on my website. The students could learn Vocabulary with very basic Question->Answer exercises.My wife : “Ooh, nice ! But… would it be possible to have TextWithBlanks and MultipleChoices exercises, too ???” Me : “Of course darling.”Step 4 : I added more spaghetti's modules to my website for these purposes. The base code became difficult to maintain, so I had to go further in learning. Ok : PHP OOP was not really easy for me. Then dive into Laravel, because I heard good thing about it. Cool. Re-create the site, but with Laravel and MVC, during summer holidays. I wanted the site to be ready for the new school year.My wife : “The site is great ! But… could it be possible for me to give homeworks to the students ? And to see the answers they gave ? To know how to improve my courses ?”Step 5 : re-think the whole thing again. Create groups of users (like school classes), add the possibility to give them homeworks (a homework is an exercise, with a min percentage of right answers to complete, a due date, etc…). Was very fun, I learned a lot making that !There are a few steps after the fifth. Actually, my wife can upload medias (images or videos) on the server to attach them to exercises. She can bring exercises and automatically create an exam with in (in word or PDF formats). She’s able to have a look at statistics for the homeworks, to see exactly what students need to work on. There are modules I work on, and the students will be able to create their Curiculum Vitae on the site (my wife has some students that are in last obligatory school year, so they need to find a job for the next year). I want to add another module where the students can create “Book where you are the hero”, with multiple storylines, etc…After doing this site, I wanted to learn more. I’m actually on several projects using Python Flask, Tkinter and Django. The site I’ve created for my wife is not the most complicated webapp I did so far as a non-professional, but for me, for sure, it was the coolest :-)

Learn HTML5 and CSS (3)Don’t get attached to remembering tags and what not. The key here is to grasp the idea and understand the principles of structuring a HTML page using CSS.Beginner’s mind. Practice every day! (even after 13 years working with tons of complex projects as Full Stack I still build a new layout every day)The best exercise is to pick a layout you like on Pinterest and try to structure the fast you can.Learn Javascript (and JQuery)You can learn JQuery knowing very little of Javascript but I wouldn’t recommend it.Javascript will give you a very good foundation in how programming (and things like if, else, for, while) works.The best exercise is to pick the layouts you built with HTML and CSS and add small functionalities such menus, transitions and input validation.Learn a server-side language such as PHP, Python or Javascript (using NodeJS)Here you might learn about MVC and how it makes life easier to separate things in Model (Database), View (Where content is rendered) and Controller (Where your logic lies)You will also have to learn about sessions and how login and signup flow works.Safety it’s very important so take note of the following to learn:SSL Ceritifcates (use Certbot or Let’s Encrypt for free/automatic ones)Hashing and SaltingEncrypting sensitive dataLearn MySQL and MongoDBThe focus here should be how to design/model a database in the most effective wayAgain, practice every day!Bonus (If you are like me and can’t really sleep like a normal person):Elasticsearch (Big Data)Rest APIJava (Android)Swift (iOS)Cordova (uses Javascript)ReactJS (uses Javascript)React Native (uses Javascript)PhotoshopBonus for effectiveness:Use Sublime Text 3 and install control package in it. Install Emmet and SFTP.Emmet let you code HTML/CSS much faster.SFTP takes off the headache of having to open FileZilla and transfer the file every time.Personal note: I started dealing with tech by the age of 8 (Windows 95). At that time I spent over 5 years playing around with fixing pcs, formatting, setting up LAN networks using router, switches and what not.That knowledge helped me having a better understanding about IT in general but I honestly would skip if I had to do it again. Unless you want to spend your whole life fixing computers and clipping UTC cables together, you should go straight to coding.Personal note 2: It doesn’t take long to become an excellent Full Stack Developer (but only if you are willing to spend 80% of your time breaking and testing things)

Having used both Ruby on Rails and PHP's most popular (though not its newest) MVC framework Laravel, and having worked for startups using both, I can attest somewhat to the relative merits of each framework. Ruby is nice, Rails is nice, Laravel is nice. They're all nice. The world is now overflowing with nice frameworks.PHP itself suffers from a terrible legacy, a well-deserved but ultimately outdated reputation as a spaghetti-code inducing mess of a language. That's changed. PHP now has namespaces and closures, and a host of other modern conveniences; PHP development now benefits from an amazing package library called Composer that is heavily influenced by Bower, and is as good if not better than Ruby bundler. PHP also remains one of the easiest languages to provision on Linux machines, as it is almost universally available. Laravel is a very well designed modern framework with an excellent ORM and built-in dependency injection. Laravel and Phalcon are both incredibly easy to learn and setup; far easier, in fact, for a beginner to get up and running than Ruby on Rails is. This might be a contentious statement, but I can attest, from experience, that it holds true.I could go on, but I don't want this to devolve into a pointless exercise in comparison. PHP development can be just as delightful now as Rails is, and no longer has any of the characteristics that merit identifying its use as a 'red flag'. Other frameworks are likewise delightful to use, for their own reasons. At the end of the day, these are all simply tools. I have received numerous job offers in recent months for Laravel and Phalcon (a newer PHP MVC that compiles to C++). There appears to be no shortage of startups embracing these tools in a serious way.A more sensible position seems to be to discard ideological attachment to any specific framework, and adopt a flexible, agnostic attitude towards the tools you use. Pick one that suits the job. Maybe learn Scala and Play, or try a client-side framework like AngularJS. Be adaptable, flexible, and open-minded rather than opinionated or cynical. Recognize that sometimes the technology stack isn't what's important: the project, or the company, is. Look for a job or a startup that appeals to you, find out what stack they're using, and familiarize yourself with that.Tools are what me make them. I believe the differences between frameworks are mostly inconsequential for the vast majority of use cases (things get weird when you encounter scalability and enterprise level domains, but there again -- choose what's appropriate to the task at hand, rather than what fits your ideological criteria). And above all, keep learning new things and have fun!