this is a feature called namespaces. php doesn’t have those so you can’t have two functions with the same name being used in a website. thats a leak of php.

We are in a lucky position where by all of our code is bespoke, we do not use off the shelf tools, as most of the software we develop is so custom. That means we are in a great place to try new things.

The issue I envisage is supporting legacy PHP software we have developed, especially those that have a lot of frequent iterations and version branches. I think we will be using PHP concurrently with Django for a while until the legacy systems have faded out.

I know survey systems are complicated, but what I’m facing is the difficulty of explaining to a manager why we can’t just go back to using the PHP-based LimeSurvey, which is light years beyond what django-survey can do. So a rich ecosystem of available reusable apps is critical when it comes to convincing managers that Django is worth adopting. Right now I’m spending a lot of time on custom code to flesh out this survey app, which I wouldn’t have to do if we were in a PHP-based system. From the boss’ viewpoint, Django looks like something that’s wasting the organization’s time right now, because there are fewer pre-fab solutions for common problems, and the ones that are available take more tweaking/massaging to get running.

All of my talk about “clean code” and “highly object oriented” etc. doesn’t hold a lot of sway when they see me slipping deadlines because I have to build things myself that would already be built if we were using another platform.