Wordpress Development

Soldato
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1 Nov 2007
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I've been programming for some time but I've never programmed in PHP, and I've certainly never done any Wordpress programming. I've also never used MySQL (I have always used PostgreSQL in the past).

Do you think taking the time to learn PHP and MySQL along with Wordpress is a decent use of my time or should I learn a different language (Go seems interesting to me)?

I can already program in C, Python and JavaScript, so I don't expect PHP to be too tricky, but at the same time, I don't want to waste my time.
 
Soldato
OP
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If you want to do WP stuff PHP is absolutely needed.

Yeah. But the question was whether I should take the time to learn Wordpress development (and as a result learn PHP) or whether I should use a more modern platform such as Go which seems like a fascinating programming language. I've already written a blogging system in Python, so doing the same in Go would be a fun experience but having said that if Wordpress development is lucrative, then I might concentrate on that.
 
Soldato
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I've already written a blogging system in Python, so doing the same in Go would be a fun experience but having said that if Wordpress development is lucrative, then I might concentrate on that.

I find PHP and Python to be quite similar from the little I've used PHP, however, WP dev might be lucrative, it's also massively over saturated with a lot of competition from other countries such as India/Pakistan.

You're obviously more pumped by the thought of learning Go so Go for it ;)
 
Associate
Joined
20 Oct 2007
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776
Wordpress is a horrible way to learn PHP. It's full of spaghetti code, is poorly structured and antagonizing to work with. Most plugins are developed by people who would generously be described as amateurs. The problem is, it's somewhat easy to jump into as it does a lot for you so you get the lowest skilled developers working on it. Do not look at wordpress if you're learning to code, you'll only learn how to code badly.

Instead look at developing sites for Symfony or Laravel, while neither is perfect at least you'll learn good coding practices along the way.
 
Soldato
Joined
24 Sep 2007
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Wordpress is extremely popular, so there are lots of companies using it, and that means career opportunities are good. So, if that's what you're looking for, I'd say learn it.
 
Caporegime
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28 Jan 2003
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39,858
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England
Yeah. But the question was whether I should take the time to learn Wordpress development (and as a result learn PHP) or whether I should use a more modern platform such as Go which seems like a fascinating programming language. I've already written a blogging system in Python, so doing the same in Go would be a fun experience but having said that if Wordpress development is lucrative, then I might concentrate on that.

Wordpress development is only OOP PHP for the most part, so you learn that and you will be 95% of the way towards knowing how Wordpress works, the rest would be spent learning the Wordpress hooks.

It is a very big part of the web so there’s be lots of opportunities for earnings, but it’s also a flooded area as everyone and his dog is a Wordpress dev churning out templates for next to nothing.

I know that kind of sounds like I’m putting you off, but I’m not it’s just how it is in that sector, it’s kind of a race to the bottom price wise, unless you can get good clients onboard
 
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