Learning programing worth it?

Lately am pretty fed up with freelance programers, its either bad communications or waiting for them to fix one tiny problem. I am thinking of just learning PHP to code my own sites my way, but realisticly am too busy with managing sites and just handle the CEO side of bussiness.

I can however put in some times, maybe around 2-3 hours daily for a few months. I just want to be able to code my own Social Network, maybe something similiar to http://www.gazzag.com/

I want to start doing the following things: Users profile, messaging system, groups, gorums for each group, articles, search, image gallery etc... would you guys consider this something to be advance coding? how long would it take to code something like that in PHP? If its really advanced and takes years to develop the skills then I would have to pass. Any advice is appreciated.

 

I coded a forum system from scratch 2 months into learning PHP averaging about an hour a day with a fair bit of C++ knowledge beforehand. Of course, it is written badly, and I re-wrote most of it due to lack of maintainability, extensibility etc. It can be done quick and dirty but you will most likely face the same problems. It takes very long before you can code quality systems that perform well, are reliable and secure and can easily be maintained and extended. Of course, it would be nice to have a basic knowledge of programming when working with a freelancer to not have to wait long periods of time for small tweaks and modifications.

 

I would love to be able to code my own sites but that would mean at least a couple of years of intense study. I prefer to spend my time learning how to use freely available content management systems such as Joomla or Drupal. Where many developers have spent countless hours doing the work. Why try and reinvent the wheel is how I look at it. Joomla and Drupal don't always do the things I want but they have a lot of support. Occasionally I have had to modify the code a bit to get things just so, but you can usually get help doing that on their forums.

Hoped that helped and happy developing!

 

Good point, that is definally something worthwhile to learn programing for.

I have dabble into those CMS but I found them good for typical sites. The kind of sites am looking to build usually have advance fuctions which these CMS are lacking. Programing knowlege would help you understand these CMS easier too I think.

 

dailydee,

I agree with the advice that has been given. Programming takes time to learn but it also takes tons of practice. It will probably take you 2 years + to get to the point were you could start something like gazzag and do so successfully.

 

It's a tough choice - most CMS lack some features but writing your own scripts sucks up a lot of you time.

If money isn't an issue I think it's easier to look for a good programmer to do the job. You can spot good ones in the programming forum.

 

well, just have fun with it a little bit for your weekend like me haha...

 

once you hit 2 years, everything starts to go very quickly. the first 2 years, yes, you will spend lots of time, you will debug, you will get mad, but once you get over the initial hump, it's all gravy. i could code a custom wordpress like blog from scratch in probably 2 days now. ahhhh, but there is still much to learn, which is why i love it sooo much. constantly evolving. you will apply what you learn in other areas of life too, not just code.

 

There is always the question of best use of your time. If you are a business manager your focus should be on managing your business not learning how to code websites.... the number of times printers and photocopiers have broken on me is scary and it would have been good to be able to fix them myself rather than having to get an engineer out but time/ effort it simply doesnt stack up, I am better off paying the specialist to do a specialist job and spending my time generating more income for my business

How long it takes to get profficient depends on your natural skill level and how forgiving a language you choose. Whilst a strict language is much more frustraiting to start off with you will get into good practices quicker than one that will forgive sloppy code where you quickly pick up bad habits.

 

This is a very good question. I have been a freelance developer for over 10 years. I have spent the last 18 months learning web skills to develop my own sites - the site in my sig is my first site and it has been a massive learning curve. I guess it all depends on your past experience and whether or not it is really something you want (because you enjoy it) to do. To learn the basics does not take too long but to do anything half useful takes much longer. I'm a very experienced developer and it's taken me 18 months (2 to 12 frustrated hours a day!) to learn ASP.NET to the point where I feel I could tackle most things, i.e. front end, back end and everything in between. Saying that I am still going to need to hire more experienced specialized developers from time to time. I think I'm trying to say that you should probably stick to what you are good at besides, the people who know how always work for the people who know why

 

Sometimes the wheel doesn't work very well and can be improved. Joomla is great software, but it has many problems. I would like to write a CMS but the problem is that you can't make money with it and I'm not willing to work for free at this point. I'll do that after I retire.

 

"learning programming" does it mean you learn it by yourself or go to a class or a course to learn it? I'm also one of the web owner who try to learn everything about my site to tweak it myself since the original script i bought was badly design and got lots of bugs. I found that learnign by myself is good in some extent. yes you can fix some tiny bugs and such but when there is a bigger issue happened, you cant fix it. I would say spend some time and money to join the class might be better it would be faster and more effective and you got somebody to ask what you dont know. If you learn by yourself like me you will only know it to some extent and at last you still need to rely on other programmer but it's still good to know something extra. hope my experience can tell you something.