naturalbornlisper

To continue: Remember to RTFM. Chasing down the (for me) unexpected nested arrays produced by preg_match_all I reread the manual page. Somehow my eyes skipped the following... >Parameters > > matches > > > Array of all matches in multi-dimensional array ordered according to flags. So that's where the nested array came from. Expected behaviour, as described in the manual. My Bad.

> I suppose we could give that up and go for a career competing with $2/hr South Asia developers I offered more than I make (150 GBP ). No $2/hour in sight but actually just over $246 for a trivial task (and I still say 2 hours for a competent coder is sufficient). In any case, current daily rates for PHP developers are 225 GBP ($370). So the amount is still sufficient. I'm not sure what you would call 'high paying', but if it does take 2 hours, then the coder is on the equivalent of nearly $1000/day. If it takes 4 hours, it's just short of $500 /day. Oh, and "stable, secure, maintainable code", I know people love their buzz words but again, compare the triviality of the task with your list. The task is so trivial that stable and maintainable code will be auto-coded in by anyone competent. "Secure"... well that is more interesting.

I'm an on/off hobby coder (normally more off than on). The point I am making, which seems to be lost here, is that I know from my level of skills this will take 2-4 hours of my time with my coding skills. And I am talking as an on/off hobby coder. I would expect someone I'm happy to pay 40/50/60 GBP/hour to, who charges for their time as a PHP codee, to have a much deeper knowledge of the language, spend less time googling and reading the manual pages, and generally to be more productive than I am. It's an interesting aside, however. How much more productive/better should a 'professional' be than an amateur? The same level (2-4 hours), 100% more (1-2 hours)... etc. Look, if you think I'm wrong about the time involved, try for yourself. I assure you it's trivial.

To clarify. preg_replace was being used to get rid of newlines and preg_match_all was used to extract <td=blah.* into an array with the required data at fixed indexes. A br tag got through, as did a closing td tag. I couldn't eliminate these. But that's because the strings I was trying to affect where nested in arrays. When I found that, it was easy. There's no point arguing the regexps were wrong when they weren't. And yes, you can criticise me for not spotting the nested arrays. I agree PHP has a very low learning curve, but if you don't know something you still have to learn it (and it's not just syntax, it's about what data structures are returned. And I'm lucky because I've heard of the functions I need in passing. But the point about googling, cut n pate, the experimentation and learning curve is/was that I am not a professional PHP coder. I'm not even a PHP coder by hobby. I have done a few thousand lines each of Lisp, Perl and Ruby. Several times that many in ksh and bash. And that's where I'm coming from in this.

p.s. If I was posting "I'm awesome messages' I certainly wouldn't admit to the difficulty the preg_* array in array problems I had. It doesn't show me up well does it?

Well, thanks Crayon No, it's the nesting of the results in an array in an array that got me, not the regular expressions (they worked once I realised my target strings were in nested arrays). Using curl, urlencode and preg_replace to convert addresses to lat long still returns an array in an array. Expecting this behaviour means I can deal with it. Extracting lat-log was a few minutes work. Finding the correct geoencoding URL was harder because I don't undertsand PHP classes. I would expect a proficient PHP programmer to know about this stuff. For me, there's a learning curve, I have to google, read and understand the idioms of a new programming language (because I'm a newbie to PHP---yes I am, whether you like it or not). I am still on target for less than 4 hours. But newbie PHP status is slowing me down. And that isn't an excuse... there are newbies in the world. Anyway. My code looks horrible, filled with failed experiments, commented out and redundant statements. I'm not sure I know why it some of it works in parts because it's cut n paste. I know there must be better ways to do this. But then I don't sell myself as a PHP coder.

Ughhh, preg_match, preg_replace and strip_tags. Horrible, horrible functions. They've absorbed 40 minutes, and I'm supposed to be relatively good with regexps. PHP wasn't very helpful with debugging either. http://dumb-dumb-dumb.blogspot.com/2011/05/phpmysql-challenge-how-long-did-it-take_28.html I'm traumatised.

Me, I use http://www.inmotionhosting.com/. Live chat to the support team. Fast efficient, and so far flawless. My business will start reselling their services later this year... but not in your area (unless you're in Bornam, Belgium. By the way. NEVER use a belgium service provider. EVER EVER EVER.

One last gripe (never get me started...). No one actually seemed to read the specification before bidding.

You might consider Lisp is you want an interesting, but brain curdling experience (look http://landoflisp.com). There's more to gaming than just graphics. We have the dedicated Peter O'tool blogging games development (http://lispgamesdev.blogspot.com/). And, of course, my hobby is creating DSLs for role playing games, for which is excellent (if you're going to do somethings as pointless as DSL development, use Lisp). I even have a game of Pac Man 'growing' using genetic algorithms. Not a very good game mind you....

@Crayon. and others. The coder offered a 1-2 day start, but google chatted 3 days later for clarifications (natural enough). This was given and he promised me the pages by close of play next day. I waited three days ('waited' == 'sent update requests emails once a day'). Sent a final warning and then cancelled the contract. Real time vs elapsed time. I'm perfectly aware of the difference. I didn't want to use a company because I was offering up to 150 GBP and wanted as much of this to go to the coder as possible. This evening I wrote page 1. Basically cut n paste plus google research. I blogged it http://dumb-dumb-dumb.blogspot.com/2011/05/phpmysql-challenge-how-long-did-it-take.html and am now having a beer. Oh, there was a final reason for asking another person to write it. I always find my own PHP coding to be ugly, especially with all the echo "html things" commands. It hurts my eyes. I'm intending to take some formal programming courses to tighten up the

@Maq Sorry, I didn't answer your question properly. The pages are in reverse order because the top level classes are made first, and then the second level then the third. The way the various IDs are made are kind of programmatically consistent, but order could be cleaned up. It's not a priority and elsewhere the order gets reversed again for other purposes. So each solution had problems, So we kept to the first one, and will fix it later (if at all).

Thanks for the offer. But I put the work up because I was overloaded for two weeks. Now I've cleared the backlog, and had a couple of evenings out to boot. So I am looking to do it myself this evening. I'll bear it in mind for later, however. My disappointment was/is this. I consider the job to be trivial, if a bit involved in a couple of places (curl, preg_*, mysql_*, some HTML analysis, some programmatically writable javascript functions, really nothing complex). The responses I got put the work into the 'days to complete' categories, and no one seemed to have a clue about curl and preg_* functions. The peeps seemed to know how to connect to a database and print out the results in nice HTML. That was the extent of the skills of the 'five star' candidates.

So the structure is clearer to 'ordinary folk' "Shops > Local Shops > Bakery" as opposed to "Bakery > Local Shops > Shops" (the structure looks back to front to me). And both stand in contrast to chains stores. "Shops > Chain Stores > Macy's" That bit is hazy. I admit. I'm going to crank out the code this evening to see how complicated it actually is. I still think it's less than 4 hours work. And probably closer to 2 hours, tops.

Dear Forum members. I've just had a disappointing experience on various freelancer/php commercial sites. I've decided to blog it (indeed, I'll do this in general for my projects from now on) and would like some feedback on exactly how complicated my request was/is. I'm perfectly able to code it myself. I consider it (very) trivial, I'm just busy. It is trivial? am I wrong? Please take a look: http://dumb-dumb-dumb.blogspot.com/