rocknbil - 5:31 pm on Oct 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

Welcome aboard zencoder,

like elance for example.

I've been coding Perl for over 16 years, PHP for 8 or so, amd myself? Sheesh as an eLance provider, it would take me **months** just to clean up the bugs and security issues they have there, if I'm even good enough to find them. So you're looking at a long way to go. But fear not, a journey of a thousand miles . . . . you know.

...tell me what mentality they adopt when they are coding.

- No matter how proud you may be of your accomplishment, it will always have something that can be improved. Don't assume it's bullet proof, it never is, but strive to get as close as you can.

- The biggest mistake any coder can make is to assume "my customers won't be doing this or that," listen to complaints and interpret them as something you didn't consider. Incorporate the concepts into a revision. Some examples are "best used at x resolution" best viewed in x browser" or "90% of my customers aren't on a Mac, so tough luck for them." Stick to (what I consider) the first prime objective of web applications: anyone can access your content regardless of how they do it.

- Security first. Too often the push is to "get the job done" and once a solution is cobbled together, it never gets revisited. That is, until the hackers find it and cause problems. Address security with every line of code you write.

- recycle, repurpose, reuse, compartmentalize. When you're scripting, approach each task and try to build a function or class that can be repurposed by other areas of your program, or even other programs. Google for "spaghetti code" to see why this is so imprtant.

- Learn by example. No matter how good you get, there are always thousands who are faster, sharper, and more knowledgeable than you and there is sooooo much to be learned from "playing around" with open source code, picking it apart, seeing what it does and why it works.

- Learn to let go. Personally I see every project as a challenge and often time find myself determined to pound that square peg into the round hole just so I can meet the challenge - don't fall for the mewlings of your ego. :-) If there's an open source solution, let it go and use it. Use available resources and don't re-invent the wheel; this is actually something I have to work on myself. :-)

- Many times "I don't know" or "I don't yet have those skills" is a perfectly valid answer. And it's one that will be much more beneficial to you than saying "yes, I can do that" and having it blow up on you or patching it together and causing security or performance problems.

Your clients will forget "I don't know." They will never forget you BS'ing your way through a project.