Today, the system I "inherited" from my senior had another issue. While debugging, I re-evaluated this system.
This system has nothing to do with being advanced; in fact, from today's perspective, it seems a bit "LOW":
- PHP
- Apache2.4
- MySQL5.6
- Openlayers 3
In contrast, it plays an extremely stable role in the daily maintenance of campus logistics, routinely recording the maintenance logs of logistics personnel.
I participated in adding some features to this project later on. At that time, I had a little foundation in developing applications and was keen on searching for new technologies as toys. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I looked down on PHP, so when I was assigned tasks, I was quite anxious.
My impatience, combined with my mediocre technical skills, meant that during the project’s progress, the completion of tasks was basically: the process could be followed, but with a little testing, many issues would arise.
In the blink of an eye, my third semester of graduate school is almost over, and I've participated in several projects in between. The technology stack of these projects has become more modern as I wished, but their practicality has lagged behind. This system, with "daily active" users numbering only two or three, quietly resides on a very underperforming virtual host, running for several years. As a 2B system, it even performs somewhat excellently compared to our "practice" projects that are not from a computer science background.
Technologies can be "new" or "old," but it's not as simple as "good" or "bad." The code written by my senior, from a software design perspective, has very poor reusability and average readability. However, today, without any PHP foundation, I can effortlessly patch up the old system. To some extent, its maintainability is excellent, with project files (*.php) quietly fulfilling their mission in the folder.
New technologies emerge endlessly, and excellent programmers are cultivating improvements in development efficiency and software performance. For me, in the somewhat blind pursuit of new technologies, I have somewhat diluted the understanding that technology itself is meant for application. I have created a bunch of fun but useless "toy" applications using different "new technologies," yet there hasn't been one that feels perfect and operates impeccably in a production environment. Moving forward, I should shift my focus from the pursuit of "new technologies" to strengthening some foundational skills and general theories, striving to create a truly practical "toy."