The PHP Brotherhood

[Davidc316]

Picture this...

You're a PHP developer. You have been working on a seriously important project for several weeks. You have a deadline to make. Suddenly you run into a problem. A very serious problem. You do a quick Google search to see if you can solve your urgent PHP problem. But nothing useful appears to come up. You jump onto this (wonderful) forum for some help. But, sadly the expert forum visitors are not online and you'll have to wait several hours for an answer. To make matters worse, your post has been answered by a guy who means well, but doesn't really know what he's doing. Your, now answered, thread loses its urgent vibe and begins creeping slowly down the list. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking! You consider rushing off to the library or bookstore to find a solution, but you're not sure if you have the time or even if you will get a guaranteed result. You try phoning a few friends but they don't know how to solve your problem. They're just Flash guys-not PHP programmers! :D The clock ticks on. You start wondering if ANYONE can solve your problem. You'd like to hire a professional web developer, but you're not sure if you can afford one or even if you know where to start looking! Stress kicks in and your deadline grows ever closer! Tick tock tick tock...

Sound familiar?

Well, let me present you with my new concept... Introducing THE PHP BROTHERHOOD!!! :)

What I was thinking was this... Wouldn't it be great if there was a group of us who could be called upon (literally phoned) whenever a serious and urgent PHP related problem cropped up? The relationship would be based on the grounds that:

1. We all have something to contribute and are willing to bring a degree of expertise to the brotherhood.
2. We all help each other in times of need.
3. Our relationship is friendly and non commercial in nature.
4. However, in cases where someone receives a major favour and appears to be receiving more help than he/she is giving then the person may (as a way of saying thanks) offer a Paypal donation to the PHP expert who has helped to solve the problem.

This would be an offline venture and would provide a friendly platform on which you could actually call someone and receive instant, friendly help on the phone from another PHP developer if you should run into problems.

This forum is great and long may it continue. What I'm suggesting would be simply one other avenue in which PHP people can help each other out. Personally speaking, I would rather the brotherhood was a small but elite group of developers/friends than a large group of novices.

PHP is still relatively new. I'm sure many of us are making all kinds of new discoveries every week. Personally speaking, I've spent over 65% of my waking hours doing PHP for the past three years and I although I'm far from the best PHP guy in the world, I believe I have good ideas and experiences to share with other web developers who are on a similar path. The vision I have is that by being a member of the PHP brotherhood, you can sleep comfortably at night knowing you need never worry about being caught out with another PHP problem ever again! You will become a better developer. You will have an opportunity to help other people. Who knows- you might even have fun and enjoy the process!!! ...on second thoughts, cancel that last one! :P

It's just a thought. Any comments?

[jeex]

The idea is good,

But (there's always a but)


doing things on line builds a knowledge base for later consultation
the brotherhood should be borderless, and we're not all in the same time zone
the phone disturbs in ones business, where as e-mail (the better platform) is patient


So, maybe e-mail + forum + ballot and limited access should do the trick.

best regards,

Jeex

[Davidc316]

I've thought about that.

What we could do is build an application, through which you could send an instant text message to everyone and anyone in the Brotherhood whenever there is an urgent problem. However, each member of the Brotherhood would have access to a secret online admin panel on which they could set their status to "available" or "not available". If the user's status was set to not available then they would not be sent a text message and could carry on with their life without being disturbed. I've already built an application that is very close to what I'm describing.

This is, of course, just one idea I'm sure there are others who may be able to cook up a better system. But with good will I believe we could come up with a system that would enable us to contact each other quickly without endangering our jobs and social lives.

[jeex]

We could of course invent the wheel.

But there is something called ICQ.

Make an ICQ list of people who passed ' the ballot ' and they have access to the ICQ list.

Jeex

[jeex]

David,

I really like the idea. I have my own Linux Apache server in one of the fastest server centers of Europe (urp, as Bush allways says). I will gladly host such a brotherhood.

But in order to get the Brotherhood in the air, we must not make it hard on ourselves by inventing things that allready exist.

Jeex

[Davidc316]

I take your point about ICQ. But if I have a serious problem and am in need or urgent assistance, I don't want to have to log onto some Messenger system on the hope that I just might catch someone online and has the time or inclination to help me out.

Hope is not a strategy.


With regards to the hosting thing... thank you for such a positive suggestion! I will bare it in mind and I look forward to seeing if anyone else reacts positively to this idea.

[Drakla]

Skype would also be a good addition to this kind of thing, as it will let people know you're not in bed. And perhaps a solutions site of what you resolved, because it would be good for more advanced developers to have something to think 'wow' about rather than ploughing through hundreds of tutorials about magic quotes and how to set the from address with the mail() function.

It's a bit of a 'Ooooo' thing in that who decides who's good enough to get into the club. Would you observe people's standards on a forum like this and invite them? Would their post count perhaps, which is unreliable as loads of the posts on this site seems to be from the stupid leading the blind as people just love getting their post counts up and throw out comments that are essentially drivel. I'm much more into the value of posts than the count, and I wish there were an option not to count my own posts where I basically have a go at people for posting in the wrong forum or having pointless thread titles - a little checkbox with 'Are you being a miserable git?' next to it would be fine.

Anyway - who gets in, I think that's the hardest part.

PS. This post should really be in the echo lounge. Christ, I almost used a smiley there.

[jeex]

You can work with invitations, or by checking who has a Zend certificate.

A better way might be free admittance, with sort of an 'appreciation ladder'. So you are allways in the company of fellow developers. This way your group has limited size, but the admittance is unrestricted.

[Davidc316]

Personally, I would like the Brotherhood to be populated by more advanced developers. I have absolutely nothing against novices and love to help them out. But if you want to talk to a novice, you can already just go to Yahoo chat!

For the Brotherhood, people would get voted in by secret ballot.

If someone wanted to join they could either present themselves and give a brief history of their background/expertise or they could get recommended by another member. Once they got put forward there would be a secret ballat to see if they are accepted into the brotherhood. If they are rejected, then they can go and refine their skills or CV, then come back at a future date for another try. The doors would NOT close for ever.

This central goal of the Brotherhood would not be to build an online PHP forum. We already have access to a fantastic one- and here it is!!!!

Anyway, that's kind of how I see it, for what it's worth. Sorry for putting it in this forum and not the Echo Lounge. I guess I figured that the thread does relate to PHP and problems with PHP so I chucked it in here. Sorry. Point taken.

[Drakla]

It all sounds a bit surreptitious and scary when you read this thread. You could end up with a group who love their big boys' club rather than the code, but that's my be pessimistic first defence mechanism talking. I love solving problems, especially if they're hard, but being put up in front of a panel of judges when you join a place makes my 'Fekk you and your masonic handshakes' attitude kick in. I've probably got the whole thing wrong in my head, though, and am just putting a downer on this so I'll shut my beak.

[Weedpacket]

Moving this to a more appropriate forum...

[dream.scape]

But there is something called ICQ.

You mean people still use ICQ?! I thought nearly everyone had moved on to a better IM service by now. :p

[laserlight]

I thought nearly everyone had moved on to a better IM service by now.
Like Jabber (http://www.jabber.org)/XMPP (http://www.xmpp.org)?

"The PHP Brotherhood" sounds like a cult, or the name of a movie :p

[jeex]

Hi all,

First this: Being a junior member of this forum (or writing broken English) does not imply that one is a novice programmer ;)

Surreptious or not, fact remains that professional programmers all need professional feed back. Programmers like myself who work freelance (and often at home) have no professional support of colleagues nearby. That is what David alluded to, I think.

So, let's gather the usable ideas mentioned here so far:


ballot by recommendation or resumé (CV)
build an on line knowledge base
share the results of the discussed code (in the on line knowledge base)
scratch each other's backs
build a working community (with a beforehand fixed hourly rate(?)) thus making it possible to build large apps and use each other's specialism
use skype for fast communication
I already offered my server for the platform.


Victor Peters
(jeex)

[Shrike]

Like Jabber (http://www.jabber.org)/XMPP (http://www.xmpp.org)?

"The PHP Brotherhood" sounds like a cult, or the name of a movie :p
Kind of like the Masons, only with PGP handshakes.

[Drakla]

Kind of like the Masons, only with PGP handshakes.
I can't wait for the Dan Brown book to come out.

[Shrike]

I can't wait for the Dan Brown book to come out.
Yeah then we can sue him.

[vaaaska]

The only time I can not find an answer to my question (via this forum) is when I'm doing something really strange (usually with regex or mysql). Personally, I think the Echo Lounge already fulfills the need you speak of...

Why not simply start a mail list (and then you'd have searchable archives)? I'm on the Web Standards Group (CSS) list and it has all the heavy weight quasi-famous css folks on it. No end to the help that comes from it...

I'd join and I'd be happy to do some design (graphic design) work for it if needed (assuming there might a website for it)...

* And also assuming you don't need it this month...or the next six months... ;)

[Davidc316]

Thank you.

Once again, I do not question how valuable this forum is and there's no way it could ever be replaced.

What I'm talking about is a way for guys like you and I to say to our friends, "if the going ever gets REALLY tough and you need help urgently, you can call me straight away and live help will be at hand."

Having read through the responses I can understand the grief that may be caused by the Masonic perception. I certainly don't want people like David Icke to be going around accusing me of being an Alien reptile or anything so maybe we could consider the idea of opening it up to everyone. But if we did then I think there would have to be some kind of system that rewards contributors and also discourages freeloaders who never help anyone else.

I don't know. Maybe this whole thing will never see the light of day. On the other hand, maybe it's an idea that could take off and eventually support other IT areas as well (not just PHP support).

Any suggestions would be appreciated. If it's a crumby idea then I won't be offended if you say so.

[goldbug]

Two thoughts:

First rule of the PHP Brotherhood... is don't talk ab......nevermind. :)

2: This is best implemented, imho, by a bright red phone. "Holy regex batman! It's the PHPhone!"

Personally, I think current IM solutions can possibly facilitate this 90%. If people are online, and available, ask away. If they set to away/DND, move on. The problem lies in controlling access to the list of IM accounts.

Another sticky issue: what happens when people IM too much or are annoying, like myself for example.

Postscript: Isn't this what Expert sEx change is all about?

[Elizabeth]

This idea reminds me of TopCoder.com (http://www.topcoder.com) except in that case membership is validated through contests instead of nomination or election. Members must prove themselves to be considered among the elite (of course this association only considers Java, C# and C++). I think what you're proposing is something similar, but the goal would not necessarily be to prove one's coding prowess but to assist other experienced coders in high-level coding dilemmas.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, in fact, I think it's a rather good one. A few comments from a 3rd party observer if I may be so bold:
1- If you plan on making it worthwhile, I think you should have some kind of validation system whatever you choose. It may be prior achievements or group nomination or contests like in TopCoder. But opening it up, while seems "warmer and fuzzier" detracts from the quality of the nature of the group.
2- Creating a group like this would not only be good for collaboration, but also good for PHP job opportunities. TopCoder promotes the fact that they will submit jobs to elite members, and I'm sure they make the companies pay dearly. But a company that is truly looking for an experienced PHPer would love to find a method to attract only the best and brightest. As well, what a nice thing to put on a resume, that you are a member of an elite PHP programming group that has stringent terms of membership. HR people love that crap.
3- It may help keep the PHP community grounded. There would be a representation of PHP users then to collaborate with PHP Internals on key issues - instead of the onesy-twosy interjections currently seen on the mailing list.

Just some thoughts. :)

If IM'ing is your worry- you could always set up a private IRC channel and keep it open all the time

[vaaaska]

For years now I've been rather mystified that folks around here have not banded together to produce anything like this (or anything of a substantive matter). If this were a graphic design forum you would have created 50 of these by now. Seriously, I see new group web projects proposed and completed on a weekly basis...doesn't mean they a great though but still...

Just do it™ - it's the best way to learn, colab and show what you can do. Who cares if it exists.

I totally wish I had time to jump on stuff like this these days...

[Drakla]

What do you do about people out who haven't met their target, who got in on a blag? Give them some sort of banishment into the wilderness (The Long Walk!) Because obviously you'd have to eventually riddle the duffers out of the system.

Where the hell is Shryuku? I love his opinion on this type of thing. He's a modern day Charton Heston! "Soylent Green is PhPeople!!!"

[Weedpacket]

Holy regex batman! It's the PHPhone!"The PHatPhone?

you can call me straight away and live help will be at handAnd I'll leap down your throat for waking me up at 2:30 in the morning.

I'm probably a bit out of touch with the situation though; I've never been in such a crisis situation (though I have dodged a few). Maybe I just play too safe with my jobs and avoid getting fancy if there are people who will be relying on the result. (when I've had to do time estimates, I overestimate 'cos I know I'm bad at it, then everyone else between me and the customer also inflates the estimate by a few percent). If I do see a deadline overrun approaching, I give those who need to know a heads-up. Given a bit of warning, the delay might be smoothed over. For one thing, the customer will rather know in advance if something might be late (so that they can accommodate it in their own time management in place as well) than find out when the deadline falls that it's not there.

[dalecosp]

IM/AIM/Jabber was discussed.

We do have IRC (http://phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?t=10280372&page=4); realistically, you're not likely to get "urgent help" there, though, as the average population of the room is about 2.79 and the charter supposedly states that the channel is for non-coding related discussion.

I really think it would be totally OK to discuss coding situations there; however, the problem of "nobody there" remains. If you look at a channel like ##freebsd on freenode, there are usually a few hundred people logged in, and 8-12 actually looking at the screen or conversing.

Possibly the problem is that the channel is about PHPBuilder (http://phpbuilder.com/board), and not about PHP itself.

But, the point was *supposed* to be something like: "many people use IRC for 'instant help/feedback'".....

[dalecosp]

Another sticky issue: what happens when people IM too much or are annoying, like myself for example.We change the subject, and you bow out, 'cause the rest of us are chatting like idiots about stupid stuff. Happens all the time. ;)

:D

[Jason Batten]

2. We all help each other in times of need.
3. Our relationship is friendly and non commercial in nature.Yay for Utopia!