I tend to agree with this. Sometimes it is hard to know when a solution is really going to be useful in the future and I should spend time on it now to save for the future or if this one particular case is a waste, and I should just GTD the hard way. Also as a self-taught coder, I find myself trying to write "reusable code", when most of the time I can just copy and paste useful code.

Keeping solutions clean always helps, as you'll always end up using it again sometime.

For solving problems, buy the book Design Patterns. It is a great book that has the best practice design for software for many common problems. Every serious programmer/engineer should keep a copy close.

I would recommend getting some formal education. Not that it isn't possible to get by without it, but the difference in the quality of the code is pretty noticeable most of the time. I have taught myself every language I know except for C++ (and its a pretty long list), but the knowledge I acquired through education has been invaluable.

Knowing what solution to use comes with experience, but that Design Patterns book will definitely help you get there. I would also recommend buying a book on algorithms, but I don't have any specific ones to recommend.

For coding style...thats mostly preference, the most important thing is to stay consistent.

Also, what seems like the quickest way isn't always the quickest way nor the best.

I really agree with you and I have the same guide line in my work. I've learned all that I know about beeing a webdesigner and a backend scripter from Internet resources, and I always believe that there is an easier way to acomplish my goals and I'm always looking for it.

Two thumbs up (I agree)...I had a very similar discussion with a co-worker a few weeks ago. It applies far beyond just being a developer (something I am far from), yet into every practice of a technical field. I am a photographer, web geek by hobby (although I did get a formal education in web design/digital media just never pursued it as a career) yet both fields were the same learning concepts. Even in school my key sources of learning were examples, taking the example and trying to find ways to cut it down, be better, be different, then once I had totally broke everything, the next time around I knew better. In photojournalism I learn from example, looking at others work, and I only improve by going out and finding what works, what doesnt work, what I will do different when I pick up my camera in a similar situation in the future.

I have a friend whose hobby is to re-write his existing code to minimize it and to make it as compact as possible. I've never seen more complex if-statements in my entire life. :P

I don't totally agree with you thought, I'd rather have an elegant solution rather than the one that is the fastest one to write.

I am also a self taught. I actually got alot of my base computer knowledge from john, Hey by the way. I've worked for a couple web companies now and one constant instills. Fast is good, Fast and Elegant is better. Is it practical, never usually. Projects never get the best options, just the best solutions. On how fast or elegant it is it comes down to the coder and their best practices. We all learn from what were doing. The greatest thing about the web is the constant state of growth. In another year who knows what will be available, ajax now, web 3.0 next? The great thing is we learn. As long as we do that (and still read or old code, hehe) there will always be room for improvements.

"What would be fast to write but not elegant?"

It depends on your definition of elegance. I once had a collegue (a programmer of 25 years) who prided himself on his ability to quickly condense long-winded perl functions into 1 or 2 lines of re-usable code. To him, this method was elegant, but for me, it was anything but, especially when I needed to modify it, even slightly. Thank goodness that perl code is not so relevant these days.

Elegant is pretty subjective according to a developers culture and habits.

One builds his library of elegant and reusable code for HIM! As long as this is reusable and elegant for him he has done a great job!

The problem begins to appear when other people need to use his library (usually happens in companies) and that’s when developers have to comply with the companies’ coding styles. That’s why in big companies there is always a training period for new developers, they learn to code accordingly.

To me, good and elegant code is whatever makes me happy coding and whatever makes my coding easier and faster.

I remember the day that I finally understood all the random characters that made up regular expressions; that was a fantastic day. :D

ActiveRecord is another big jump for making SQL easier and more elegant but you're already using CakePHP. Recursive algorithms maybe? You probably understand that by now anyways.

There isn't a whole lot of jumps out there until someone takes a step and creates them.

Andy, I am still waiting for that day to come :)

Jonathan, database servers are becoming powerfull enough to handle business logic. Do you think that this is messing up the 3 tiers by pushing business logic to the data tier?

Exactly,

I had such conversation with one of my colleagues a few days ago and we decided that there is no generic way to clearly define tiers. But you can define the tiers when looking at a specific application. In other words when you define application boundaries, then you can define the tiers more precisely.
Of course, this is a topic on which we could contemplate for ever and is different from the article above!

Just wanted to hear your opinion…

Thank you!

My rule of thumb for where to place business logic for data:

Is performance important?
-> Yes, then embed the business logic into the database if possible since databases are optimized for these sorts of operations.
-> No, put it in the framework.

Another consideration is whether the dataset is going to be used for other purposes such as reports. Handling this in the framework results in tight coupling and will require you to reimplement your dataset in each different technology you use it for.

It's about finding the easiest way to solve a problem for next time, even if it takes me a relatively ridiculous amount of time to solve the problem this time.

Now that is a sign of a good programmer!