Pocket Revolutionary

I am a PHP programmer. I have been a PHP programmer for most of a decade. My license plate says “PHP DEV”, and I have PHPUnit tattooed on my arm (in Kanji). It is with that overly-defensive attitude that I must admit the inevitable: my latest project is in Ruby.

Shock. Awe. I know. It was an easy decision based on the server stack we were running, our growth plans, and the fact that we needed to train intern developers with a very quick turnaround. We went with the sexy newcomer, but that’s not the interesting story. The interesting part is that it wasn’t a big deal at all. With good frameworks, it didn’t really matter what language we chose.

Part of the reason that I love frameworks so much is that dropping from CakePHP to Ruby on Rails is a syntactical change and not a process change. In a way, frameworks are just enforced design patterns (MVC, mostly, in my case). Plus, playing with a different language after all this time away has been great experience. This jaunt into the land o’ pure object-oriented madness and strict coding rules has made my PHP coding (especially CakePHP) better. I have new appreciation for fat models and thin controllers, and I throw in the ternary operator more often. On top of that, I’m getting to teach people (like my friend Neil) who have never really done web development on this level. Through teaching others about MVC architectures, I’ve gotten better.

So, I’m still a PHP developer. It’s the basis for 80% of my work projects and all of my freelancing.
I’m having fun, though, on the other side. Stretching my PHP skills, adding to my toolbox, and remembering that I was just a better programmer when I couldn’t rely on ten-year old knowledge.

Keep current with world events and what God is speaking through His prophets. GI News will take you into the studio for prophetic news and “behind the scenes” with Mike and Cindy Jacobs.

We launched a brand, spanking new video podcast from the Generals HQ this week called GI News. You can check GI News out on our shiny, new podcast page.

We have a job opening at Generals International for some more help in the IT/Web Department. Check out the info below, the website (if you don’t already know about the ministry), and email me if you’re interested! Friends and family are welcome to apply.

Job Description: We need somebody to handle website updates, store updates, and the administration needed for those updates. Our normal duties for the website involve communicating with other departments about future updates, working with the graphic designer, editing raw text for pages, creating lead-ins or “blurbs”? for longer articles, graphically laying out newsletters and pages based on text from other departments, and creating new pages based on other department’s ideas and our own skill/experience. Store updates involve coordinating with the graphic designer and accounting and getting text or writing our own (based on current workload).

Job Requirements: Good communication skills (and grammar) are necessary for editing web-based text, creating lead-ins or blurbs, and especially for coordinating all updates with other departments. Professional aesthetic taste is just as important as being a good communicator. We don’t necessarily need somebody who could design a whole website from scratch, but we desperately need somebody who knows what works and what doesn’t and is willing to continue learning as the web changes. We don’t need a marketing person, either; we just need somebody who knows that blood red is not an acceptable background color and understands why too many logos on one page will overwhelm readers. Most importantly, we need people with the ability to learn. Web technologies keep changing all the time, but anybody willing to learn can pick up Typo3, FishCart, blogs, wikis, and whatever we decide to implement in the future. Past web experience is good, but we don’t need another programmer; anybody with the desire and basic ability to run their own blog or homepage and continue learning could have the technical skills that we need.

We Use: Mac Laptops, Typo3, wikis, etc.

Please Contact:Jeremy Greenawalt (IT Manager)jeremy@generals.org(972) 576-8887 ext. 205

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