Comments on: CakePHP Resources

By: Chuck

Chuck — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:24:03 +0000

This is a good discussion via comments I mean!

One of the fundamental reasons why PHP has become so popular IMHO, is PHP’s online documentation and the user comments which often include code and further explanations.

No offense, but you might at well dig through the code rather than reading Cake’s API doc’s.

By: Aitch

Aitch — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:35:29 +0000

Biggest productivity gain I use is the cakephp group search plugin in the firefox tool bar, I use that every 15 minutes probably!

I only use the group directly very occasionally, i certainly at best skim the headers, but when workload reduces i would hope to contribute more answers

In rough order of preference:

1. group search via firefox plugin
2. my 4-A4 sheets per page, duplexed printout of the manual, stapled and dog eared!
3. increasingly the “pages: frequent discussions” on the google groups homepage for cakephp
4. online API – i find myself using this more and more now, especially for bleeding edge 1.2 features. the link to function code is so useful

By: Baz L

Baz L — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:54:44 +0000

@Richard:
I guess that’s my problem then. I’m not a real developer. I’ve been messing with PHP for a few years, but nothing on this level.

I’m just a guy that needs to get some things done in a limited amount of time. Usually it’s nothing fancy. This is why I thought that CakePHP would help me. I mean, I know you can do amazing stuff with Cake, but I’m not at that level yet. I thought that it was the lazy man’s framework, guess I was wrong.

But it’s all good. I love what you guys are doing.

Oh and Chris, you are a bit grumpy, but I’m a lot lazy, so I guess everything balances off.
–
Baz L

By: Chris Hartjes

Chris Hartjes — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:44:41 +0000

@Daniel: We can agree to disagree on this idea as well. Why is the API doc not maintained? Shouldn’t the goal be to reduce the number of places you need to look in order to find information about a particular function? I agree that tests are a good place to look, but if I remember correctly the Ruby API (which is the best online API I’ve every seen) has examples of how to use every function. One place to look is better than two.

By: Oli

Oli — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:25:56 +0000

http://www.thinkingphp.org/cakenews/

By: Markus Henke

Markus Henke — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:51:57 +0000

It was often the case that I had a problem to which I already read something on the mailing list. So I switched over to read nearly everything on the list just to learn how to use Cake.

By: Daniel Hofstetter

Daniel Hofstetter — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:01:34 +0000

I disagree with you, Richard (and Chris). What’s needed are tests, not examples in the API doc nobody maintains. With tests you have examples plus you guarantee a certain functionality.

By: Richard@Home

Richard@Home — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 17:30:44 +0000

“As awesome as the API is, I think it would be very helpfull if there were examples of using a method right in the API.”

I think this this is more than helpful, this is critical! Real developers don’t read docs, they read code

“Next time I add something into the core I will be sure to include an example right there in my docblock”

+10 good guy points

By: Daniel Hofstetter

Daniel Hofstetter — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:22:44 +0000

I have compiled a resources page on my blog: http://cakebaker.42dh.com/cakephp-resources