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Originally Posted by cecilia
Maybe a project that is not dependent on your knowledge of the language can work for you. I mean one that doesnt challenge how much you know about PHP or the languages that you know but how much you can really think.
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Very few projects in high level languages such as PHP challenge how much you actually know about the language. If you know how to program beforehand, high level languages are a matter of syntax and keywords, the methods you use are the same. I've modified (even written simple) programs in language I'd never worked in before that time. All I needed was documentation. This is common when you know a variety of languages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cecilia
Why not build something that no one has ever been able to? Well those are just random thoughts... so.
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If no one has been able to do it, I probably can't do it (let alone in PHP). If no one has bothered, it is not likely worth my time. I'm not saying everything has been invented, but the vast majority of new ideas are failures.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cecilia
Motivations can vary, but also the feeling of accomplishment at the end among other things.
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I feel accomplished when I do someting I did not know how to do from the start. It feels hollow to finish something you knew you could do (and have done simillar to) from the start. Things that used to infactuate me like forums and blogs now don't even interest me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cecilia
Just a thought, it makes me think of Rocky 3. When youre at the top already its like theres nothing else to pursue. It sorta leads to you getting rusty since you start taking things lightly and your confidence somehow can get the better of you. Well on the movie Mr. T came along who was maybe not better than Rocky but was just way more determined and motivated and he took the title from Rocky.
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I have been rusty in my PHP lately, I find myself stopping to the PHP.net documentation about every time I reccomend a command to help someone.But it still remains that while I do not remember the arguements to every PHP command, I still know how to program stuff because I do it eight hours a day.
For instance, if I was on a Python forum (I know absolutely no Python) and someone wanted to know how to verify that an input is alphanumeric, I would say use
re.search("^[0-9a-zA-Z]$",compareVar). I used google to find that command, but I knew from the getgo that regular expressions were the way to go in comparing strings like that. I would do the same thing on a Java or Ruby forum.