Advanced PHP Programming

Foreword

I have been working my way through the various William Gibson books lately and in All Tomorrow’s Parties came across this:

That which is over-designed, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace.

Gibson rather elegantly summed up the failure of many projects of all sizes. Drawing multicolored boxes on whiteboards is fine, but this addiction to complexity that many people have can be a huge liability. When you design something, solve the problem at hand. Don’t try to anticipate what the problem might look like years from now with a large complex architecture, and if you are building a general-purpose tool for something, don’t get too specific by locking people into ...