Beginnings
When I first began working for Swansea University in 2009, I have to admit, I was more of a scripter than a developer. Having studied history at university and arriving in the job with no official qualifications in computing, my suitability for the role was based entirely on personal study and experimentation.
My knowledge of front end web desgin and PHP had largely been acquired via a general computing interest, a year's stint in a primary school I.C.T. department, several years experience in Swansea Public Library Service and the odd request to build a website for a friend or acquaintance.
Fortunately, the primary piece of software for which I was to be responsible - VuFind [1] - was written in PHP. By examining the source code and using the excellent user community, I was able to demonstrate enough familiarity with the VuFind to propose a development path to suit the goals of the project.
VuFind: OOPs I did it again
The first lesson I received from VuFind (or more accurately from the user community, particularly Demian Katz, the project leader) was Object Orientated Programming (OOP) [2]. Up until that point, I had only ever used PHP's native functions, perhaps augmented with a few libraries which had been recommended in "Teach Yourself" type books which were accessed via includes.
Moving from scripting to OOP was probably the most important step I have taken in the last five years. OOP not only makes developing applications far more efficient as frequently used code can be put into methods to be utilised whenever required, it also opens up a world of tried and tested methodologies which can speed up the development process, resulting in code which is more robust, portable and easier to debug.
For the first time, I wasn't just writing code to get things done - I was writing code mindful of considerations such as accepted standards, performance, portability, repository integration and usefulness to others. It felt good to be able to make some small contributions to the direction of the VuFind project and to see some of my patches integrated into the core repository.
VuFind: The Gift that keeps on giving
VuFind 1.0 had introduced me to a world of inheritance, dependency injection, modular programming, encapsulation, interfaces and abstracts. It had also forced me to learn more about the Apache web server, to take my first steps into Unix via a Virtual Box installation of Ubuntu and to consider repository management via SVN. By the time VuFind was launched for the South West Wales Higher Education Partnership (SWWHEP), I was responsible for building and configuring an Ubuntu server from scratch on a VMWare platform.
My experience on the SWWHEP project was also responsible for landing me a permanent job at Swansea University as part of the Web Team. Again, this was a fantastic opportunity as I would be working with professional developers who were willing to help me fill in the gaps which still existed as a result of my rather ad hoc career. If VuFind primarily helped expand what I was able to develop, the move to the web team greatly improved how I was able to develop code. I began to use an integrated development environment for the first time, switched to Unix via Fedora and was introduced to concepts such as test driven development, automated deployment and continuous integration.
VuFind & Zend
VuFind 1.0 had a loose, custom MVC framework. As the project began to grow however, the user community decided that it would be beneficial to base future developments on a tried and tested framework. VuFind 2.0 was initially developed on Zend Framework 1.8 but as Zend Framework 2 was released during this process, VuFind was eventually re-factored to take advantage of these developments. I had never used a framework before and when the beta versions of VuFind 2.0 were released, I realised that Zend 2 used many concepts outside of my comfort zone. As with OOP however, thanks to Demian Katz and the VuFind community, I was able to ask questions and get very helpful answers. Working with the web team also meant that I could tap into their knowledge to resolve particular issues.
Using the experience gained working with VuFind 2, I plan to write a series of brief articles on using the Zend 2 platform. I don't expect to provide any great revelations or insights as I am definitely a consumer rather than an innovator when it comes to programming. Nevertheless, the articles should at least serve me as "revision notes" and they may save some poor soul from hours agonising over an issue which has a simple solution, something which became apparent to me only after the fact!
[1] www.vufind.org
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
