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Phil Sturgeon:
PHP Wars: Attack of the Clones
Oct 21, 2014 @ 15:18:02

In one of his recent posts Phil Sturgeon talks about what he calls the "Attack of the Clones" on Packagist. In this case, he's referring to the number of packages that all pretty much do the same thing, just in slightly different ways.

n the last article I said I wanted to write about when its a good idea to release a component. A lot of this comes down to: is there one out there that does what I want, and if so, can I use it. This blog post is going to touch on a lot of points already made well by Anthony Ferrera. His article Reinvent The Wheel! says many of the same things, so if you only have time to read one article right now, go and read that. I've been talking with various people on Twitter about how I see a lot of people building what I consider to be clones. [...] It should go without saying that I'm not trying to quash innovation; I just don't think building identical shit over and over again is innovation. I see people wasting their time, and I know that time could go to better use.

He talks about how he's not opposed to innovation and development for the sake of learning, but that often the packages released are lower-powered versions of already established, well-tested packages. These kinds of packages can clutter the results when the packages are searched and prevent developers from finding the best fit for what they need. He mentions frameworks, but doesn't dwell on them as they're a bit more "self-contained" than just packages. He also touches on the curation of packages (guiding people to the right ones) as a possible solution and looks at how some of the other communities out there handle this same problem.

tagged: clones package opinion curation learning innovation community

Link: https://philsturgeon.uk/blog/2014/10/php-wars-attack-of-the-clones


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