[eluser]Myles Wakeham[/eluser]
[quote author="BrianDHall" date="1253554831"]I'm glad you got everything working Myles. I'm glad the older version worked, I have a different system so can't speak to why it might be a problem.
I know now that you'll probably never want to be without a full debugger for PHP/CI. Its amazing what a little break or watch will can do to show you want went wrong - especially in CI, where $this is loaded with so much useful information on the DB, session, etc.
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That is so true. Within 10 minutes of getting this running, and after taking a quick break from exhausting myself with it, I returned back to my project to the first bug to fix and found a flaw in the design that I would never have seen if it wasn't for trace level debugging. That, alone, would have taken me hours to find and fix so the payback was instant.
Having come from developing in languages where trace level debugging is assumed (I'm a Delphi & C++ developer before) I just took that for granted. I can never understand how a developer can be without those sorts of tools and expect to be productive. Its not that you need them - but without them you are working in the dark.
My concern right now for the PHP/CI/Open Source community like us is how we can compete in the enterprise world with other developers who use closed sourced tools (mainly the MS developers with Visual Studio). What I am seeing is that my biggest competition in the space that we work in are VB developers who have been given an IDE that they can literally check a box and convert their badly designed & coded GUI app into a badly designed web app. That is scary stuff. But they have an IDE that gives them all the capabilities to do this including debugging. And I have to produce systems at the same pace in order to compete in that space. My clients want what I do because they want all the freedom and choices of having open source solutions. But they expect me to be able to produce at the same pace as the other developers who can't give them the same freedom. I guess I want to be able to let them 'have their cake & eat it too' which I do see as a major competitive advantage for PHP/CI developers.
Anyway I just hope we can try and evangelize all other CI developers into using trace level debugging. It will produce better systems faster, which ultimately is the reason why we use CI in the first place.
Myles
